'It Is Clear': UN Commission Finding Confirms Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza

A commission of independent experts at the United Nations on Tuesday said Western countries must stop providing military aid to Israel as it released an extensive report confirming that the Israeli government is carrying out a genocide in Gaza—joining international and Israeli human rights groups and numerous genocide experts that have come to the same conclusion in recent months.

"The commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit the following actus reus of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip," said the UN Commission of Inquiry, citing four of the five "genocidal acts" defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In its bombardment of Gaza, the three-member panel found, Israel has killed members of a group, caused serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicted conditions to destroy the group, and acted to prevent births.

The only genocidal act classified under the Genocide Convention that the commission did not find evidence of in Gaza was the forcible transfer of children from one group to another.

Under the Convention, committing just one or more genocidal act constitutes a genocide.

The report cited an Israeli attack on Gaza's largest fertility clinic in December 2023, which reportedly destroyed 4,000 embryos and 1,000 sperm samples and fertilized eggs, as evidence that Israel has acted to prevent Palestinian births in Gaza. More than 18,000 Palestinian children have also been killed in Israel's assault.

Navi Pillay, the commission chair and former UN high commissioner for human rights, emphasized the key finding that Israeli officials have demonstrated their "intent" to commit genocide.

"It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention," said Pillay in a statement.

The commission report cited comments by former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in October 2023, when he said Israel would impose "a complete siege" on Gaza with "no electricity, no water, no food, no fuel" entering the exclave in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023.

"We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly," said Gallant at the time. The near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that resulted from his order has killed more than 400 people including at least 145 children so far, with many dying in recent months.

Gallant's comments were just one example of Israeli officials' intent to hold Gaza's entire population of 2.2 million Palestinians accountable for the actions of Hamas in October 2023. Israeli President Isaac Herzog explicitly said that the entire group was "responsible" and said there were no "civilians who were not aware and not involved" in the attack on southern Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also called on Israeli soldiers to "remember what Amalek did to you," a reference to the Amalekites in the Hebrew Bible, whom God commanded the Israelites to exterminate.

"The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza,” Pillay said in a statement.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed more than 65,000 Palestinians since beginning the assault on Gaza—attacking hospitals, schools, and refugee camps while claiming that Hamas operates out of civilian infrastructure. Doctors have reported operating on many children who have gunshot wounds to the head and chest—suggesting they were deliberately targeted. Israeli soldiers have also described being ordered to shoot civilians.

Pillay said in an interview with Zeteo that, under the Genocide Convention, countries are legally obligated to step in and take action to stop Israel from continuing the genocide.

"It's not a choice," said Pillay. "It's an obligation that states have under the Genocide Convention, and they are all parties to that."

In an op-ed at The New York Times, Pillay wrote: "Every state has an obligation to prevent genocide wherever it occurs. That obligation requires action: halting the transfer of weapons and military support used in genocidal acts, ensuring unimpeded humanitarian assistance, stopping the mass displacement and destruction, and using all available diplomatic and legal means to stop the killing."

"To do nothing is not neutrality," she said. "It is complicity."

The report was released as the IDF launched a ground offensive to take control of Gaza City, killing at least 68 Palestinians in the city on Tuesday.

Forty percent of the city's residents have been forced to flee south to a coastal encampment in al-Mawasi, which has repeatedly been struck by Israeli forces despite being declared a "safe zone." Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are living in the tent encampment without access to sanitation, safe water, or basic services.

"They have to run out of their homes in the middle of the night with nothing other than the clothes that they’re wearing, seeking shelter towards the coast of Gaza City," reported Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud in a dispatch from Gaza City on Tuesday. "Fighter jets are hovering at a very dangerously low level in the past hour or two. The sky remains filled with the constant hum of drones, leaving residents unable to rest."

"What we are witnessing is a systematic, unfolding terror inflicted on this population," said Mahmoud. "They live in constant fear that their building will be next and they will lose everything and find themselves on the road again to displacement."

The offensive in Gaza City comes weeks after Netanyahu confirmed that his government is planning a full takeover of the Gaza Strip, defying international law.

The UN commission's findings on Tuesday could be used by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court, which has a warrant out for the arrests of Netanyahu and Gallant and has accused them of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the International Court of Justice, which is hearing a genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel.