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genocide
Gaza Genocide 'Not Over,' Says UN Expert as Israel's Onslaught Enters Fourth Year
"It's really beyond what words can say, and it gives the sense that the destruction of Gaza is not over," the 49-year-old Italian jurist continued. "Seventy percent of the strip is under the control of the [Israeli] army, which is leveling as much as it can. There is an environmental catastrophe, a humanitarian catastrophe."
Israel's assault on Gaza began in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, in which more than 1,100 Israelis and others were killed—at least some by so-called “friendly fire” and under the fratricidal Hannibal Directive—and over 240 people were abducted.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials soon began calling for the genocidal destruction of Gaza and its 2.2 million people. Netanyahu declared it a "holy mission" for Israel to fulfill a divine command to the Israelites to exterminate every man, woman, child, and animal in Amalek, the fictional archenemy of the ancient Jews.
Over the past three years, Israeli forces have killed at least 74,237 Palestinians and wounded at least 175,206 others in Gaza, according to Gaza Health Ministry figures—which not only have been affirmed by senior Israeli military and intelligence officials, but are believed by the authors of multiple peer-reviewed scientific studies to be a significant undercount.
Tens of thousands of those injuries are classified as "life-altering," including thousands of amputations performed on adults and children, sometimes without anesthesia.
The Gaza Health Ministry says more than 10,000 of those killed were women, over 5,100 were elderly, and upward of 21,000 were children—figures supported by classified Israel Defense Forces intelligence data suggesting that 5 in 6 Palestinians killed by the IDF through the first 19 months of the onslaught were civilians.
Tens of thousands of children have also been left without one or both parents, with more than 2,700 families suffering so many deaths that they were erased from the civil registry in Gaza. The UN Children's Fund called the strip the "world's most dangerous place to be a child."
In the wake of the October 7 attack, the IDF dramatically loosened rules of engagement, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking. The IDF’s use of massive ordnance, including US-supplied 1,000- and 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs, and the utilization of artificial intelligence to select targets, have resulted in staggering numbers of civilian deaths, including numerous instances of dozens or more people being massacred in single strikes.
At closer range, current and former IDF troops have accused their own of deliberately shooting Palestinian civilians, including children, sometimes out of sheer boredom. Palestinian medical professionals—who, like journalists and aid workers, have suffered hundreds of their ranks killed by Israeli bombs and bullets—have also described what they say is the deliberate shooting of Gazans, including children.
On October 8, 2023, then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered the "complete siege" of Gaza, explaining that "we are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly." The siege, which is actually a tightening of a decadeslong blockade of Gaza, fueled famine and disease that killed many of the most vulnerable people in the strip. Nothing was spared, including hospitals and other medical facilities, whose staff members were sometimes abducted and tortured—allegedly to death in at least one case—by their Israeli captors.
Around 90% of Gaza's population—around 1.9 million people—has been forcibly displaced, most of them multiple times. With the vast bulk of Gaza's buildings damaged or destroyed, nearly two-thirds of Gazans continue to live in tents or makeshift shelters as the war's fourth winter, and with it the prospect of more infants and newborns dying of hypothermia, approaches.
Despite a purported year-old ceasefire, Israeli forces continue to kill, wound, and displace Palestinians in Gaza to this day. Gaza officials say that at least 1,460 people have been killed and more than 5,100 others have been wounded since the ceasefire took effect. Israel is still blocking or delaying desperately needed humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, although there have been some improvements in delivery during the ceasefire period.
Meanwhile, Israeli calls for more ethnic cleansing, occupation, and possibly even the Jewish recolonization of Gaza continue. And while President Donald Trump no longer openly discusses a US takeover and redevelopment of the Mediterranean strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East," his administration is still trying to determine Gaza's future through vehicles like his widely derided "Board of Peace."
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. The ICC simultaneously ordered the arrest of three senior Hamas officials, but Israel has since assassinated them.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), also in The Hague, is currently in the written stage of a genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa and formally supported by more than 15 nations. While a ruling in the case isn't expected until at least the end of the decade, a UN commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and other experts—including many Israeli and international Jewish academics, jurists, human rights campaigners, and others—have already concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Yet genocide denial persists in Israel, the United States, and among supporters of Israel's destruction of Gaza around the world. And while numerous nations have severed diplomatic ties with Israel or imposed sanctions—sometimes both—the United States under both the Biden and Trump administrations has lavished the key Middle East ally with tens of billions of dollars in armed aid, as well as diplomatic cover including a string of vetoes of UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions.
Furthermore, the Trump administration has moved to punish members of the ICC, ICJ, and UN, including Albanese—who has been relentlessly critical of both Israel's genocide and Western complicity, especially by the United States.
On the other hand, increasing diplomatic recognition of Palestine by even Israel's allies and a worldwide wave of protests against the Gaza genocide—including numerous demonstrations organized and led by Jewish groups—has shown Palestinians that much of the world stands in solidarity with them.
"There are really these two forces... symbolically, fighting against each other," Albanese told Anadolu during Wednesday's interview. "Those who want to continue the genocide, the exploitation, and the erasure of Palestine, and those who want to stop it."
'By Annihilating Iran, We've Created Peace': Trump's Genocidal Rhetoric Takes Orwellian Turn in Time Interview
Over the last seven months, Trump has on numerous occasions threatened apocalyptic destruction of Iran, most infamously in April when he said that if it did not submit to a peace agreement he found favorable, its "whole civilization" would "die."
Trump's threat to annihilate a nation of 90 million people drew worldwide condemnation from human rights groups, lawmakers, and other nations, some of whom described the rhetoric as "genocidal."
Time senior political correspondent Eric Cortellessa and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs asked Trump about these threats and how they comported with his self-description as a peacemaker.
"You've made versions of that threat before. You've also called yourself the president of peace," they said. "How can the president of peace be calling for the annihilation of an entire people?"
Trump replied: "Because by annihilating Iran, we've created peace in the world. With Iran, I don't think you could ever have peace."
The reporters asked Trump to clarify: "Are you talking specifically about the government, the Islamic Republic regime? What about the innocent people?"
He did not give a clear answer, instead accusing the Iranian government of having "killed 75,000 people in the last number of months," referring to its crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.
Iran has claimed that 3,117 people were killed during the protest wave. But while independent investigations have suggested this is an undercount, the figures they have confirmed are far lower than what Trump suggests.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), for instance, documented a total of 7,007 confirmed deaths, mostly of protesters, between December 2025 and February 2026, and says another 11,744 possible deaths remain under review. Other unverified reports suggest that perhaps as many as 30,000 people were killed.
While seeking to justify continued war with Iran—now into its seventh month—Trump has continued to inflate the number of people supposedly killed well beyond even the highest reported figures. In July, he claimed 52,000 people had been killed, but provided no evidence. He again provided no evidence for the 75,000 figure other than to say it was "documented."
After launching the war at the end of February, Trump initially claimed it would last about six to eight weeks. The reporters asked why the war was now entering its seventh month.
"Only because I wanted to go further," Trump acknowledged.
"I took them out," he said, possibly referring to Iranian nuclear sites, or to Iran's senior leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed during the initial wave of US-Israeli attacks. "I could have stopped then, but I wanted to go further."
Trump went on to portray Iran as essentially destroyed, claiming its economy, navy, and air force were “gone” and putting inflation at “300%”—assertions that substantially overstated the damage inflicted on the country.
Iran has suffered enormous military and economic damage, but it has continued to launch ballistic missile attacks and threaten further retaliation. Meanwhile, official Iranian data puts September inflation at roughly 90% year over year, a far cry from 300%.
“When I said I was going to be there for a short period of time, I was, and then I decided I wanted to go further than that because I didn’t want to have them come back in some different form," the president said.
US President Donald Trump addresses the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York on September 22, 2026. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump's threats also come as the US midterm elections loom just over a month away. High gas prices and inflation caused by the war have fueled backlash among American voters, leading to Trump's lowest-ever approval ratings and predictions of an electoral bloodbath for Republicans down the ballot in November.
Last week, Trump rejected a Qatari-mediated ceasefire proposal from Iran that would have involved the US ending its military blockade of Iran in exchange for Iran lifting its restrictions on travel through the Strait of Hormuz. It would also have meant returning to nuclear negotiations for the first time since Trump backed out of the memorandum of understanding agreed upon in June.
With the war deeply unpopular among the American public, Trump has scaled back the tempo of his attacks on Iran in recent months. Reporters asked Trump whether he planned to ramp up the bombing once the elections were over.
He said it was “possible,” adding, “I can’t tell you that because look, you know, you’re asking, 'Where are you going to bomb?'”
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