Former UN Aid Chief Calls Gaza Genocide 'Worst Crime of the 21st Century'
"I am absolutely convinced that what's going on in Gaza is a genocide, because the thing speaks for itself," said Martin Griffiths.
Former United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths on Tuesday accused Israel of committing the century's worst genocide in an interview published amid increasingly deadly forced starvation in Gaza and a vow by an Israeli Cabinet minister to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the strip to make way for Jewish resettlement.
"I am absolutely convinced that what's going on in Gaza is a genocide, because the thing speaks for itself," Griffiths, who served as the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator from 2021 to 2024, said in an interview with Middle East Eye.
"My grandchildren will be learning in school about who did what in the worst crime of the 21st century," he predicted.
Griffiths' remarks came amid worsening mass starvation in Gaza fueled by Israel's blockade of the besieged strip. Gaza officials said Thursday that at least 115 Palestinians, including more than 80 children, have died of malnutrition since October 2023. Overall, at least 59,106 Palestinians have been killed and more than 142,500 others have been wounded by Israeli forces during 656 days of assault and siege. Over 14,000 Gazans are also missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble.
"There can frankly be very little doubt that we are seeing starvation and hunger as an instrument of the war," Griffiths asserted. "There is no prior experience in my five decades of humanitarian experience that can come close to comparison to the horror we are all seeing in Gaza."
"The U.N. announcement, based on serious hospital data, that people are fainting in the street from hunger and malnutrition, tells us all we need to know," he added. "It is a historic fact that children die first in these circumstances. Our humanity cannot believe our eyes."
Numerous human rights groups and U.N. experts have accused Israel of weaponizing starvation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including forced starvation and murder.
In March 2024 the International Court of Justice—which is currently weighing a genocide case brought by South Africa—ordered Israel to allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into the embattled enclave and reiterated an earlier directive to prevent genocidal acts. Critics allege that Israel has ignored these orders.
Griffiths slammed the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose aid distribution points have been the site of numerous massacres in which more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed. Israeli officers and soldiers have said they received orders to shoot and shell desperate aid-seekers.
"This isn't humanitarian," Griffiths said. "It's a lure for displacement."
Israeli officials have openly declared their intent to conquer, indefinitely occupy, and ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians so that a plan proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump to turn the coastal enclave into "the Riviera of the Middle East" can be implemented.
On Thursday, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said that Israel's far-right government "is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out."
"All of Gaza will be Jewish," Eliyahu vowed.
Griffiths also decried the "massive impunity" enjoyed by Israeli officials and their enablers, and warned of the dangerous precedent this sets.
"What happens in Gaza doesn't stay in Gaza," he said.
