Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a United Nations commission said Tuesday, calling on the international community to end the campaign and punish the top officials it found responsible for inciting it.
Israel rejected the accusations as “distorted and false,” labeling them "scandalous."
A team of independent experts called a commission of inquiry detailed their assessment in a new report, joining a growing chorus of rights advocates and scholars to level the accusation against the U.S. ally.
The findings were published as Israel launched its long-anticipated ground offensive on Gaza City, a widely condemned assault on a famine-stricken area where hundreds of thousands of people were living.
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“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, the commission chair and former U.N. human rights chief. “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.”
The three-member team said in its 72-page report that Israel has committed four of the five “genocidal acts” defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention: Killing members of a group, causing serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group and preventing births.
To count as genocide, at least one of five acts must have occurred. The commission found no evidence in relation to the fifth category, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The inquiry's conclusion is the strongest U.N. finding to date, but the body is independent, and it does not officially speak for the U.N. The team was commissioned by the Human Rights Council, the U.N.’s top human rights body.
It said Israel has attacked “protected objects,” such as civilian homes and health care facilities, while it targeted “civilians and other protected persons.” It also accused Israel of severely mistreating detainees, carrying out forced displacement and environmental destruction and blocking essential aid, water and supplies.
The report cited an attack on Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, which reportedly destroyed 4,000 embryos and 1,000 sperm samples and fertilized eggs, as a measure intended to prevent births.
To meet the legal definition under the convention, it must also establish that any of the genocidal acts were committed with the intention to destroy a group in whole or in part.
The commission concluded that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had “incited the commission of genocide.”
It cited Gallant’s remarks in October 2023, after a Hamas-led terrorist attack killed 1,200 people and more than 250 were taken hostage.
Gallant announced “a complete siege” of Gaza, declaring: “No electricity, no water, no food, no fuel. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.”
Since then, Palestinian health officials say, Israeli forces have killed nearly 65,000 people in Gaza, including thousands of children, while displacing most of the population and destroying or damaging much of its infrastructure.
Addressing U.N. member states, the commission urged that they employ "all means reasonably available to them" to prevent genocide in Gaza and "examine the involvement of officials" mentioned in the report "as those most responsible for international crimes" in Gaza.
Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said on X that the report relies “entirely on Hamas falsehoods,” adding it “categorically rejects this distorted and false report.”
