My UN Commission’s finding: Israel Is Committing Genocide

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Navi Pillay: Our analysis found that starvation has been used as a weapon of war and that the medical system has been deliberately destroyed. Maternal health care has been severely undermined. Children have been starved, shot and buried under rubble - Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

By Navi Pillay

In 1995, President Nelson Mandela of South Africa asked me to serve as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The judicial panel over which I presided convicted three Rwandans of genocide. So I understand the word ‘genocide’, and it is not one I use lightly. It is the deliberate attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a people. It represents the most serious violation of our shared humanity and the gravest breach of international law.

Today, the United Nations commission that I lead is publishing its legal analysis of Israel’s conduct in the Gaza Strip. Our conclusion is stark: Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. This finding is based on investigations and extensive evidence into the period between Oct. 7, 2023, when the war began, and July 31, 2025. It has been corroborated by multiple sources and assessed through the rigorous legal framework of the UN Genocide Convention of 1948, to which Israel is a party.

My organization, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (IICIOPT), was established by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2021. It is overseen by appointed experts who are supported by staff from the UN secretariat. The Commission reports its findings to the Human Rights Council and General Assembly.

The scale of destruction is devastating. More than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 18,000 children and nearly 10,000 women, according to Gazan health officials. Estimated life expectancy in Gaza has collapsed from 75 years to just over 40 in a single year, one of the steepest declines recorded. Hospitals, schools, churches, mosques and entire neighbourhoods have been destroyed.

Our analysis found that starvation has been used as a weapon of war and that the medical system has been deliberately destroyed. Maternal health care has been severely undermined. Children have been starved, shot and buried under rubble. According to UNICEF, one child has died every hour in Gaza. These are not the accidents of war. They are acts calculated to bring about the destruction of a people.

Establishing genocide requires not only the act but also the intent. Here, too, the evidence is clear. Senior Israeli leaders, including the president, the prime minister and the former defence minister, have dehumanized Palestinians. Yoav Gallant, the defence minister at the time of the Oct. 7 attacks, said, “We are fighting human animals,” while President Isaac Herzog proclaimed that the entire Palestinian nation was responsible. Their words have been matched by deeds: indiscriminate bombardment making Gaza uninhabitable, the blocking of humanitarian aid, sexual and gender-based violence and a siege we concluded was designed to starve the population to death. Together, these constitute a pattern that demonstrates genocidal intent.

The commission also found that Palestinians have been killed while seeking food at distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the Israel and US-backed entity that largely replaced the existing aid network. Hundreds, including children, have been shot while trying to access aid.

Some argue that the term ‘genocide’ is too grave to apply while Israel’s war continues. But the law is explicit: The obligation to prevent genocide arises the moment a serious risk is evident. That threshold was crossed long ago in this war. In January 2024, the International Court of Justice put all states on notice that there was a serious risk that genocide was being committed in Gaza. Since then, the evidence has only deepened, and the killing has multiplied.

What does this mean for the international community? It means its obligations are not optional. 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. It is complicity.

I do not write these words as an adversary of Israel. I recognize the suffering of Israelis who lost loved ones in the horrific Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, which killed some 1,200 people, and the pain of the families of the roughly 50 hostages who remain in captivity, including about 20 still believed to be alive. Our commission has documented the crimes by Hamas. But no crime, however grave, justifies genocide. To respond to atrocity with atrocity is to abandon the very values international law was created to protect.

History will judge how the world responds. In Rwanda, the international community did not prevent the genocide, nor did it intervene to stop the killing once the genocide began. Today, the international community is again failing to act — this time, in Gaza. The facts are reported daily. The warnings are unequivocal. The law is clear. The stakes, the survival of a people, could not be higher.

The obligation to prevent genocide belongs not only to states but also to the international system as a whole. The UN Security Council must not be the graveyard of conscience. Regional organizations, national parliaments, civil society and ordinary citizens all have a role to play in pressing governments to act. The Genocide Convention was born from the ashes of the Holocaust with a solemn vow: “Never again”.  That vow is meaningless if it applies only to some and not to others.

I urge every government, every leader and every citizen to ask: What will we say when our children and grandchildren ask what we did while Gaza was burned to the ground? Every act of genocide is a test of the humanity that binds us.

The prevention of genocide is not a matter of the discretion of states. It is a legal and moral obligation, and it admits no delay. The law requires action. Our common humanity demands it.

-Navi Pillay is the chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. She is a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. This article was originally published by The New York Times

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