A United Nations Inquiry Commission concluded on Tuesday that Israel committed genocide in Gaza and that the main Israeli authorities, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, incited these acts-accusations that Israel called out of scandalous.
The UN report, released as Israel announced, cites examples of the murder scale, aid blockages, forced displacement and the destruction of a fertility clinic to support its genocide conclusion, adding to an association of academics and rights groups that came to the same conclusion.
“Today we witness in real time as the promise of ‘never again’ is broken and tested in the eyes of the world. Genocide ongoing in Gaza is a moral outrage and a legal emergency,” said Navi Pillay, head of the occupied Palestinian territory committee and former judgment of the International Criminal Court at a press conference in Geneva.
Unique opportunity
Legacy Card: Far beyond a service
“The responsibility for these crimes of atrocity falls on the Israeli authorities in the highest echelons, which orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years with the specific intention of destroying the Palestinian group in Gaza.”
Israeli authorities reject report
The Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, who was also cited in the report, condemned the conclusions, which, according to him, misunderstood his words.
“While Israel defends its people and seeks the return of hostages, this morally bankrupt commission is obsessed with blaming the Jewish state, covering the atrocities of Hamas and turning the victims of one of the worst massacres of modern times into accused,” he said.
Continues after advertising
The Israeli ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Daniel Meron, called the report “scandalous” and “false,” saying that he had been created by “representatives of Hamas.”
“Israel categorically rejects the slander published today by this inquiry committee,” Meron told reporters.
Israel accuses the commission of having a political agenda against Israel and diverging from its mandate, and refused to cooperate with it.
Continues after advertising
Required to respond to Israel’s comments, Pillay said, “I would like them to tell us where we were wrong in these facts, or simply cooperate with us.”
The 72 -page legal analysis of the committee is the strongest conclusion of the UN so far, but the agency is independent and does not officially speak by the United Nations. The UN has not yet used the term “genocide”, but is under increasing pressure to do so.
Pillary said he expects UN head of rights, Volker Turk, and secretary general António Guterres to read the report and “be guided by the facts.”
Continues after advertising
Israel faces a genocide process at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The country rejected such accusations, citing its right to self -defense after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages, according to Israeli records.
The subsequent war in Gaza killed more than 64,000 people, according to Gaza’s health authorities, while a global hunger monitor states that part of the territory is suffering from hunger.
The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of Jewish mass murder by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed “with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.”
