A United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded on Tuesday that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and that top Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu incited these acts - accusations that Israel called scandalous.
The U.N. report, issued as Israel announced the start of a ground operation in Gaza City, cites examples of the scale of the killings, aid blockages, forced displacement and the destruction of a fertility clinic to back up its genocide finding, adding its voice to a scholars' association and rights groups that have reached the same conclusion.
"Today we witness in real time how the promise of 'never again' is broken and tested in the eyes of the world. The ongoing genocide in Gaza is a moral outrage and a legal emergency," Navi Pillay, head of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a former International Criminal Court judge, told a Geneva press briefing.
"The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza."
Israeli officials dismiss report
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who was also named in the report, condemned its findings, which he said misinterpreted his words.
"While Israel defends its people and seeks the return of hostages, this morally bankrupt Commission obsesses over blaming the Jewish state, whitewashing Hamas’s atrocities, and turning victims of one of the worst massacres of modern times into the accused," he said.
Israel's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Daniel Meron, called the report "scandalous" and "fake", saying it had been authored by "Hamas proxies".
"Israel categorically rejects the libellous rant published today by this commission of inquiry," Meron told journalists.
Israel accuses the commission of having a political agenda against Israel and diverging from its mandate, and declined to cooperate with it.
Asked to respond to Israel's comments, Pillay said, "I wish they would tell us where we went wrong on these facts, or just cooperate with us."
The commission's 72-page legal analysis is the strongest U.N. finding to date but the body is independent and does not officially speak for the United Nations. The U.N. has not yet used the term 'genocide' but is under increasing pressure to do so.
Pillay said she hoped U.N. rights chief Volker Turk and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres would read the report and "be guided by the facts".
Israel is fighting a genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It has rejected such accusations, citing its right to self-defence following the deadly 7 October, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
The subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 64,000 people, according to Gaza health officials, while a global hunger monitor says part of the Strip is suffering from famine.
The 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such".
Israel 'dehumanising' Palestinian population
To count as genocide, at least one of five acts must have occurred.
The U.N. commission found that Israel had committed four of them: killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
It cited as evidence interviews with victims, witnesses, doctors, verified open-source documents and satellite imagery analysis compiled since the war began.
The commission also concluded that statements by Netanyahu and other officials are "direct evidence of genocidal intent." It cites his letter to Israeli soldiers in November 2023 comparing the Gaza operation to what the commission describes as a "holy war of total annihilation" in the Hebrew Bible.
The report also names former defence minister Yoav Gallant. Netanyahu and Gallant did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Pillay, who is 83 and headed a U.N. tribunal for Rwanda where more than 1 million people were killed in 1994, said the situations were comparable.
"You dehumanise your victims. They're animals, and so therefore, without conscience, you can kill them," she said.
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