ISRAEL is committing genocide in Gaza, a United Nations commission has said this week.
In a report published on Tuesday, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded that Israel’s actions met the definition of four out of five acts of genocide laid out in international law, and that Israeli politicians had demonstrated “direct evidence of genocidal intent”.
The report lists the acts of genocide committed by Israel as: killing, and causing physical and mental harm to Palestinians in Gaza; inflicting on them “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”; and “imposing measures intended to prevent births”.
The same day, Israel launched large-scale ground operations to occupy Gaza City, after a night of intense bombardment. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in the city despite evacuation orders (News, 5 September).
In a detailed examination of Israel’s actions in Gaza since the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023, the UN commission found that Palestinians had been targeted while on evacuation routes and in safe zones designated by Israel, and that the IDF had had “clear knowledge” that its attacks fell on civilians.
“Some children, including toddlers, were shot in the head by snipers” during assaults on evacuation routes and safe zones, the report says.
It cites a figure of 60,199 Palestinians killed in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 31 July 2025, and says that 18,430 of those — almost one third — were children. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had reported that, on 18 March, when the ceasefire was broken, women and children constituted more than 60 per cent of the 404 Palestinians killed.
Actions that constitute attempts to prevent births include the destruction of healthcare facilities, including maternity wards and the main fertility clinic in Gaza. Israel denied targeting the Al-Basma Fertility Centre, but the commission concluded that an attack on the facility in December 2023, which destroyed about 4000 embryos, amounted to an act of genocide.
Israel’s intention of committing genocide was “the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from the totality of the evidence”, the commission concluded. It cited President Isaac Herzog’s statement that “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible,” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invocation of the attack on Amalek, referenced in a letter to Israeli soldiers and in a televised address.
In the Book of Samuel, God tells the Israelites: “Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”
The UN commission comprises a three-person panel chaired by a South African lawyer, Navi Pillay, who was president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
In a statement, she said: “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.”
A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry described the report as “fake” and said that “in stark contrast to the lies in the report, Hamas is the party that attempted genocide in Israel.”
The commission’s findings hold no legal force. It concludes, however, by calling on UN member states to “employ all means reasonably available to them to prevent the commission of genocide in the Gaza Strip”.