<img src='https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-09-16/UN-inquiry-finds-Israel-committing-genocide-in-Gaza-1GImZAJZc1G/img/2f533beb41e745de97e781738ccd8fb1/2f533beb41e745de97e781738ccd8fb1.png' alt='Palestinian solidarity activists stage a protest in front of the United Nations office to denounce the situation in Gaza, in Geneva, Switzerland, September 15, 2025. /VCG'
A United Nations (UN) independent Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Tuesday accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza in a bid to “destroy the Palestinians” there, and blamed Israel’s prime minister and other top officials for incitement.
“Genocide is occurring in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, head of the COI on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a former International Criminal Court judge. “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.”
The commission published its latest 72-page report, nearly two years after the war erupted in Gaza following Hamas’s deadly October 7 2023 attack inside Israel.
Nearly 65,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to figures from the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the UN considers reliable.
The vast majority of Gazans have been displaced at least once, with more mass-displacement underway as Israel ramps up efforts to seize control of Gaza City, where the UN has declared a full-blown famine.
The COI concluded that Israeli authorities and forces had since October 2023 committed “four of the five genocidal acts” listed in the 1948 Genocide Convention. These are “killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
Israel is fighting a genocide case and rejected such accusations at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The commission is not a legal body, but its reports can wield diplomatic pressure and serve to gather evidence for later use by courts.
‘Intent to destroy’
The investigators said explicit statements by Israeli civilian and military authorities along with the pattern of Israeli force conduct “indicated that the genocidal acts were committed with intent to destroy … Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a group.”
The report concluded that Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has “incited the commission of genocide and that Israeli authorities have failed to take action against them to punish this incitement.” It cites a letter Netanyahu wrote 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.
‘Complicity’
“The international community cannot stay silent on the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” insisted Pillay, presenting her final report. “The absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity,” she warned.
Israel has since the start of the war faced accusations of committing genocide in Gaza from many NGOs and independent UN experts, and even before international courts.
Israel on Tuesday said it “categorically rejects” the probe. “Israel categorically rejects this distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of this Commission of Inquiry,” a statement from the Foreign Ministry said.
The UN itself has not labeled the situation in Gaza a genocide, although the body’s aid chief urged world leaders in May to “act decisively to prevent genocide,” while its rights chief last week denounced Israeli “genocidal rhetoric.”
In January last year, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to prevent acts of “genocide” in Gaza. Four months later, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Angered by that move, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration last month imposed sanctions on two ICC judges and two prosecutors, including barring them from entering the United States and freezing their assets in the country.
(With input from agencies)
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