The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory published a report on September 16 that charged Israeli authorities and security forces with having committed, and continuing to commit, acts of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The 72-page report, replete with 495 footnotes, was compiled by senior independent rights investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council. Specifically, the report concludes that Israel is responsible for committing four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely:
- (i) killing members of the group;
- (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and
- (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
This report brings the UN into line with leading human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, Genocide Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem and Oxfam, all of whom have explicitly labeled Israel’s crimes in Gaza genocidal. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) also recently passed a resolution stating that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.
Hellbound and Down 