The growing consensus that Israel is committing genocide

A United Nations commission published a 72-page report^[1] on Tuesday that concluded Israel has committed a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

“It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention,” said Navi Pillay^[2], chair of the commission. The commission’s findings specifically determined that Israel has perpetrated at least four of the five acts of genocide as defined by the 1948 Geneva Convention.

The report adds yet another voice to the growing consensus that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza constitutes a genocide. Leading international^[3], Palestinian^[4], and Israeli^[5] human rights organizations have already released reports saying so. More recently, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution^[6] that stated the same conclusion. They have been joined by at least 20^[7] members of Congress who have called the war in Gaza a genocide.

The two latest members of Congress to make that statement did so after the UN commission’s report was released. “The intent is clear. The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wrote^[8] in an op-ed on Wednesday. In another op-ed, Rep. Becca Balint, a Democrat from Vermont, echoed the sentiment.

“Today, I believe the Israeli government is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people,” Balint wrote^[9]. “As the granddaughter of a man murdered in the Holocaust, it is not easy for me to say that. But the trauma of the Holocaust serves as a reminder of the power of speaking out.”

This growing consensus comes as Israel faces more and more pressure from the international community to stop the war, especially since the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) — the world’s leading authority on hunger crises — determined that Israeli policy has created^[10] a famine in Gaza. But Israel has ignored those calls and has instead recently launched^[11] a ground offensive to invade and occupy Gaza City.

What the UN commission’s report says

The commission — officially called the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel — was created in 2021 by the UN Human Rights Council. And since the start of the war in Gaza, it has been investigating violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

The Geneva Convention lays out five acts^[12] that constitute genocide if any of them are undertaken with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

The newly released report concludes that Israel is responsible for four of the five: “(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,” specifically by destroying health care infrastructure, including maternity wards and a fertility clinic. The report said there’s no evidence of the fifth act of genocide^[13], which is forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The report outlines various statements from Israeli officials to underscore intent. “Several statements by Israeli officials advocated for collective punishment against the Palestinian people as a whole or the population of Gaza in particular,” the report said^[14]. “Some statements recognised that there was a difference between civilians and combatants but urged that all Gazans should be punished for the actions of the militants on 7 October 2023.”

But if these official statements leave room for doubt, the report doesn’t solely rely on them to infer intent but also focuses on Israel’s pattern of conduct. That includes Israel blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza and the forced starvation of Palestinians; targeting Gaza’s health care system; destroying the enclave’s educational, religious, and cultural facilities; perpetrating sexual and gender-based violence; and deliberately targeting children.

Here’s one example: “Sexual violence [against Palestinians in Gaza] was used as a means of punishment and intimidation from the moment of arrest and throughout detention, including during interrogations and searches,” the report stated. “Several male detainees reported that Israeli security forces personnel had beaten, kicked, pulled or squeezed their genitals, often while the detainees were naked. One detainee stated that he had been forced to strip and ordered to kiss the Israeli flag. When he refused, he had been beaten, and his genitals had been kicked so severely that he had vomited and lost consciousness.”

The report also said that the commission received credible information concerning “many cases of rape” and added that Israeli forces “sexually harassed and publicly shamed” Palestinian women.

The commission also documented how the mass killing of civilians — the death toll in Gaza has now reached more than 65,000 people^[16] — has often been deliberate. “The Commission found that the Israeli security forces had clear knowledge of the presence of Palestinian civilians along the evacuation routes and within the safe areas but nevertheless they shot at and killed civilians, some of whom (including children) were holding makeshift white flags,” the report said. “Some children, including toddlers, were shot in the head by snipers.”

These are just a few of the horrific details among the commission’s findings, which are worth reading in full^[17]. But Israel has denied the allegations made in the report, resorting to tired tactics of calling it “fake,” accusing^[18] the report’s writers of being antisemitic, and even “serving as Hamas proxies.”

What impact will this report have?

That this report is coming from an independent commission established by the UN only lends further credence to the piling charges and expert determinations that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.

Even for some skeptics, that conclusion is becoming harder and harder to avoid. Last month, for example, the president of J Street, a liberal-leaning Zionist lobbying group, said^[19] that while he might not use the term “genocide” himself, he “cannot and will not argue any more against those using the term. I simply won’t defend the indefensible,” adding that he has “been persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention^[20].”

The report was also published just before the UN General Assembly is set to convene next week, which will likely highlight Israel’s growing international isolation as world leaders gather to discuss the most pressing concerns around the globe. More and more Western states, for example, have already pledged^[21] to recognize Palestine as a state, and the report’s conclusions will only add more pressure for states to take action to stop the genocide, such as arms embargos, boycotts, and sanctions.

But the report only adds to a growing chorus of experts and observers who have concluded that Israel is committing the crime of crimes. On its own, though, that will not carry much weight without corresponding government measures. And if Israel’s allies — chiefly, the United States — continue to support its military campaign while imposing few, if any, conditions on aid, then there is no end to the horror in sight.