By KNEWS

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U.N. commission finds that Israel committed genocide in Gaza

Sep 17, 2025
News

An independent United Nations commission said Tuesday that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected the conclusions. The “fake report” was based on “falsehoods,” it said in a statement calling for the “immediate abolition” of the commission.

The U.N. commission found indications of intentions to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a group — which it said amount to genocide. “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,” Navi Pillay, chair of the U.N. commission and a former U.N. human rights chief, said in a statement.

The finding, which cites the conduct of military forces on the ground and statements by Israeli authorities, echoes assessments by a growing group of governments and Israeli and international human rights organizations.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel was established in May 2021 by the U.N. Human Rights Council and has investigated alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law during the war in Gaza. The independent commission is composed of three experts appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council’s 47 member states and does not speak for the U.N.

The report was published as the Israeli military began a ground offensive to seize Gaza City, once the enclave’s largest population center. “Gaza is burning,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on X.

It comes near the two-year mark of the war, which began in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel in which about 1,200 Israelis were killed and about 250 people were taken hostage. More than 64,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the war so far, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but says most of those killed were women and children. It says the figure is likely to be an undercount.

Genocide is defined by the United Nations as an act committed with intent to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” That can include any of five acts: killing, causing “serious bodily or mental harm,” imposing measures to prevent births, forcibly transferring children or “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” according to the U.N.’s 1948 genocide convention. Any one of the conditions would be sufficient for a finding of genocide.

The U.N. report found that Israeli authorities and security forces “committed four of the five genocidal acts” as set out by the 1948 convention — all of them but forcibly transferring children.

It said that many explicit statements by Israeli officials contain “dehumanising sentiments that encourage hatred … and violence against Palestinians,” pointing to “intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry in a statement on X accused the writers of the report of “serving as Hamas proxies” with “antisemitic positions.” It said that instead, “Hamas is the party that attempted genocide in Israel.”

In July, all three members of the inquiry submitted their resignations to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Pillay, 83, cited her age, medical issues and other commitments; another member, Australian human rights expert Chris Sidoti, said Pillay’s retirement was an “appropriate time to re-constitute” the commission.

On Aug. 31, the world’s oldest and largest association of genocide scholars said Israel’s military campaign in Gaza meets “the legal definition of genocide.” The International Association of Genocide Scholars said in its resolution that Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack “constitutes international crimes,” but also said that Israel’s response violates conditions set out in the 1948 convention’s definition of genocide.

Two prominent Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, in a July report said they had analyzed Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the rhetoric of Israeli political and military leaders. They concluded that there has been deliberate intent by Israeli decision-makers to target the whole population of Gaza rather than strictly combatants and to destroy life for the Palestinian people and the enclave’s health and civilian infrastructure.

David Mencer, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, at the time called that report baseless and said it “blasphemes Israel.” He said genocide allegations were an “attempt to delegitimize Israel’s right to self-defense against Hamas.”

Gaza, genocide, U.N. commission, United Nations