Israel Has Committed Genocidal Acts in Gaza Since Cease-Fire, U.N. Human Rights Panel Says
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Israel Has Committed Genocidal Acts in Gaza Since Cease-Fire, U.N. Human Rights Panel Says
The panel also accuses Israel of committing crimes against humanity in the West Bank. Israel condemned the report.
A commission of United Nations human rights experts said on Monday that Israel was committing genocidal acts against Palestinian civilians in Gaza despite a cease-fire agreement there and carrying out crimes against humanity in the West Bank.
The report by the U.N. Independent Commission of Inquiry, which comes on the eve of Israel’s first general election since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack, is meant to look at the drivers of violence by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the panel said. It said that Israel was deliberately targeting Palestinian children and was using torture, rape and sexual violence as part of a broader attack aimed at displacing and subjugating the Palestinian population.
Israel immediately rejected the claims.
The report, delivered to the U.N. General Assembly, noted that between the cease-fire announced on Oct. 10, 2025, and the end of September 2026, Israeli airstrikes, artillery and gunfire had killed 1,431 Palestinians in Gaza, including 300 children. The report rejected a claim in May by the Board of Peace set up by President Trump that the cease-fire had “largely held.”
The combined findings of the U.N. commission, an independent panel of three human rights experts that has already released multiple reports, represent the most authoritative legal analysis of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza pending a ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague on an allegation of genocide filed by South Africa.
Left out here: Leaves out what changes the picture
The Times says only that the commission "has already released multiple reports". It never says that in September 2025 the commission found Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Without this, a reader believes Monday's report is the panel's first genocide determination and that the post-cease-fire "genocidal acts" are a new accusation, not the continuation of a genocide already found.
How we know
- Times of Israel reported“The commission first accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in September 2025”UN-sponsored probe accuses Israel of ongoing Gaza genocide, West Bank crimes against humanity (opens in a new tab)
- Tehran Times reported“In September 2025, the commission found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza”UN inquiry confirms Israel continued Gaza genocide, committed torture and rape in West Bank (opens in a new tab)
- On the recordThe UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry found, on 16 September 2025, that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip.ohchr.org (opens in a new tab)
“The intentional killing and injuring of Palestinian civilians and destruction of homes in the West Bank combined with Israel’s persistent denial of responsibility form part of a broader strategy to exterminate and displace Palestinians and impose conditions of life that are unlivable,” Srinivasan Muralidhar, an Indian lawyer who serves as the panel’s chairman, said in a statement accompanying the report.
The commission also includes Chris Sidoti, an Australian expert on international human rights law who has served on the panel since it was set up in 2021; and Florence Mumba, a Zambian judge who served on international criminal tribunals investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
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