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Wed 17 Sep 2025
The conclusion of a UN commission of inquiry that Israel has committed genocide in the war in Gaza, and that its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other Israeli leaders are responsible for inciting that genocide, changes little in legal terms. The international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague has yet to issue its final ruling in the genocide case that South Africa brought against Israel last year.
Politically, however, this latest report (officially a “conference room paper”, intended to aid discussion of the themes) may prove to be one of the final nails in the coffin of the shameless but still-continuing narrative from Netanyahu and his allies that any talk of Israeli crimes is part of an antisemitic plot – or, to use Netanyahu’s favourite phrase, “a blood libel”.
The commission of inquiry’s findings now stand alongside those of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the respected Israeli groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, who have all published authoritative and detailed reports concluding that Israel is committing genocide in the two years since the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023. UN experts and genocide scholars have reached the same conclusion.
Even when so many have already spoken, however, a UN commission of inquiry brings a particular stamp of authority. The chair of the commission on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel is Navi Pillay, a former president of the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda. When I first met her, she was a respected UN high commissioner for human rights – not exactly a “Hamas proxy”, to quote Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva when he accused the authors of the report of a “libellous rant”.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/17/un-report-israel-genocide-gaza-western-governments?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other