By Palestine updates
For the very first time in history, the United Nations has officially declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Not “possible genocide.” Not “plausible genocide.” Genocide.
The UN’s words are not symbolic. They are binding. Under the Genocide Convention, every signatory state —including America — now has a legal duty to prevent, to punish, and to stop their complicity. That is why this moment matters so much.
For nearly two years, the world has danced around the world. The International Court of Justice said genocide was “plausible.” The leading human rights groups in the world already said this. Scholars of genocide raised alarms. But governments — especially the United States and its allies — refused to admit the obvious. Now the Commission of Inquiry of the United Nations Human Rights Council has issued a declarative report that removes all doubt. Their words are chilling in their clarity:
“The Commission concludes that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, establishing both the underlying acts and the specific intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part.”
This is not rhetoric. It is not a metaphor. It is a legal determination, backed by exhaustive data. The Commission looked at every category under the Genocide Convention — killings, causing serious bodily and mental harm, inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction, and preventing births — and found them all satisfied. For decades, “never again” has been the UN’s mantra. Yesterday, the mask slipped: “again” is here. And it is happening in Gaza.
The report lays out the evidence in devastating detail. Between October 7, 2023, and July 31, 2025, Israel killed at least 60,199 Palestinians. The Commission says the numbers alone are enough to demonstrate a pattern, but the methods prove intent.
· The siege of Gaza created famine conditions. Mothers unable to feed infants. Children wasting away from hunger.
· Israel destroyed Gaza’s health system, striking hospitals, medics, and ambulances, while denying medical evacuations.
· Israel demolished homes, schools, mosques, universities — entire neighborhoods levelled with wide-area explosive weapons.
· They even destroyed Gaza’s largest IVF clinic, wiping out the embryos of parents hoping for children.
The UN’s language is precise: “Israel has deliberately imposed conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, including starvation, destruction of healthcare, and deprivation of essential services.”
And the Commission didn’t stop with deaths. It also documented thousands who lost limbs, children burned beyond recognition, families displaced into endless cycles of bombardment. In the report’s words, “serious bodily and mental harm has been inflicted on a scale consistent with genocidal acts. ”The horror is not just in numbers, but in intent. When you blockade food, bomb bakeries, and bulldoze farmland, starvation is not a byproduct — it is the point.
The Voices of Incitement
The report goes further, documenting not just acts but incitement to genocide at the highest levels of the Israeli government. It names President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. It recalls Gallant’s infamous line calling Palestinians “human animals.” It quotes Netanyahu invoking the Biblical command to “remember Amalek” — the ancient call to wipe out an entire people. It highlights Herzog saying there were no civilians in Gaza, only enemies.
The Commission concluded: “Senior Israeli officials engaged in direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and the State of Israel failed to prevent or punish such incitement.”
State Responsibility, Not Just Individuals
Here is why this UN finding is different from any trial of a soldier or commander: it places responsibility on the state of Israel itself.
The report states plainly: “Israel bears State responsibility for committing genocide, for failing to prevent it, and for failing to punish incitement to genocide.” That means reparations. That means accountability at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. That means Israel as a state has crossed the red line into the gravest crime known to law.
And legally, state responsibility is heavier than individual criminal liability. An individual conviction sends one man to prison. A state determination delegitimizes an entire government, its alliances, and its standing in the world. That is what just happened.
What Other States Must Do Now
And here is the part the United States and Europe will try hardest to ignore. The Commission says genocide does not only implicate the perpetrator state. Every other state now has obligations under the Genocide Convention.
The report makes it clear:
– Stop arms transfers —weapons, ammunition, jet fuel, spare parts.
– Cease any material support that contributes to genocidal acts
– Do not recognize Israel’s unlawful acts or territorial gains.
– Cooperate with ICC prosecutions.
– Use all reasonably available means to prevent genocide.
The UN’s words are not a suggestion. They are law: “States parties have an obligation not only to refrain from aiding or assisting genocide, but to employ all reasonably available means to prevent its continuation.”
If the Genocide Convention means anything, it means American taxpayers are no longer innocent bystanders. We are financiers.
The United Nations may have the loudest megaphone, but it is not the first voice to call this a genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars, the leading academic body in the world on the subject, declared it genocide.
Over 50 UN Special Rapporteurs and human rights experts signed a statement in late 2023warning of “a genocide in the making.” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, has said repeatedly that Israel’s actions meet the definition of genocide. Craig Mokhiber, director of the UN human rights office in New York, resigned in protest in October 2023, writing: “This is a textbook case of genocide.”
Governments — South Africa, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and others — brought genocide charges to the ICJ. Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow have shouted it from the streets. Palestinian organizations like Al-Haq and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights have documented it daily. But now the UN has said it officially. And that changes everything.
The UN has taken away plausible deniability. The next time the Trump administration or anyone else sends weapons to Israel, they cannot say they did not know. They know. We all know.
The Children of Gaza
Nothing in the report is moresearing than its section on children. The Commission documents thousands of child deaths, sniper fire at evacuation routes, starvation, and trauma. Itdescribes how an entire generation has been targeted for destruction.
“At least 18,430 children were killed. Many more suffered amputations, severe burns, and life-long disabilities. The deliberate targeting of children and the conditions imposedon them amount to acts of genocide.” Family, children are the measure of asociety’s soul. And in Gaza, children have been crushed beneath the weight of siege, starvation, and bombs. This is why the report is unflinching: the destruction of children is not incidental — it is central.
And history will remember this. Just as we remember the children of Armenia, of the Holocaust, of Rwanda, of Bosnia — we will remember Gaza’s children. The only question is whether we will remember them as victims we failed to save, or as survivors of a genocide we stopped in time.
The Machinery of Starvation and Disease
The Commission’s report describes how Gaza was turned into a laboratory of starvation. Israel imposed a “complete siege” — cutting off food, water, fuel, and electricity. Convoys of humanitarian aid were blocked, bombed, or turned back. “Israel has employed starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, resulting in widespread hunger, malnutrition, and preventable deaths.”
Famine is not a natural disaster. It is engineered. Gaza’s children wasted away, not because of drought or crop failure, but because trucks full of food were held at the border until the food rotted. Mothers stood in lines for hours, only to return empty-handed. Doctors performed surgery by flashlight, without anesthesia, because fuel was cut off. And the Commission says plainly: these acts were “calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians.” Starvation and disease were not accidents of war — they were weapons.
The report includes eyewitness testimony: infants crying from hunger, parents feeding children weeds and animal feed, bodies weakened by malnutrition until they could not survive even small injuries. These are not conditions of war. They are conditions of extermination.
Preventing Births
One of the most chilling parts of the report is its finding that Israel took “measures intended to prevent births” among Palestinians in Gaza. The destruction of Gaza’s largest IVF clinic wiped out thousands of frozen embryos ,erasing the hopes of families already battered by war. Hospitals that provided reproductive care were deliberately targeted. Pregnant women were denied safe deliveries. Thousands miscarried after being displaced again and again under bombardment.
The Commission’s conclusion is stark: “The destruction of reproductive healthcare, coupled with the denial of medical access, constitutes measures intended to prevent births within the group, as prohibited under the Genocide Convention.” And this connects directly to international law: the Genocide Convention, Article II(d), lists “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” as one of the five genocidal acts. The UN Commission is saying Israel has crossed that threshold, deliberately targeting the future of Palestinians.
Why Words Like Genocide Matter
Some will say: isn’t it just semantics? Mass killing, war crimes, ethnic cleansing — does the word“ “genocide” really change anything? Yes. It changes everything. Genocide is the crime of crimes. It triggers obligations under international law that no state can ignore. It removes the fig leaf of plausible deniability. It places Gaza in the lineage of the Holocaust, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Armenia.
The Commission wrote:
“The crime of genocide carries obligations erga omnes — owed to theinternational community as a whole — to prevent, to punish, and to ceasecomplicity.” And this is why Israel, the U.S., and much of the Western media have resisted the word so fiercely. Because once the word is said, the law is triggered. Once the word is said, complicity can no longer hide in ambiguity.The UN has now said the word. And the world can never unsay it.
America’s Fingerprints
The report is unambiguous: states that aid or assist genocide violate the Genocide Convention. That means the United States. Billions of dollars in weapons, jet fuel, and ammunition flow from Washington to Tel Aviv. Every bomb dropped on a Gaza school has fragments stamped “Made in USA.” Every tank shell that collapses a hospital wing is funded by your tax dollars.
The Commission warns: “States must immediately cease arms transfers and other forms of support that could contribute to genocidal acts. “Since October 2023, the U.S. has approved over $20 billion in weapons transfers to Israel, including precision-guided bombs, artillery shells, and spare parts for F-35 fighter jets. Shipments of jet fuel kept Israel’s air force flying missions over Gaza. U.S. contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics have directly profited from the war machine.
When we pay taxes, when our leaders sign weapons packages, we are not bystanders. We are financiers of genocide. That is the unbearable truth. And history will judge us by whether the west stopped it or ignored it.
Why Silence Is Complicity
Here is what cuts deepest. If any other state were found guilty of genocide by the United Nations, the world would erupt. Sanctions. Emergency sessions. Arrest warrants. Front-page headlines. But because it is Israel, the silence is deafening. Western governments issue platitudes. Media outlets bury the word “genocide” deep in their stories, or avoid it altogether. Politicians dodge, deflect, or change the subject.
The Commission itself anticipated this cowardice. It warned: “The failure to name genocide when it is found to exist contributes to its continuation and emboldens perpetrators.” irresponsibility is to break that silence. And that means you and I saying the word out loud, everywhere, until the silence cracks.
The Weight of History
The UN’s finding places Gaza alongside the darkest chapters of human history. Armenia. The Holocaust. Rwanda. Bosnia. Darfur. “The destruction in Gaza, in scale and severity, constitutes acts of genocide comparable to the gravest crimes adjudicated in international law.” And when our grandchildren ask, “What did you do?” we will not be able to say we did not know. Because now the UN has told us. We know.
And let’s be clear: every genocide is remembered not only for its perpetrators but for the bystanders. History remembers the Turks who denied Armenia, the Europeans who ignored Rwanda, the Serbs who mocked Bosnia. Gaza will be remembered the same way — and America, Europe, and Israel will all bear the stain.
What We Must Do
The UN’s finding is not the end. It is a beginning. It is a demand. Every person, every community, every nation now faces a choice: complicity or resistance.
That means:
· Boycott institutions complicit in genocide, from weapons manufacturers to cultural whitewashers.
· Demand sanctions, arms embargoes, and prosecutions.
· Share the truth — embed the UN’s own words in every conversation, every classroom, every pulpit.
· Refuse silence.
And it also tells us we have power. Power in what we consume. Power in what we share. Power in who we pressure. Power in how loudly we say the word genocide when others whisper it. If millions of us act, history will remember us as the ones who refused to stay silent in the face of extermination.
16 September 2025