By Richard Falk
29 Oct 2025 – The historic outcome of Gaza People’s Tribunal Final Session in Istanbul, May 23-26. The Jury was composed of persons from diverse backgrounds but joined by lives vividly committed to engaged citizenship and progressive political consciousness, with actions guided by the deep roots of conscience. The GPT was designed to honor these same features with a particular emphasis on serving as an instrument of truth-telling with respect to the Palestinian ordeal resulting from the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. To expose the truth that emerges from respecting reality and evidence is necessary because of state propaganda and a filtered, biased media that either hides or slants the truth, even to the extent of punitive and lethal action against independent journalists and dismissing as irrelevant the rulings of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
Its formation inspired by the Russell Tribunal of 1966-67, which reacted to US crimes in the Vietnam War that were not resisted, or even exposed by the organized international community as embodied in the UN. When institutions fail to implement international law in extreme situation people of conscience must act. Israel has become a rogue or pariah state because the peoples of the world have reacted, but it is not enough. Palestinian rights must be realized, and future of peace must be shaped by the victims of criminality, not by the perpetrators.
***************************
Final Statement of the Gaza Tribunal Jury of Conscience
Istanbul, 26 October 2025
We, the undersigned members of the Jury of Conscience, hereby deliver this Statement of Findings and Moral Judgment at the final session of the Gaza Tribunal. The Jury, guided by conscience and informed by international law, does not speak with the authority of states, but when law is silenced by power, conscience must become the final tribunal.
The Tribunal is not a court of law so does not purport to determine guilt or liability of any person, organization or state. It is a civil society response to the continuing lack of accountability for the commission by Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip. We believe that genocide must be named and documented and that impunity feeds continuing violence throughout the globe.
Genocide in Gaza is the concern of all humanity. When states are silent civil society can and must speak out.
The Gaza Tribunal has brought together a wealth of material in a valuable archive, the existence of which provides lasting evidence of the truth of the genocide against the Palestinian people. The Jury expresses solidarity with the rallies, the marches, the encampments, the flotillas, the strikes and other actions that protest the genocide and states’ unwillingness to hold Israel to account. And it offers a counter-narrative to the security narrative Israel and its allies persistently broadcast and to the labelling of Palestinian suffering as a humanitarian disaster. It is not. It is the deliberate commission of the gravest of crimes, imposed with dire humanitarian consequences.
We have heard extensive evidence of the crimes committed by Israel, of the causes of the genocide, of the collusion by and complicity of other actors, of courageous resistance and resilience by Palestinians and by global civil society. We have heard moving personal testimonies of the physical and mental harms wrought by these crimes and the suffering of the Palestinian people.
This concluding statement presents our findings based upon this evidence and the legal standards of the Genocide Convention, the human rights treaties, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the moral imperatives of natural justice. Yet above all, this decision is grounded in the unyielding belief that every human life has equal worth, and that no state or ideology has the right to destroy an entire people.
Our decision builds upon the testimonies, oral and written, the expert evidence and the research and analytical papers carried out by many people over the past months. It reiterates and endorses the Sarajevo Declaration adopted in May 2025.
Israel’s Crimes
The Jury condemns the ongoing genocide and crimes listed below. We believe these crimes and their impact on the Palestinian people should be separately named to understand the holistic nature of the genocide, its dehumanisation of the people, its sadistic character and its temporality. These crimes did not commence in October 2023 and they will not end with the ceasefire; deaths and severe physical harm will continue. The physical and psychological trauma of the surviving population will be transmitted through the generations.
The Jury condemns the commission of the following additional crimes:
Starvation and famine through the deliberate denial of food, water and systematic destruction of the entire food system.
Domicide is more than the intentional mass destruction of residential properties and their infrastructure – electricity, water and sanitation. A home is about love, life, a repository of memories, hopes and aspiration. Its destruction causes displacement, trauma, the disintegration of communities and profound cultural loss.
Ecocide describes a particular kind of warfare based on ruination of land fertility, air quality, sources of food and water: catastrophic environmental damage that destroys the capacity to survive after the bombing ceases.
Deliberate destruction and targeting of the healthcare infrastructure, equipment and personnel have been systematic for decades and has become almost total. The most important issue for physical and mental health is the Israeli occupation and the dehumanisation of the population.
Reprocide is the intentional and systematic targeting of Palestinian reproductive care through prevention of births, eliminating future lives and the ability to reproduce safely.
Scholasticide is the genocide of knowledge, the destruction of Palestine’s intellectual future through the killing, silencing and displacing a generation of students and teachers, obliteration of schools and universities, destroying dreams and aspirations.
Attacks on journalists. ‘Genocide documentation’ is carried out by Palestinian journalists and they and their families are targeted. Silencing these journalists is instrumental to the concealment of the genocide and more journalists have been killed than in any other conflict.
Torture, sexual violence, disappearances, gender-based violence in detention, at checkpoints, in house searches, in displacement and elsewhere.
Politicide is the targeted assassination and kidnapping of political and cultural leaders, representatives, activists, and destruction of civic institutions.
The Jury finds a coherent and consistent pattern of exterminatory violence in the intentional and targeted destruction of homes, water supplies, schools, hospitals, clinics, universities, cultural and religious institutions, agricultural land, and natural ecosystems.
The weaponization of hunger, denial of medical care, and forced displacement are not collateral damages of war—they are instruments of collective punishment of the entire population and of genocide. They are not justified by any claim of military objectives.
Complicity and Collusion
The Jury finds Western governments, particularly the United States, and others complicit in, in some cases colluding with, Israel’s commission of genocide through provision of diplomatic cover, weapons, weapon parts, intelligence, military assistance and training, and continuing economic relations. Such actions constitute moral failure and breach of their legal duty to prevent genocide and to cooperate to end a violation of a peremptory norm of international law – genocide and the Palestinian right to self-determination. Silence and inaction in the face of genocide are not an option and are other forms of complicity.
The Jury finds a range of non-state actors to be complicit in genocide. Biased media reporting in the west on Palestine and under-reporting of Israeli crimes conform to the economic and political interest of the ruling elites and their allied interests.
Academic institutions through their investments support Israel; staff and student endorsements of Palestine are silenced or disciplined.
Israel survives through militarisation; global supply chains sustain the genocide through weapons, banks, technology, transportation, and other multinational corporations. The hi-technology sector sustains the machinery of genocide by manipulating contents through algorithms, and allowing Israel to watch and plan every airstrike and assassination. Companies that sell cloud capacity to Israel provide the computer power for genocide. The Jury considers that the political economy of genocide is the highest form of hyper imperialism of the 21st century.
The Jury finds the current global order, structured by power hierarchies and economic dependencies, to have revealed its incapacity to prevent or punish atrocity crimes when committed by the powerful or their allies. The United Nations, paralyzed by the veto and political selectivity, has abdicated its foundational responsibility “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
The Jury, however, commends the UNHRC special procedures, including the Commission of Inquiry and especially the steadfastness of the special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, for their affirmation of genocide.
Conclusions
The Jury affirms that Israel is perpetrating an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, within—and enabled by—a broader settler-colonial apartheid regime rooted in the supremacist ideology of Zionism. This campaign is inseparable from over a century-long project targeting Palestinians across all of Palestine and in exile. The root causes of genocide lie in a racist, supremacist ideology—Zionism—that underpins a system aiming to dispossess, dominate, and erase Palestinians, supported by an oppressive neo-colonial power structure led by the United States and its allies, and shielded by international complicity, including from many Arab and Muslim governments.
The Jury considers the genocide in Gaza to have several exceptional characteristics. It is perpetuated on a captive population in a tiny, closed territory where Israel controls all entries and exits. It is systematic and carried out with the most advanced technology. Despite Israel’s attempts to prevent reporting, it is highly visible in real time. There has been resort to international judicial bodies, the International Court of Justice by South Africa and the request for an Advisory Opinion by the UN General Assembly with respect to UNRWA and the arrest warrants issued by the ICC, yet these have been ignored with impunity by Israel and other states have made little real protest and minimal sanctions have been imposed. Indeed, it is the ICC personnel and NGOs assisting the Court that have been sanctioned by the United States.
Recommendations
Ending Impunity and Ensuring Accountability
To hold all those responsible, politically, militarily, economically, and ideologically, perpetrators, supporters, enablers, and complicit parties fully accountable by every lawful means and to the fullest extent of the law.
To suspend Israel from international organizations and institutions, particularly the United Nations and its affiliates.
To activate UN General Assembly Resolution 377 A(V) (Uniting for Peace) so the UNGA can adopt collective measures to mandate a protective force for the Palestinian territories and stop the genocide in Gaza, given the UNSC’s failure to act due to successive U.S. vetoes.
Resisting and Dismantling Oppressive Structures
The Jury reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to choose their modes of resistance to achieve liberation, freedom, and independence.
The Jury endorses a global, rights-based strategy to dismantle Zionist structures: identify and map the Zionist regime’s sources of power and enabling pillars.
The Jury calls for building a worldwide movement that weakens, isolates, and dismantles each source through coordinated political, legal, economic, academic, cultural, technological, and social action.
To achieve this objective, two main tasks are paramount:
-
- Steadfastness and non-displacement.
Palestinians—in Gaza, the West Bank including Jerusalem, Palestinian communities inside the 1948 lines, must remain rooted in their land. There must be no further forced displacement of Palestinians in exile, particularly refugees across the region. Preventing displacement and sustaining steadfastness are essential to maintain the struggle.
-
- Comprehensive global confrontation.
Confront the Zionist movement and regime globally in every sphere—political and diplomatic; legal and human rights; economic and commercial; media, cultural, intellectual, academic, and educational; industrial, technological, and scientific; arts, tourism, and sports. This mobilization centers peoples, movements, parties, unions, civil-society organizations, and individuals so that solidarity becomes power, normalization is resisted, and the Zionist project is besieged on all fronts.
The Jury affirms that the struggle is with Zionism as a racist, supremacist, settler-colonial enterprise—not with Jews or Judaism. The strategic horizon is a single rights-based political order grounded in equality, decolonization, restitution, and the unfettered right of return. Only this course can end the ongoing genocide and open a path to a just and durable peace for all who live in Palestine and beyond.
We issue this statement in the name of justice, dignity, and peace, and in remembrance of all those who have perished in Gaza and throughout Palestine.
Silence is not neutral; silence is complicity; neutrality is surrender to evil.
In solidarity with the people of Gaza and in memory of all victims of genocide,
The Jury of Conscience (alphabetically):
Prof. Sami Al-Arian
Prof. Christine Chinkin
Dr. Ghada Karmi
Author Kenize Mourad
Prof. Chandra Muzaffar
Prof. Biljana Vankovska
__________________________________________
Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, of the TRANSCEND Media Service Editorial Committee, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.
3 November 2025
Source: transcend.org
