Speaking to the UN Security Council, the head of an investigatory body probing the Gaza war found Israeli officials committed war crimes during military operations in the Strip.
Navi Pillay, chairperson of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, announced her findings to the UNSC on Wednesday, stating the commission had concluded that “Israeli authorities are responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”
She explained that those crimes include “extermination, intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, murder or willful killing using starvation as a method of War, forcible transfer, gender persecution, sexual and gender-based violence amounting to torture and cruel or inhuman treatment.”
The commission noted that Hamas has committed similar crimes throughout the latest conflict.
During the eight-month assault on Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed over 37,000 Palestinians and injured an estimated 85,000. Israeli bombings have also destroyed most of Gaza’s homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and farmland. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been plunged into near-famine conditions.
Tel Aviv’s onslaught has been aided by a long list of US weapons. A separate report from the UN Human Rights Office published Wednesday documented six cases of Israel using American bombs to kill hundreds of civilians.
The report stated that US-made GBU-31 (2,000 lbs.), GBU-32 (1,000 lbs.) and GBU-39 (250 lbs.) bombs were used to strike “residential buildings, a school, refugee camps and a market” between October and December 2023. The UN rights office verified 218 deaths from those six attacks, and said it had indications the number of fatalities could be “much higher.”
Pillay explained that the independent commission determined the Israeli strikes were intentional. “We found that the immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable result of an intentional strategy to cause maximum damage,” she said.
The commission found Israel’s crimes went beyond using bombs or other conventional weapons but also food, water, and dispossession as weapons of war. Tel Aviv has also forcibly transferred much of Gaza’s population into small enclosures that are “unsafe and uninhabitable.”
Pillay also noted that Tel Aviv has engaged in unprecedented violence in the occupied West Bank since October 7, but those crimes have received little attention due to the near-daily atrocities committed in Gaza.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.
*Crickets*
Well, that's clear enough. And seeing as how nations like the US, UK, Germany, France, etc. are sticklers for human rights and rule of law, there should be swift actions from these states and others to end this abuse, right?
Very good. Now if the ICC would just put the self-evident names to those crimes, we'd have something.
Irrelevant. No one is going to do anything except the Axis of Resistance. Even if the UN General Assembly invokes the "Uniting For Peace" Resolution, which UN member state is going to mobilize against nuclear-armed Israel and nuclear-armed US? Only two have that power: Russia and China. And Russia is busy and China won't do it because it's not China's thing.
The Axis of Resistance, however, doesn't need a resolution or nuclear weapons. They can take Israel down without nuclear weapons. All they need is what they have – one hell of a lot of missiles and manpower and (relatively) secure facilities.
The only non-catastrophic way this will end is the South Africa model, where Israel is internationally isolated and shunned to the point where it itself must decide to change. That's why this is NOT irrelevant.
What the AofR must do is not stop … they need to do what the Arab armies of '56, '67,and '73 did not do and what Hezbollah did do in '82: stretch the thing out to the point Israeli society becomes exhausted.
The South Africans were racists but otherwise "normal" people – they could decide to change. The Israelis are Zionist fanatics – they can't. Plus they view it as irrelevant that other nations shun them because they have the "greatest power in the world" (according to Biden) supporting them. They own the US politically.
As for the Axis, that's exactly what they're doing – the Russian Ukraine strategy against NATO: bleed the West of weapons and economy until it collapses. In the case of Israel, this will be followed up by a military defeat – and perhaps in the US case as well.
'The commission noted that Hamas has committed similar crimes throughout the latest conflict." Where? Hamas hasn't been in Israel since October 7.
A fake sentence to maintain equilibrium, rather than one-way accusation…!
They shot at Israeli soldiers.
Soooo when can we expect the white UN-nation vehicles and blue-helmet troops to roll in and restore order and prevent further genocide and crimes against humanity? See, UN resolutions and fact-finding are all well and good but unless that body and its member nations are prepared to enforce its decisions and restore peace, it really doesn't amount to much, does it? The UN can present its findings to the ICC, but if nations simply ignore the ICC as well it's rather pointless.
So much for a 'rules-based' international order, huh?
The crimes of someone else are not an excuse for one's own crimes.
Hamas is a terrorist organization, and Israel is a state that is a member of the UN and obligated to behave as such.
Also, the crimes of Israel are 100 times worse, and are ongoing, and they defy orders of the UN court to stop this.
The mantra that changes the subject to what some else did one day half a year ago is worse than childish, even a child would not attempt that. This is just bold faced defiance.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization“
Why plead guilty on their behalf? You’re entering the fray with an arm tied behind your back.
The fact is Hamas is the organized resistance of an oppressed Palestine and allowed to resist under international law… It is they who are behaving as legitimate state and Israel as a terrorist organization with dubious legitimacy as nation of any kind.
Terrorism is a tactic that has nothing to do with supposed “legitimacy” as a state either way. Hamas and the IDF — among many, many others — commit terrorist acts.
The difference between Hamas and Israeli terrorism is that Israeli terrorism is justified by a religious basis due to the dehumanization of anybody not of the chosen race. Hamas is just fighting to save their land from Israeli theft which is also justified to form the greater Israel and fulfill the Zionist dream.
The main question is Why Hamas and IDF commit terrorist acts…?! It's obvious that the former does it to resist an oppressor, apartheid and sadistic regime… and the latter does it because it's monster that enjoys slaughter, genocide and ethnic cleansing…!
The fundamental component to terrorism is it’s criminality.
Resistance to oppression is sanctioned under international law while the kind of theft and murder engaged in by the Zionists is prohibited by both the laws of man and God.
I think it's useful to agree that Hamas is a terrorist organization for argument's sake. It makes Israel's own terroristic acts look that much worse. There the "good" guys. Also, something useful to use for argument's sake.
Adopting the pretense of false moral equivalence only helps you lose the argument.
It is the same corrupt government that designated the Palestinian resistance as terrorists that bizarrely claim Israel is our ally that clings to this fig leaf to justify its own depraved actions.
Experts: ICC and UN blamed Israel for a famine that never happened in Gaza
‘We found that the food supply entering Gaza is more than sufficient to feed all 2.2 million Gazans according to what is considered a normal diet in North America" According to Columbia University Professors Awi Federgruen and Ran Kivetz. Sounds like they're using the same denial as some believe the European genocide never happened. Got to give them credit for chutzpah and bald face lying if that's worth any credit, that is. https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-806739
The report stated that US-made GBU-31 (2,000 lbs.), GBU-32 (1,000 lbs.) and GBU-39 (250 lbs.) bombs were used to strike “residential buildings, a school, refugee camps and a market” between October and December 2023.
Sounds like someone is an accessory.
More like an accomplice.
True. More accurate. We are there.
Yawn. Is the UN going to do something about it? Wake me when that happens.