A UN commission has recently concluded that Israel bears responsibility for “the commission of genocide” in the Gaza strip and has called on all member states to end the transfer of arms to Israel; support the prosecution of war criminals; and consider the imposition of sanctions on Israel.
The commission was led by a three-member expert panel and chaired by Navi Pillay, a South African former UN human rights chief who was president of the international tribunal on Rwanda's genocide. The two other members are Chris Sidoti, an Australian human rights lawyer, and Miloon Kothari, an Indian expert on housing and land rights.
The commission examined four of the five categories underlying genocidal acts and provide evidence that Israel was guilty of perpetrating each act. The four categories detailed are (i) killing members of the group; (ii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (iii) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (iv) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
The fifth category concerns the forceful transfer of children of the ethnic group to another group, which the commission noted they had not received evidence of.
The commission also examined the mens rea, or criminal intent, by reviewing statements made by Israel's ministers, army officials, and political leaders. Mens rea is a required feature for an atrocity to amount to genocide.
The commission described the statements as “direct evidence of genocidal intent”. The report further stressed that “genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from the totality of the evidence”.
Israeli officials have vehemently denied the report and called for the abolition of the commission.
The former human rights commissioner, Navy Pillay, has spoken out previously about the global issues of impunity for war crimes. Whilst in office, she had previously detailed that Sri Lanka’s then President Mahinda Rajapaksa had directed her office not to intervene in his military campaign which saw the butchering of Tamil civilians, in what is increasingly being recognised as a genocide.
Read the full UN commission report here.
