UN Commission Concludes Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza

This essay appeared in the Sept. 15, 2025 edition of UNFTR’s premium newsletter. Become a UNFTR member to receive our bonus newsletter each week and for other perks.

Sometimes, when I’m looking at my news feeds, the papers, or the morning newsletters, I don’t know where to begin. As I’m writing this, there’s only one story that matters—a story that encapsulates all the horrors we’ve talked about here and seen on our screens and apps for nearly two years: the live-streamed genocide that literally everyone in power refuses to do anything about.

It matters.

It not only matters to those who support a free Palestine but to every person who is a citizen of the only country with the power to stop the genocide.

Among the most shocking elements of the so-called War on Terror was how our civil liberties were eroded as we prosecuted senseless, never-ending wars in the Middle East and Africa. Now, those freedoms are being diminished even more—but not for a war the United States is directly prosecuting, but one that its client state is intent on making its legacy. Just this week, President Trump, using the example of protesters yelling “Palestine” at him at a restaurant, suggested those on the left should be jailed:

“They started to scream when I got into a restaurant, something with Palestine,” he said, adding he “asked [Attorney General Pam Bondi] to look into that in terms of RICO, bringing RICO cases against them. Criminal RICO. Because they should be put in jail, what they’re doing to this country is really subversive.”

And as we woke up on Tuesday, we learned that an independent United Nations commission declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

It matters. All those lives—snuffed out. People mutilated, killed, left unrecognizable, thanks to our money, our munitions, our political protection of Israel. Thanks to the “bipartisan consensus”—the sycophantic corporate media’s perverted benchmark for how all politics should operate.

It matters if you couldn’t care less about Palestine, Israel, or any other international conflagration. It matters even for those who want to be left alone because America’s freedoms grant them that right. But those freedoms have been effectively cratered—they mean nothing.

• In the initial weeks and months after October 7, pro-Palestine college students were blacklisted from jobs.
• Then came the government’s war on free speech at universities across the country.
• That was followed by the legislative politicization of the definition of “anti-semitism” to clamp down on pro-Palestine speech.
• Then came the arrests of international students for anything from protesting Israel’s bloodthirsty campaign to writing an unprovocative op-ed in their college paper.

It matters because a single political force, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has such disregard for the intelligence of Americans that he goes on our broadcast channels to manufacture consent over the obliteration of Palestinians. It’s a tried and true strategy, one that he weaponized more than two decades ago when he whipped Congress into a frenzy over warnings about Iraq and openly petitioned for regime change. He’s a master at propaganda, so much so that he immediately exploited the killing of Charlie Kirk last week as some sort of deranged proxy to justify what his government is doing in Gaza, referencing “radical Islamists and their union with the ultra-progressives.”

As Chris Sidoti, one of the authors of the aforementioned UN commission report I’m about to excerpt, said in response to Israeli pushback: “Israeli responses are becoming so boring. They say the same thing every time—they’re producing the responses by ChatGPT these days. They spend so much money in the foreign ministry on propaganda, you’d think they’d come up with something original. They never engage with the evidence.”

So let’s engage with the evidence. Here’s what the commission had to say:

“The Commission therefore finds that the Israeli authorities intended to kill as many Palestinians as possible through its military operations in Gaza since 7 October 2023 and knew that the means and methods of warfare employed would cause mass deaths of Palestinians, including children.

 

“The Commission also notes that deaths were a result of the deliberate infliction of conditions of life in Gaza calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in Gaza, especially the blocking of medicine, medical equipment, food and water from entering Gaza. The Commission finds that Israeli authorities knew that blocking the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza would lead to the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza. Based on the abovementioned reasons, the Commission concludes that the Israeli authorities intended to kill and cause the deaths of the Palestinians in Gaza through the military operations and war strategies employed.

 

“As such, the Commission concludes that the actus reus and mens rea of ‘killing members of the group’ under article II(a) of the Genocide Convention are established.”

The 72-page report covers everything from the widespread slaughter of women and children to mass starvation and witness accounts of indiscriminate murder.

Here’s one particularly long excerpt that everyone should read in full:

“The Commission notes a report from Breaking the Silence, an organisation of veteran soldiers who have served in the Israeli military, in which several Israeli security forces personnel involved with the military operations along the buffer zone were interviewed. A captain stationed in southern Gaza said that there was a ‘massive’ use of firepower like tanks to instill a psychological effect on the Palestinians near the buffer zone. He told Breaking the Silence, ‘We decided on a line which is the borderline, past which everyone is a suspect.’ There were no markings to indicate the border and, according to the captain, ‘How they know is a really good question. Enough people died or got injured crossing that line, so they don’t go near it.’ A warrant officer stationed in northern Gaza told Breaking the Silence, ‘People were incriminated for having bags in their hands. Guy showed up with a bag? Incriminated, terrorist. I believe they came to pick hubeiza, but the army says ‘No, they’re hiding.’ Boom (shells were fired in their direction). That’s considered a miss. They were supposed to shoot (hit) them.’ He added that, despite being shot at, Palestinians kept returning to the area because they were hungry, so they had to go there to pick hubeiza (mallow).”

Torture of detainees? The commission has a section on that, too:

“Detainees had been blindfolded and handcuffed by Israeli security forces personnel at all times, confined to large and overcrowded makeshift cells, kept naked or near naked for days at a time and forced to kneel in stress positions for hours, while also being prohibited from speaking. They had been denied adequate access to toilets and showers, and many had been forced to wear diapers. They had been subjected to beatings, including with batons and wooden sticks, even while immobilized, and intimidation and attacks by dogs. Many detainees had been bound to a screw placed high on a wall for hours, while blindfolded and suspended with their feet touching or barely touching the ground (‘shabah’). In one case, a detainee had been left in that position for five to six hours as interrogators repeatedly subjected him to extreme changes in temperatures, using a strong fan and a heat lamp in alternation. The Commission also received reports of electric shock devices being used against detainees.”

No one has been spared, not even pregnant women.

“The Commission has also found in a previous report that the Israeli security forces had intentionally and systematically attacked and destroyed reproductive and maternal health facilities across Gaza, including maternity hospitals and maternity wings of hospitals. The direct attacks on reproductive and maternal health in Gaza have resulted in killings and caused serious bodily and mental harm to Palestinian women and girls.”

Just days before the commission released its genocide findings, Israel intensified its attacks on Gaza City, killing dozens and destroying residential buildings, schools, government offices and encampments. One attack on a residential building in At Twam killed 17 Palestinians, including 10 children, according to the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The war of annihilation continues apace. Typically, we end these essays with an overarching point. What else is there to say? Please, read the commission’s findings.

Image Source

• ishmael daro from New York, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.