A group of independent human rights experts from the UN have released their blistering assessment of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. In a call for immediate global intervention, they said:
While States debate terminology – is it or is it not genocide? – Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza, through attacks by land, air and sea, displacing and massacring the surviving population with impunity.
They pointed out how Israel has, horrifically, escalated their actions after the so-called ceasefire:
Since breaking the ceasefire, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians, many daily – peaking on 18 March 2025 with 600 casualties in 24 hours, 400 of whom were children.
Israel and impunity
Israel have continued to destroy infrastructure vital to the continuation of human life. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) found that Gaza no longer has any kind of health system:
due to the bombardment of health facilities by Israeli forces, dire shortages of vital supplies, and evacuation orders forcing patients and staff into life-threatening situations.
Healthcare professionals themselves have been attacked in addition to healthcare facilities. The Hind Rajab Foundation has shared the extent of the damage to civilian infrastructure:
Yet, since October 7th, 2023, up to 80% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli Army…With up to four-fifths of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure damaged or destroyed—including water and sanitation systems, which the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) describes as ‘almost entirely defunct’–one must ask: if this does not constitute an act of genocide, what does?
Israel has also gone to great lengths to stop any aid, specifically food, from reaching Palestinians. Human Rights Watch has reported:
Israel did not make any meaningful efforts to ensure that the humanitarian needs of displaced people were met. Instead, Israel has taken steps to ensure that displaced civilians cannot avail themselves of such protections through its attacking of civilian infrastructure and restrictions on water, electricity, and aid leading to starvation and threatening famine.
What cannot be lost in this discussion is that Israel is not only bombing Palestinians, but doing all it can to destroy any chance of survival. As the UN experts argued:
Not only is delivering humanitarian aid one of Israel’s most critical obligations as the occupying power, but its deliberate depletion of essential necessities, destroying of natural resources and calculated push to drive Gaza to the brink of collapse further corroborates its criminal responsibility.
‘Genocidal conduct’
Remarkably, Israel’s genocidal conduct is still being reported in Western mainstream media as legitimate. Despite various organisations who have been in Gaza, including Amnesty International, designating Israel’s actions as genocidal they are not being treated as such by media and politicians. The experts continue:
These acts, beyond constituting grave international crimes, follow alarming, documented patterns of genocidal conduct.
None of the declarations of the UN experts are being explained for the first time. In fact, this has been the most well-documented genocide in history. As such, the experts write:
The world is watching. Will Member States live up to their obligations and intervene to stop the slaughter, hunger, and disease, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity that are perpetrated daily in complete impunity?
This far into the genocide, the most powerful nations in the world have shown the problem is not that they are powerless to stop Israel. Instead, they simply do not wish to. The UN experts are forthright in explaining the consequences of inaction:
International norms were established precisely to prevent such horrors. Yet, as millions protest globally for justice and humanity, their cries are muted. This situation conveys a deadly message: Palestinian lives are dispensable, and international law, if unenforced, is meaningless.
Impunity to complicity with Israel
In continuing to not intervene, states are showing that international law can become meaningless if the political will is not there. Instead, the experts warn that if states continue to do nothing and allow genocide to happen they will complicit in war crimes:
Continuing to support Israel materially or politically, especially via arms transfers, and the provision of private military and security services risks complicity in genocide and other serious international crimes.
By allowing Israel’s impunity and enabling their war crimes, states are proving themselves to be complicit in war crimes. States may find it profitable or politically expedient to support genocide for the moment – but that won’t remain the situation forever. Just as they have in every single day since October 2023, states can choose the side of impunity, or the side of complicity alongside Israel.
Featured image via the Canary
