On September 16, 2025, the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, delivered a report to the 60th session of the UN Human Rights Council that has sent shockwaves throughout the international community. The commission’s findings are unambiguous: Israeli authorities and forces, according to the report, have committed—and are continuing to commit—genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. The gravity of this conclusion, rooted in the legal definition provided by the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, has sparked urgent calls for action and fierce debate about responsibility and complicity.
The COI’s investigation, as described in detail by its chair Navi Pillay in an interview with NPR, was exhaustive. The 80-page document outlines a harrowing pattern of conduct by Israeli forces since October 2023, documenting not only the killing of Palestinians but also the destruction of cultural, religious, and educational structures that, as Pillay emphasized, “have nothing to do with Hamas, but all that's been destroyed.” The report catalogues a siege that has led to starvation and the blocking of humanitarian aid—measures that, according to Pillay, “are not keeping Hamas hungry but the whole population.”
One of the most chilling findings cited by the commission is the targeting and destruction of Gaza’s only fertility clinic, which resulted in the loss of all stored embryos. Pillay reflected on this, saying, “We drew a conclusion from that about destroying the Palestinians' life and their future.” The report further notes that this conflict has become the deadliest for journalists in recent history, and recounts cases where children have endured amputations without anesthetic due to the collapse of Gaza’s medical infrastructure.
Under the Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. The commission concluded that Israeli forces have committed four acts specifically prohibited by the Convention: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction; and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. The report asserts that both direct statements from Israeli officials and the pattern of military conduct constitute compelling evidence of genocidal intent.
Direct quotes from Israeli leaders feature prominently in the commission’s rationale. On October 7, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to inflict, in his words, “mighty vengeance” on “all of the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in, that wicked city, we will turn them into rubble.” While Netanyahu appeared to direct his threat at Hamas, Pillay noted that his reference to Gaza as a “wicked city” and his directive for Palestinians to “leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere, making no distinction between combatants and civilians” left little ambiguity about the scope of the intended destruction—especially since, as widely reported by NPR, “Palestinians in Gaza had nowhere to go.”
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s statements were also cited in the report. On October 9, 2023, Gallant announced a complete siege on Gaza, declaring that Israel was fighting “human animals” and that Israel “must act accordingly.” According to the commission, these statements, combined with subsequent military actions, serve as direct and circumstantial evidence of genocidal intent.
The commission’s findings have been echoed by leading human rights organizations. Amnesty International’s Secretary General, Agnès Callamard, responded to the report by stating, “As Israeli authorities and forces intensify their brutal campaign of annihilation, particularly in Gaza City, the UN Commission of Inquiry’s damning report provides further confirmation of what Amnesty International and others have been concluding for months: that the Israeli authorities and Israeli forces have committed and are continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
Callamard issued a stark warning to the international community: “There is no more time for excuses: as the evidence of Israel’s genocide continues to mount, the international community cannot claim they didn’t know. This report must compel states to take immediate action and fulfill their legal and moral obligation to halt Israel’s genocide.” She called for an immediate and lasting ceasefire, unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza, and the suspension of all arms and security transfers to Israel, urging states to “re-evaluate their trade ties with Israel to ensure they are not contributing to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, apartheid, other crimes against humanity or war crimes, or the unlawful occupation of the OPT.”
The commission’s report also raises alarms about the potential spread of genocidal intent beyond Gaza, warning that “the specific intent to destroy the Palestinians as a whole has extended to the rest of the OPT, that is the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.” Amnesty International has urged all states, particularly those that have supported Israel, to “shift course, to hear the findings of expert after expert, and to do all in their power to protect Palestinians and stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza and prevent its possible spread to the rest of the OPT.”
Predictably, Israeli officials have roundly rejected the findings. According to NPR, Israel’s ambassador to the UN called the report a “libelous rant” that relies on “Hamas falsehoods” in an attempt to “delegitimize and demonize the state of Israel.” Navi Pillay responded to such criticism by saying, “That was their reaction to every one of our reports—calling us biased and antisemitic and so on. I wish they would look at the facts we set out and point out what is not true. Or open up and let us into the country so we could investigate even more fully and talk to Israeli victims.”
The report has also reignited debate about the role of international actors, especially the United States, in the conflict. The U.S. is Israel’s primary weapons supplier, and the State Department has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide. Yet, as Pillay told NPR, “Even if you say nothing and do nothing and think you are being neutral, you are not. You're being complicit. Under the Genocide Convention, they would fall into the category—those who are helping with arms, military weapons and other support.” She affirmed her belief that states supplying arms to Israel “are complicit in genocide.”
As the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza deepens, the commission’s report has intensified calls for immediate action. The stakes, as Callamard stressed, “have never been higher. The very existence of Palestinians in Gaza is under threat. The scale of deaths and destruction has already been cataclysmic, but we are at a juncture where states have the tools to prevent further crimes. They must demonstrate that they also have the will to do so.”
With the UN’s highest investigative body and leading human rights groups now aligned in their assessment, the world faces a critical moment of reckoning. The question is no longer whether the evidence exists, but whether those with the power to act will heed the warnings and take steps to halt the devastation—before it is too late.
