The juxtaposition said so much. This morning, a United Nations commission of inquiry released a 72-page report concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Marking the first time a UN body has ever reached that conclusion, it is “the strongest and most authoritative UN finding to date”, its authors said.
As the press conference to launch the findings was underway, my phone started buzzing. The director of Shifa hospital in Gaza City was sending a slew of messages.
Israel had launched a massive bombing raid overnight to herald the start of Benjamin Netanyahu’s deeply controversial forced evacuation of the Gaza Strip.
Under that bombardment, Shifa chief Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya was describing to me the catastrophic situation inside his wards.
“The bombing didn’t stop for a single moment. My medical teams are exhausted and worn out,” he said, sending me photos of wounded children lying on the floor of a hospital corridor.
“There are cases of amputation. We don’t have anaesthesia,” he added with desperation.
After weeks of forced evacuation orders and bombastic statements by the Israeli prime minister, forces launched their operation into the most populous city in the besieged Strip.
The divisive plan was even opposed by top members of Netanyahu’s own security apparatus. Many of the families of the remaining 48 hostages and captives held by Hamas militants in Gaza have said it will be a death sentence for their loved ones, as they begin a sit-in outside Netanyahu’s home.
In a chilling parallel – just as I was processing the horrific images Abu Salmiya sent me – Chris Sidoti, one of the three members of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry that penned Tuesday’s report, took to the floor.
“We are told that the number of children that have had one or both legs or arms amputated is greater than any conflict this century,” Sidoti, an Australian human rights lawyer, said as he discussed some of the 16,000 pieces of evidence looked at during the two-year-long investigation.
He wasn’t describing something that had happened. He was describing something that Dr Abu Salmiya’s teams were dealing with at that very moment.
And so, as this war unfurls in real time, broadcast live on TV, Sidoti and the commission chair, Navi Pillay, a South-African jurist and former UN High Commission for Human Rights, warned that UN member states, like the UK, should act now – and could face legal consequences if they fail to do so.
In essence, the report found that since October 2023, Israel has committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention—more details on what those are here.
