Israel/Palestine Thread

Thanks for the link. There is a shorter summary available below.

By Salo Aizenberg

Accusations of genocide are among the most serious charges that can be made against a state. They evoke the darkest episodes of modern history, such as the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Srebrenica, and they carry immense legal consequences as well as profound moral weight. For this reason, the Genocide Convention of 1948 sets a deliberately high bar: genocide requires specific intent (dolus specialis) to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected group “as such.”[1] Genocidal intent is established only when there is no other reasonable inference. Evidence of widespread civilian casualties, extensive destruction, or inflammatory rhetoric does not suffice; what is required is proof that deaths and suffering were the result of a deliberate policy to exterminate a people. Establishing such intent is among the most difficult elements in international law, and the genocide allegation against Israel fails at this threshold even before considering the Report’s distortions of its conduct in Gaza.

The UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry’s report is fatally deficient: its reasoning is deeply flawed, its evidentiary base unreliable, and its methodology unsound. It selectively misinterprets statements by Israeli leaders, accepts unverified Hamas casualty figures, disregards Hamas’s systematic use of human shields, relies on unverified media reports (such as by Al-Jazeera), and assumes that civilian deaths in Gaza are only the result of deliberate targeting by Israel. Its omissions are equally striking. The report erases Hamas as an active belligerent; across its 72 pages, it never acknowledges that the IDF is engaged with a 30,000-strong fighting force that constructed a battlefield fortified with 500 kilometers of tunnels. Such deficiencies strip the document of legal credibility and render it indistinguishable from propaganda dressed in legal language.

This rebuttal examines the central defects of the UN report (the “Report”) issued by the Commission of Inquiry (the “Commission”). It shows why the evidence presented cannot sustain a finding of genocide under international law. A summary of its main deficiencies are as follows:

1. Failure to prove dolus specialis: The specific intent to destroy a protected group is the central and extremely high bar in any genocide case. The Commission’s claim of genocidal intent fails on this threshold alone, relying on tortured parsing of statements, selective quotations, and conjecture rather than unambiguous evidence.

2. Erasure of Hamas as a belligerent: The report never acknowledges that the IDF is engaged in combat with an estimated 30,000-strong Hamas force in Gaza as well as thousands of fighters from other militant groups. A reader would come away believing the war has the IDF deployed against only women and children, with Hamas erased from the narrative. The Commission makes no attempt to analyze the war itself, because in its alternative version of reality, there is none.

3. Silence on Hamas’s military infrastructure: There is no mention of Hamas’s 17-year military buildup in Gaza, including its vast tunnel network, booby-trapped buildings, and massive arms buildup. By ignoring this reality, the report strips the conflict of its military context and recasts lawful military targets as evidence of genocide.

4. Erasure of Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure: The Commission ignores Hamas’s openly acknowledged human shield strategy,[2] including its use of mosques, schools, residential buildings, and hospitals to conceal tunnels and weapons. Instead, damage to these sites is consistently portrayed as deliberate targeting of civilians by Israel.

5. No recognition of the hostage crisis: The report omits the fact that Hamas took Israeli hostages and continues to hold them, starve them,[3] and rape them.[4] This omission is consistent with the broader erasure of Hamas as an active actor in Gaza, removing essential context from the Commission’s narrative.

6. Reliance on Hamas-supplied fatality data: Despite Hamas’s long record of exaggerating civilian deaths and its status as a US and EU-designated terrorist organization, its figures are treated as fact while IDF data on combatants killed is ignored.

7. Civilian deaths distorted as evidence of genocide: The report presents civilian casualties as prima facie proof of genocidal intent rather than as tragic and unavoidable consequences of urban warfare, exacerbated by Hamas’s human shield strategy. The Report cites numerous incidents where civilians were killed as intentional and targeted acts by Israel without evidence.

8. Normal wartime consequences treated as crimes: Regular and expected wartime impacts on civilians, such as mental health impacts, difficulty accessing medical care and displacement, are depicted as evidence of genocide rather than inevitable outcomes of urban conflict.

9. Urban devastation portrayed as extermination: Large-scale damage is cited as proof of genocide, ignoring that urban combat inherently produces extensive destruction, particularly when military forces are embedded within civilian areas.

The Commission also ignores the obvious: the suffering of Gazans could be significantly reduced or even ended if Hamas released all hostages and relinquished control of Gaza. The idea that the population experiencing the claimed genocide has the power to stop it but refuses to is unprecedented in the history of actual genocides and exposes a deliberate blind spot in the Report. This omission mirrors the Commission’s broader erasure of Hamas as an active party in the conflict, a group with agency and responsibility, leaving readers with the false impression that all suffering in Gaza is solely Israel’s responsibility.

The Report is riddled with factual errors and assertions made with no credible evidence. A complete catalog of these mistakes and their corrections would be longer than the Report itself. This rebuttal highlights key factual errors and significant omissions that the Commission relies on to underpin its thesis of genocide.

https://unwatch.org/un-watch-rebuttal-legal-analysis-of-pillay-commissions-september-2025-report-to-human-rights-council/

Just seen footage of an Israeli drone shoot a doctor (Dr Marwan Adedin) in the head whilst on duty at Nasser Hospital.

They never cease to shock me. Two years in and they're still outdoing themselves on a daily basis.

So this isn't genocide because:

Hamas and October 7th (never mind what happened before that)

Human shields

Hamas tells us who died (where are the numbers from Israel??? They frequently tie themselves up in knots with this one).

Hamas have tunnels, so dropping bunker buster bombs on people living in tents is nessecary

Don't worry about:

Mass killing of civilians (Hamas making up the numbers something something)

Mass starvation of a civilian population

Targeting schools, hospitals, colleges, churches, mosques, libraries, doctors, nurses, paramedics, etc

Destruction of farms, olive groves, fresh water wells, turning off power and fresh water plants

Calls from Israel politicians to eradicate Gazans

Intentional targeting of children

Blockades of aid, including baby formula

All these are just normal parts of war apparently.

Finished off with the customary Release all hostages and this will end (oh and ignore the planned annexation of the West Bank).

I'm not sure who UN watch are - but if this is their defence they are utterly compromised. These are the same nonsense arguments of Israeli leaders comitting said genocide and their sycophants dressed up in fancy language.

Yet another despicable lie . You have no shame- you really will tell any lie in order to try and support Israel. Since you have such a low opinion of Irish People why don't you go back to Israel permanently

To quote the Israeli officer who said once upon a time (back pre-2002 actually)

"In order to prepare properly for the next campaign, one of the Israeli officers in the territories said not long ago, it's justified and in fact essential to learn from every possible source. … he must first analyze and internalize the lessons of earlier battles - even, however shocking it may sound, even how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto."

These sick **** are going to struggle to shake those Nazi allegations…

I believe self-hating Jew is the current terminology….

Part of the deal is the dropping of ICC and ICJ prosecutions, Bibi called “lawfare”?

It will be interesting to see what Netanyahu is up to here in supposedly 'accepting' the 21 point plan. There are many points in it which he, his far right cabinet and the Israeli public would be opposed to. Is he trying to buy time with the intention of reneging on it later?