UN Confirms What We Already Knew: Israel is Genociding the Palestinians

It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my finding, The Anatomy of Genocide.
Francesca Albanese

The Anatomy of a Genocide

On March 26, 6 months after Israel began unprecedented attack on the citizens of Gaza, the United Nations confirmed what we already knew: Israel is genociding the Palestinians. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian occupied territories, released her 4th report on Gaza. You can watch her full report below:

Albanese relates a chilling narrative, revealing the savage genocide committed against Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli army. Through the systematic dehumanization and relentless destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, a calculated strategy to distort international laws emerges. This campaign not only deprives the population of essential humanitarian aid but also masks the atrocities under the guise of military necessity.

The situation in Gaza is illuminated by undeniable acts: the mass killing of civilians, with a significant proportion being women and children; the systematic targeting of essential civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and schools; and the severe restrictions on humanitarian aid to the point of utilizing starvation as a weapon. Israel has targeted journalists, doctors, nurses, academics, scientists, and their family members. Most hospitals have been destroyed as well. Israel has blocked food, medical supplies, incubators, and baby formula amongst other necessities.

The Anatomy of a Genocide: The Full Report

The full unedited report in written form can be downloaded here:

a-hrc-55-73-auv Download

Let’s highlight a few key points from this report:

The report confirms genocidal violence by Israel:

“By analyzing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza this report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met. One of the key findings is that Israel’s executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.“

Confirms that October 7th is not the beginning of the conflict

Since it imposed the siege on Gaza in 2007, which tightened the closure imposed since 1993, Israel, the occupying power, has carried out five major assaults before the present one.

Confirms the claims of Hamas and Palestinians that Israel kidnaps Palestinians and detains them as hostages

Israeli forces have detained thousands of Palestinians, mostly men and young boys, often refusing to disclose their whereabouts. Many of them have been severely mistreated, including through torture at times leading to death.

Dispels the humanitarian claims of Israel

The total siege and near-constant carpet-bombing, along with draconian evacuation orders and ever-shifting ‘safe zones’, have created an unparalleled humanitarian catastrophe. Over 1.7 million Palestinians were displaced and forced into overcrowded UNRWA shelters and cramped quarters in southern Gaza, systematically targeted by the Israeli army, and later into makeshift shelters.

Dispels the myth of human shielding by Hamas

Israel has accused Palestinian armed groups of deliberately using civilians as human shields in previous aggressions on Gaza. It also used it to justify high civilian casualties and attacks against paramedics, journalists and others during the 2018–2019 ‘Great March of Return’. UN independent fact-finding missions and reputable human rights organizations have consistently challenged these allegations, sometimes concluding that evidence of human shields had been fabricated. Nevertheless, Israel has used these accusations – sometimes then retracted to justify widespread and systematic killing of Palestinian civilians in its ongoing assault.

Inventing the pretext of human shields to justify genocide

Nevertheless, Israeli authorities have characterized churches mosques, schools, UN facilities, universities, hospitals and ambulances as connected with Hamas to reinforce the perception of a population characterized as broadly ‘complicit’ and therefore killable. Significant numbers of Palestinian civilians are defined as human shields simply by being in “proximity to” potential Israeli targets. Israel has thus transformed Gaza into a “world without civilians” in which “everything from taking shelter in hospitals to fleeing for safety is declared a form of human shielding”. The accusation of using human shields has thus become a pretext, justifying the killing of civilians under a cloak of purported legality, whose all-enveloping pervasiveness admits only of genocidal intent.

Please read the entire report for source evidence of each point. For another in-depth article on the evidence of Israeli genocidal violence on Gaza, please refer to our 3 part article: The Manufacturing of Consent of a Genocide. Finally, the United Nations also released a Q&A with the media and Albanese as a follow up to the report which can be viewed below.

The Human Toll of Genocide

Palestinians killed in Gaza: 33,137
Children killed in Gaza: more than 13,000
Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank: 456
Palestinians currently displaced in Gaza: 1.7 million (70 percent of the population)
Percentage of buildings likely damaged/destroyed: 55.9 percent
Percentage of homes likely damaged: more than 60 percent
Percentage of school buildings damaged: 90 percent
Hospitals that are functioning: 10/36
Palestinian civilians facing “catastrophic” food insecurity, according to the UN: 1.1 million
Percentage of northern Gaza children under the age of two who are acutely malnourished: 31 percent
Percentage of students out of school: 100 percent
Mosques damaged: 227
Churches damaged: 3
Palestinians killed in the West Bank: 456
People killed in Lebanon: at least 343
Journalists killed in Gaza: At least 95
Palestinians injured in Gaza since Oct. 7: 75,815
Children have died of malnutrition and dehydration: At least 28
Number of calories Palestinians are surviving on since January: 245 calories
The estimated cost of direct damage by Israel to critical infrastructure in the Gaza Strip: US$ 18.5 billion

Truth In The Holy Land

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

It’s Bisan From Gaza, I’m Still Alive After Six Months Of Bombing