A UN commission of inquiry has found that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza against Palestinians, but an expert has issued a bleak warning in response to the devastating findings
An expert has warned that there’s ‘no end in sight’ to Israel’s violence, despite a UN-commissioned inquiry finding it has committed genocide against Palestinians in war-torn Gaza.
Under international law, there are five defined genocidal acts, and the new report found that Israel has committed four of these devastations upon the Palestinians in Gaza. They include killing members of the group, preventing births, causing serious mental and bodily harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy them.
Israel has denounced the report, refuting its findings as “distorted and false” and saying “Hamas is the party that attempted genocide in Israel – murdering 1,200 people, raping women, burning families alive, and openly declaring its goal of killing every Jew”.
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The commission chair, Navi Pillay, a former UN human rights chief, said, “It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”
Pillay added that “Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, have incited the commission of genocide”.
Reacting to the report, Professor Anthony Glees, an international relations expert from the University of Buckingham, told the Mirror: “We should be in no doubt that this Report by the UN Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Navi Pillay, a highly distinguished South African lawyer and expert in the field, is a devastating indictment of Israel’s war on Gaza, described by Netanyahu as ‘a war of revenge’ and by his former defence minister Gallant as a ‘war against animals’.”
Despite the “devastating” findings, Professor Glees explained that he didn’t believe the report would lessen the sufferings of Palestinians in the short term and that “justice” for the people of Gaza would only come “far too late”.
“Given the way the world is at the moment, the Commission’s finding will have no immediate impact on the Gaza war,” the expert explained.
“However, in the medium and longer term, its grave importance will, I feel sure, be recognised. The mills of justice grind slowly, yes, but they do grind, and they grind exceeding fine.
“In the end, there will be justice, but, I fear, far too late to help the ordinary people of Gaza right now.”
Professor Glees, who was an advisor to the 1989 UK Nazi War Crimes Inquiry set up by Margaret Thatcher and worked as special advisor to Lord Eric Pickles when he investigated Nazi war crimes in Alderney, said that Israel “can do exactly what it wants” and will likely ignore the findings of the report.
“At the moment, Israel can do exactly what it wants,” the expert said. “It is totally impervious to pressure from the likes of the UK or EU, even increasingly, feels entitled to disregard Trump. The USA will veto any further action on this report being taken by the UN.”
Professor Glees added that “most people accept fully that Israel was entitled to hunt down and destroy the Hamas terrorists who had carried out the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust,” but that Israel has failed to do so, and “it has tried to remove Hamas by extinguishing the lives of all Palestinians in Gaza.”
“That Israel has committed war crimes is self-evident,” the expert said, adding that the UN commission’s report “suggests, compellingly in my opinion, that it is beyond question [that it is a genocide]”.
Professor Glees points out that the five criteria in international law to define a genocide were “drawn up originally by a Jewish lawyer who had experienced the Holocaust” and four of these “have been met”, though “only one is needed to meet the definition of ‘genocide'”.
The expert said the report’s findings “chime entirely with the horrors that the world has been seeing daily on its TV screens for over year. But there is no end in sight to them.”