Israel has carried out at least four of the five actions defined as genocide under the UN convention, according to a report released Tuesday by the UN Commission of Inquiry against Israel.
The report accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, sparking sharp political fallout. Commission members claimed Israel had met the criteria for genocide under international law.
Israel's response was swift. The Foreign Ministry condemned the report, accusing the commission of laundering the crimes of Hamas through legal language in order to justify propaganda. The ministry demanded the panel's immediate dissolution, saying it was "entirely based on lies originating from Hamas" and that its members were "effectively serving as a Hamas arm."
President Trump also weighed in earlier in the day, saying, "When this comes to a vote, we'll see what happens."
Major international outlets, including CNN and the Associated Press, reported extensively on the findings, describing the commission as "independent." However, they made no mention of the controversial records of its members, an omission criticized by UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group monitoring UN bias against Israel.
UN Watch director Hillel Neuer recalled that the panel's chair, Navi Pillay, had called for sanctions against what she described as Israel's "apartheid regime" even before her appointment.
Another commissioner, Miloon Kothari, questioned Israel's right to be a UN member state and spoke of "Jewish control of the media," remarks widely condemned as antisemitic by 18 countries. The third member, Chris Sidoti, claimed Jews "throw around accusations of antisemitism like rice at a wedding."
In July, all three members announced their resignations. UN Watch quickly linked their departure to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's decision to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN's anti-Israel special rapporteur, amid growing public pressure over the commissioners' extreme positions.
According to Neuer, the current report is not the panel's final product before its mandate ends later this year, but their intention to resign may explain the harshest language yet used in the commission's anti-Israel reports.
UN Watch also released a detailed legal analysis dismantling the report's arguments, calling it "a Hamas propaganda document in legal disguise." The group stressed that the commission failed to prove the central legal requirement for genocide, explicit intent to destroy a group, while deliberately ignoring the military context and Hamas' actions, including its October 7 massacre, which were entirely absent from the 72-page document.
Neuer said the Pillay commission "began with a verdict and worked backward to justify it. By erasing Hamas from the story, ignoring its tunnels, rockets, and human shields, and relying on Hamas-supplied casualty figures as fact, the Commission stripped the war of all military context and distorted urban combat into 'genocide.' This is propaganda, not law, and it discredits the UN. And if anyone knows anything about the members, one of whom, Miloon Kothari, was condemned by 18 countries for antisemitism - this is more like a clown show."
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