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SvennoJ on 26 March 2024
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UN expert accuses Israel of genocide:

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, has issued a damning report on Israel’s war on Gaza, saying there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is committing genocide in the Palestinian enclave.

Here’s what you need to know:

  • Albanese said evidence – gathered from organisations on the ground, investigative reports and consultations with affected people – suggested that Israel has committed at least three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention.
  • These are “killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group’s members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
  • On the first point, Albanese noted that Israel has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7. A further 12,000 are reported missing, presumed dead under the rubble.
  • More than 70 percent of the recorded deaths have been women and children and Israel has failed to prove that the remaining 30 percent – adult males – were active Hamas fighters, she said.
  • Israel’s heightened blockade of Gaza is also resulting in deaths by starvation, including that of 10 children daily.
  • On the second point, Albanese noted that Israeli forces have wounded more than 70,000 Palestinians and detained thousands of Palestinian men and boys, subjecting them to torture and mistreatment.
  • On the third point, Albanese said Israel has destroyed or severely damaged most of Gaza’s life-sustaining infrastructure, including hospitals and agricultural land.

UN expert says Israel using concepts such as ‘human shields’ as legal cover for genocide

The UN expert said Israel has deployed concepts from international humanitarian law – such as human shields, collateral damage and safe zones – as legal cover to commit war crimes in Gaza.

For instance, the UN rapporteur said, Israel has sought to portray all of Gaza’s population as human shields, with Israel’s top-ranking political and military leaders consistently framing Palestinian civilians as either Hamas operatives, “accomplices”, or human shields among whom Hamas is “embedded”.

“Israel has de facto treated an entire protected group and its life-sustaining infrastructure as ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorist-supporting’, thus transforming everything and everyone into either a target or collateral damage, hence killable or destroyable,” she wrote.

“In this way, no Palestinian in Gaza is safe by definition. This has had devastating, intentional effects, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroying the fabric of life in Gaza and causing irreparable harm to its entire population.”

In less than 6 months, Israel has destroyed Gaza: UN expert

Presenting the findings in Geneva, Albanese has said that 25,000 tonnes of explosives – equivalent to two nuclear bombs – have been used to level entire neighbourhoods in Gaza, “erasing or severely damaging almost all civilian infrastructure and agricultural land, most of homes, healthcare facilities, telecommunications infrastructure, every university, most education facilities and innumerable cultural heritage sites”.