Gaza War: UN official accuses Israel of genocide, urges arms embargo

A UN expert called on nations to quickly apply sanctions and a weapons embargo, telling the world body’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday that she thought Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since October 7 amounted to genocide.

Israel, which was not present at the meeting, disagreed with her conclusions.

“It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my findings,” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told the UN rights body in Geneva, presenting a report called “The Anatomy of a Genocide”.

“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met,” she said, citing more than 30,000 Palestinians killed among other acts.

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“I implore member states to abide by their obligations, which start with imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and so ensure that the future does not continue to repeat itself,” she said, prompting a burst of applause.

“Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” is the definition of genocide given by the 1948 Genocide Convention, which was passed in the wake of the mass murder of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.

Israel’s diplomatic office in Geneva called the usage of the phrase “genocide” “outrageous” and stated that Palestinian civilians were not the target of the battle, but rather the Islamist organization Hamas. It began when Hamas fighters invaded southern Israel, according to Israeli accounts, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 253.

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“Instead of seeking the truth, this Special Rapporteur tries to fit weak arguments to her distorted and obscene inversion of reality,” it said.

Arab states like Qatar and African nations like Algeria and Mauritania expressed concern about the humanitarian situation and their support for Albanese’s conclusions.

The United States, an ally of Israel, had its seats left unfilled. The council has been charged by Washington with persistent anti-Israel bias in the past.

The UN has assigned scores of independent human rights experts, like Italian lawyer Albanese, to report and provide advice on particular issues and emergencies. Her opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions of the entire world.

Her remarks regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict have previously come under fire, notably from the US ambassador in Geneva, who claimed she has a history of employing “antisemitic tropes” in her remarks.

(With agency inputs)