On Tuesday, in a groundbreaking new report, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory officially concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This comes ahead of the members of the commission stepping down later this year, after announcing their resignations this summer amid the US’s escalating attacks on UN personnel.
“The Commission concludes that the State of Israel bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide, and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” the report says.
In this exclusive interview, Mehdi speaks with two of the commissioners behind this report: Chair Navi Pillay of South Africa and commissioner Chris Sidoti, one of Australia’s most prominent human rights lawyers.
In the interview, Pillay – who previously served as president of the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda – immediately draws parallels between genocide in Gaza and the Rwandan genocide.
“It’s when I came to the deliberate shooting of the single standing building where the fertility clinic was and the embryos. That immediately reminded me of the Rwanda genocide where I was a judge and where they ripped the bellies of pregnant women, pulled out the fetuses because they wanted to kill off the entire Tutsi group,” Pillay recounts.
Pillay and Sidoti also both point out that unlike the Rwandan genocide, Palestinians in Gaza do not have neighboring countries they can escape to.
“There is nowhere that the people of Gaza can go to escape this slaughter,” Sidoti tells Mehdi. “And yet the slaughter has continued.”
The commissioners also address criticism that their report does not cover Hamas’s war crimes, with Pillay noting that the commission has addressed Hamas’s war crimes in previous reports.
“It doesn't mean to me that every time you have to strike some kind of balance as if the parties are equal,” she explains. “They are not equal. One is the occupier and the other is occupied.”
You can watch the full interview above to hear Mehdi press the commissioners on why it has taken almost two years for them to declare that Israel is committing a genocide, and why Israel prevented their commission from investigating claims of rape and sexual violence from both sides. He also asks whether they fear retaliation from the US for their report, after the Trump administration’s sanctioning of ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.
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