Peace and Justice Post

Hossam Shaker

MEE, 3 July 2026

Successive United Nations investigations have documented Israel’s genocide, yet western regimes still refuse to name it or deliver the accountability their own institutions demand

Chris Sidoti of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory speaks at a press conference in Geneva on 16 September 2025 (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)

Once again, the United Nations reminds us that genocide is taking place in the Gaza Strip.

A report issued on 23 June 2026 by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory documented what Israel has committed against the Palestinian people, especially children.

This followed an earlier report from the same commission on 16 September 2025, which found that genocide was taking place, as well as the report of the UN special rapporteur issued on 20 October 2025.

But what can meticulously documented international reports do in the face of those who have insisted on averting their eyes from declared Israeli intentions to commit genocide, ethnic cleansing, comprehensive destruction and horrific starvation – not to mention the torrent of live images transmitted around the clock to mobile devices from the field of atrocities over the course of two full years?

Specialised UN reports, testimonies by international rapporteurs and experts, assessments by the most prominent global human rights organisations, and even Israeli testimonies have followed one another, all confirming the reality of the genocide committed by Israel under the eyes of the world since October 2023.

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In contrast, most European and western states have clung to a rigid position that ignores this glaring truth, despite genocidal intentions being openly expressed in advance by senior Israeli leaders, who continued to boast of what their army and authorities were doing on the ground.

Official western comments on those reports were often absent, unlike what would have happened in other cases

Official western comments on those published reports were often absent, unlike what would have happened in other cases.

Is it not worthy of condemnation that senior European and western officials have persistently avoided using the term “genocide” in relation to these systematic and horrific Israeli practices?

It is as though the word were a firmly established taboo in European and western political, media and cultural discourse whenever Israel is concerned.

This taboo exerts its power over those officials and commentators who, in this way, give reason to suspect that acknowledging genocide depends on the identity of the perpetrator and the status of the victims.

Double standards

It is entirely understandable that the allies of a regime of occupation and genocide, or those who consider themselves Israel’s partners and friends, would avoid issuing a clear condemnation of conduct they themselves helped support and encourage, directly or indirectly, even if only through silence and denial of its atrocities.

Throughout this prolonged season of horrors, the Israeli side has enjoyed military and political backing, as well as propagandistic cover, through carefully crafted formulas uttered by senior European and western officials.

These amounted to evasive justifications for whatever war crimes and grave violations an occupying authority and its military forces might commit against a population left utterly exposed to continuous bombardment.

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This may be inferred from the phrase that has become a staple of western speeches: “Israel has every right to defend itself” – words that Israeli leaders understand simply as advance legitimation for a policy of mass killing and comprehensive destruction on the ground.

Naturally, no mention is made in this context of any right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves, for example, or of their right under international humanitarian law to resist the military occupation entrenched on their land.

States, governments and political leaderships – joined by elites in the fields of thought, culture and media – insist on ignoring the reality of genocide against the Palestinian people, or conceal it through a tendency toward genocide denial, as though all the serious international efforts of documentation and investigation had no value for them.

Denying a genocide that has unfolded before everyone’s ears and eyes simply means minimising its confirmed atrocities. It also entails direct or indirect encouragement of this pattern of horrific violations, so long as they are met with such shocking laxity.

Moreover, clinging to outright denial encourages the perpetrators to resume committing appalling war crimes, so long as these crimes are not named as such. Which western leaders – apart from a handful, such as Spain – have described what the Israeli leadership and its army have committed as “genocide” or “war crimes”?

It must be recalled that the centres of western decision-making, including the European Union and its leading bodies crowned with slogans of noble values and human rights, became implicated in a sweeping display of bias when they chose very mild or evasive terms to describe Israeli war crimes that the entire world followed in images, sound and live broadcasts.

Leaders and spokespersons resorted to cold expressions such as the ploy of “expressing concern” and voicing “sorrow” over the victims, often without naming the perpetrator, because the perpetrator was the Israeli leadership and its army, whose brutal policies and measures were visible to all.

Observers around the world have noted how the charge of “double standards” clings to European and western political discourse.

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This is precisely what the former vice-president of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, warned his EU colleagues against – in full view of a world that notices the grave moral gap between European positions on Ukraine and Palestine. He issued that warning days into the war, at a Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg on 23 October 2023.

One would not be exaggerating to conclude from these contradictory positions that they place some human beings above others in status, degree of concern and human dignity, so that the lives, safety and security of Palestinians are placed lower in rank than those of others.

Thus comes the tolerance of the crushing of children, mothers, the sick and the elderly in the Gaza Strip, without serious positions being taken to restrain the machinery of genocide.

The margins, not the centre

Those faltering positions gave the strong impression that they were conferring moral immunity on the perpetrator, namely the Israeli leadership and its regular army.

Prevailing European and western criticism was limited to only two reckless ministers from the Israeli government, which amounts to little, since Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are already constantly criticised within Israeli circles.

The narrative has been shifted into familiar terms about a ‘humanitarian crisis’, as though the programmed genocide were merely a natural disaster

Meanwhile, the government and the political leadership more broadly continue to escape direct criticism, even after the accumulation of filmed atrocities and the issuance of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.

This evasion becomes even clearer when criticism, along with some sanctions of limited effect, has been confined to settler gangs and their leaders, without any verbal reproach or punitive gesture directed toward the Israeli army. The latter not only sponsors and protects settlers on the ground but also directly commits grave violations, appalling war crimes and campaigns of ethnic cleansing within the context of a horrific genocide.

This contradiction betrays a firmly rooted European and western position intent on exempting the state, its leadership and its regular military and security apparatuses from any clear criticism, explicit condemnation or accountability, while merely formal positions are issued concerning the margins rather than the centre: some settlers instead of the army, and only two ministers instead of the government.

Political Europe, and many elites in public life across western states, have even evaded confronting a simple question: does what Israel has committed against the Palestinian people constitute genocide?

Denying the genocide committed in Gaza requires wilful disregard.

It begins by brushing aside these war crimes and behaving as though they merit no attention. The adopted narrative has been shifted into familiar terms about a “humanitarian crisis” and “alarming” conditions, or a show of concern for “civilian suffering” – as though the programmed genocide, reinforced by declared intentions to commit it, were merely a natural disaster that befell the place.

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The states and governments that boast of their commitment to moral positions, human values, international law and human rights were supposed to honour those commitments. They should have warned against the campaign of genocide in its earliest stages, stripped it of political and propagandistic cover, and supported the enforcement of international justice and the cases filed over genocide against the Palestinian people.

Foremost among these is the case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, on the basis of Israel’s violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Instead, campaigns of moral targeting, incitement, intimidation and even the imposition of unjust sanctions on prosecutors have escalated, affecting international justice bodies and their personnel, as well as UN rapporteurs.

Thus, it becomes clear that complicity with the genocide committed against the Palestinian people goes ever further in undermining international law and threatening the foundations of international action and the protection afforded to its institutions and authorities.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Hossam Shaker is a journalist and an author who has extensively covered the topic of migration in Europe.

From war crimes and genocide abroad to moral, constitutional, and debt crises at home: Why Congress must reject the NDAA’s U.S.-Israel military and intelligence merger.

by Dennis Kucinich | Jul 3, 2026

Against the horrific high- and low-tech butchery of Palestinians and Lebanese by Israeli ethno-nationalist psychopathic killers, this week there will be an effort in Congress to formally merge or integrate the military of Israel and the United States at the most advanced levels.

Section 219 (formerly Section 224) of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act of 2027, provides for an unprecedented unification. The nearly $4 billion in the NDAA for Israel’s offensive efforts pales next to Israel having direct access to determining use of $1.5 trillion in annual military resources of the United States.

Money can be appropriated one year and withdrawn the next. Institutional integration is permanent.

Section 219 creates permanent mechanisms through which military planning, intelligence sharing, weapons development, procurement, research, artificial intelligence, and strategic coordination become increasingly intertwined between the United States and Israel.

It is a proposal to embed another nation’s military establishment within the long-term planning and strategic architecture of the United States government.

Our own government – House, Senate and Administration – is in moral collapse, placing overwhelming emphasis on militarism instead of adequately funding America – housing, education, food, health, safety, and retirement security. Americans are standing at freeway exits, begging for food, while our tax dollars flow to weapons manufacturers.

While carrying a national debt approaching $40 Trillion, the Administration is increasing spending for its newly dedicated Department of War by 67% to upwards of $1.5 TRILLION per year. Simultaneously, with more than 42 million Americans unable to feed themselves, the administration is cutting federal food programs.

The practical implications extend far beyond dollars. With NDAA Section 219, Congress the legislation would create enduring institutional relationships affecting how those extraordinary military resources are developed, coordinated, and potentially employed.

No Congress has ever before considered legislation of this nature with any foreign nation.

If the Administration’s “America First” claim were to mean anything, it must first mean that America’s Constitution comes first. It must mean that American families, farmers, workers, veterans, and children come first. Section 219 turns that claim into a farce.

Section 219 of the NDAA would cause the United States to become dependent upon Israel making decisions about war, peace, military strategy, intelligence, and U. S. national security. This is the consequence of permanent institutional integration.

One week ago, a UN Commission of Inquiry determined that Israeli security forces deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children, sometimes as a game, torturing them, subjecting children to sexual violence resulting in “unprecedented death, injury and trauma.”

Since Oct. 7, 2023, the IDF has been instrumental in the deaths of as many as 800,000 Palestinians, including children, emergency health care workers, doctors, nurses, journalists, and educators.

UN investigators and human rights observers have documented the killing of Palestinian children and have accused Israeli forces of deliberately targeting the children of Gaza.

These findings are reinforced by dehumanizing statements from Israeli political figures who have portrayed Palestinian children as future terrorists, so children are targets.

Essential civilian infrastructure has been devastated. Water systems, hospitals, schools, electrical networks, and sanitation facilities have been damaged or destroyed, eacerbating a man-made, humanitarian catastrophe.

In the occupied West Bank, armed “settlers” have been widely reported to have attacked Palestinian communities, burned homes, uprooted olive groves and other crops, destroyed property, and killed livestock, further displacing civilian populations.

Israel has used starvation as a weapon, setting food as a trap and, gunning down Gazans as they rush desperately to feed themselves and their children. Water supplies have been poisoned, wells filled with cement.

Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon are testing ground sfor increasingly sophisticated military technologies, destroying entire villages with increasingly powerful munitions, and using precision, artificial intelligence-assisted targeting systems. Human rights organizations have raised serious concerns about the speed of targeting decisions, civilian casualty rates, and the implications of delegating life-and-death decisions to algorithmic systems.

White phosphorous and other weapons banned by international treaty are in use.

The conduct of the IDF has earned world-wide condemnation. Twenty-nine UN member states do not have diplomatic relations with Israel. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The Israel newspaper Haaretz recently reported that the ICC prosecutor is also seeking arrest warrants for Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich: “Gaza must be destroyed entirely.” and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Givr, who has said: “All of Lebanon must burn.” Will these be our new partners? If so, the fundamental question becomes: Who are WE?

What is to be lost further in an Israel-U.S. military merger?

If the U.S. combines our military capabilities with the twisted occupation and expansionist ethic of Israel’s use of military technology against civilian populations, will it be long before our own government militarizes the high -tech surveillance infrastructure already in place to use state violence against our own citizens who protest abuse of basic rights?

The First Amendment has already been taken down on college campuses, and in cities and states where Israel critics are sanctioned.

U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officials have trained in Israel. The lessons learned there have come to America in terms of deportation, detention, and in some cases, physical abuse, injury and death at the hands of ICE government agents.

Israel kills Arab children so they will not commit crimes in the future. Will Americans, as in the movie Minority Report be pitched into a dystopian world where predictive algorithms enable Israel-U.S. collaborators to hunt down, prosecute and even punish Americans for crimes not committed?

As a Member of Congress, I questioned Benjamin Netanyahu during a hearing which took place prior to the 2003 Congressional vote on going to war against Iraq. He admitted he wanted not only Iraq to be attacked by the United States, but also Libya and Iran. It is widely known that the Israeli Prime Minister pushed President Trump into the disastrous war against Iran.

It is inevitable that as Israel’s aggression is maximally empowered, once placed inside the U.S. war-making establishment, the U.S. will be dragged into the Zionists’ expansionist designs on Iran, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere. A greater Israel means a lesser United States. Congress, heavily influenced by the Israel lobby, is unable to reclaim its constitutionally based war power

Since the merger is to be voted on, this week, before America celebrates the 250^th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, let us be reminded by Thomas Jefferson’s July 4, 1776 characterization of George III, King of Great Britain: “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws….”

Our forefathers did not fight for freedom and for independence at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Trenton, Saratoga, and Yorktown, nor sacrifice American blood and treasure in battles in World War I and World War II to arrive at July 4, 2026, having willingly forfeited our sovereignty to a foreign nation, losing control of our future and putting in doubt “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.”

Call your congressperson today and tell them to stand for America’s independence and vote for the Massie-Khanna Amendment to remove Section 219 from the NDAA.

United Nations Human Rights, 23 June 2026

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Press releases Sudan: Arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearances fueling civilian protection crisis, UN Fact-Finding Mission says

Press releases Palestinian civilians are victims of all sides, trapped between the mass atrocities of Israeli forces and settlers and the fear-based rule of Hamas

Press releases Joint Declaration on Sudan – Adopted by the Joint Fact-Finding Mission of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Human Rights Situation in the Sudan and the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan

GENEVA – Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said in a new report today.

The Commission, which concluded last year that Israel had committed genocide against the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip, found that the intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations have continued – resulting in unprecedented death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children.

The Commission reiterates that the deliberate targeting of children is one of the key elements establishing genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.

“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, Chair of the Commission. “Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”

Severe physical and mental injuries, mass trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacements, starvation, and the collapse of education and healthcare have erased childhood and will continue to affect children in Gaza throughout their lives.

Palestinian children have been arrested and subjected to torture and other severe forms of mistreatment in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, with no information on their whereabouts. Israeli security forces have also used sexual violence against children as part of the collective shaming and oppression, entrenched within a prolonged, ethnic, gendered, and intergenerational pattern of Israeli occupation and hostilities.

Israel’s targeting of neonatal and maternity care centers in Gaza have directly harmed the survival of newborns and Palestinians’ reproductive future, including rises in miscarriages, birth defects and lasting vulnerabilities among newborns, resulting in the destruction of Palestinian newborn life and the population’s continuity. Starvation imposed by Israel through blockade and siege have further caused the death of Palestinian children and severely impacted the health of many others, depriving them of essential nutrition and increasing disease risks amid reduced immunization, food insecurity and destroyed health services.

In parallel, the dismantling and destruction of orphanages and education facilities in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have obstructed children’s cognitive, social and emotional care and development and disrupted the foundations of Palestinian society.

“Even if the bombs and guns fall silent in Gaza and West Bank, Palestinian children will not simply recover overnight,” said Muralidhar. “The destruction of their health, education and development is irreversible.”

Palestinian children have suffered immense psychological harm, having been stripped of any sense of safety and future. Mental harm is an intergenerational condition, producing a distinctive “occupied psyche” in which the freedom to play, imagine, hope, and develop an identity has been eroded.

By targeting children, Israel is eroding the foundational structure of Palestinian society, weakening the demographic vitality, and overall capacity of the Palestinian people to sustain and exercise its right to determine its future as a people.

“The protection, care and survival of Palestinian children are inseparable from the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” said Muralidhar. “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.”

The Commission calls for Israel to cease committing violations and crimes against and affecting Palestinian children. The Commission further calls for the end of Israel’s continuing presence in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in compliance with the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.

The Commission has identified military units within the Israeli security forces responsible for killing and injuring of Palestinian children and makes recommendations to Israel and to all Member States to ensure accountability for such crimes.

The international community as a whole must uphold their international legal obligations and call for an end to the hostilities, for Israel to end its occupation and to prioritize accountability and access to justice for victims as an integral component of any political process, grounded in the meaningful participation of Palestinians, including children.

Read the full report in English.

ENDS

Background: The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel was established by the UN Human Rights Council on 27 May 2021 to “investigate, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up to and since 13 April 2021.” Resolution A/HRC/RES/S-30/1 further requested the commission of inquiry to “investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.”

For media queries, please contact: Todd Pitman, Media Adviser for the UN Human Rights Council’s Investigative Bodies: todd.pitman@un.org / +41766911761; or Pascal sim, Human Rights Council Media Officer: simp@un.org.