The UN Has Found Israel Committed Genocide In Gaza By Deliberately Targeting Palestinian Children
It found that about 30% of those Israel killed in Gaza were children, with more than 20,179 Palestinian children killed and 44,143 injured during the two-year period.
A UN inquiry has found Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian children, committing genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, as well as war crimes in the occupied West Bank.
The report, released on Tuesday, June 23, by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, examined alleged Israeli violations against Palestinian children committed between Oct. 7, 2023, and Oct. 7, 2025.
It found that about 30% of those Israel killed in Gaza were children, with more than 20,179 Palestinian children killed and 44,143 injured during the two-year period.
The commission said Israel’s military committed genocidal acts through killing Palestinian children, starving them, repeatedly forcibly displacing them, attacking hospitals and schools and restricting humanitarian aid.
It also investigated incidents involving sniper fire, drone attacks and the use of heavy explosives in densely populated civilian areas, concluding they formed part of a pattern supporting its finding that Israel is committing genocide.
“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 commission said.
The report builds on the commission’s findings published in September 2025, when it concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
The commission said Israel had carried out four of the five acts that the 1948 Genocide Convention defines as genocide, including killing members of the group and causing serious bodily harm, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
The latest investigation says evidence gathered since then shows those acts have continued.
Beyond Gaza, the report also examined the occupied West Bank, where it found Israeli forces and settlers have committed war crimes against Palestinian children, including a sharp rise in settler violence.
The Israeli rights group B'Tselem said 236 Palestinian children have been killed in the West Bank since October 2023.
Israel rejected the findings, calling the report a “libelous sham” and accusing the commission of bias.
Israeli officials denied deliberately targeting civilians and said Israel’s military is fighting Hamas, which they accuse of operating from civilian areas and using civilians as human shields.
Hamas has denied those allegations.
The commission called on Israel to immediately halt its military operations in Gaza and end its occupation of the West Bank.
It urged other countries to arrest Israeli officials wanted by the International Criminal Court, stop selling weapons to Israel and impose sanctions on officials and settlers it holds responsible.
The commission does not have the power to enforce any of these recommendations itself.
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