Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva says use of word genocide ‘outrageous’ (Document)
A United Nations expert told the Human Rights Council on Tuesday that she believed Israel’s military operations in Gaza since October 7 amounted to genocide and called on countries to immediately impose sanctions and arms embargoes.
Israel was not present at the meeting but refused to accept her findings.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, said in her report to the UN human rights body in Geneva: “It is my solemn duty to report on the worst conditions humanly possible and to present my findings. ” is called “The Anatomy of a Genocide.”
“I think there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold of genocide has been reached against the Palestinians in Gaza,” she said, citing the killings of more than 30,000 Palestinians.
“I implore member states to abide by their obligations and first impose arms embargoes and sanctions on Israel to ensure that this does not happen again in the future,” she said, prompting a round of applause.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, national, racial or religious group.”
Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said the use of the word genocide was “outrageous” and said the war was against the Islamist group Hamas rather than Palestinian civilians. The incident was triggered when Hamas militants entered southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages, according to Israeli statistics.
“Instead of seeking the truth, the special rapporteur attempts to counter her distortion and obscene inversion of reality with weak arguments,” the report said.
Gulf countries such as Qatar and African countries such as Algeria and Mauritania have expressed support for Albanese’s findings and expressed concern about the humanitarian situation.
The seat of Israel’s ally, the United States, was empty. Washington has previously accused the committee of perpetuating anti-Israel bias.
Albanese is an Italian lawyer and one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations to report and advise on specific topics and crises. Her views do not reflect those of the global body as a whole.
Her comments on Israel’s conflict with Hamas have come under scrutiny in the past, including from a U.S. ambassador in Geneva who said she had a history of using “anti-Semitic tropes” at the United Nations.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
