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Rights expert alleges ‘genocidal incitement’ being committed in Gaza

Israel's "genocidal incitement" against Palestinians in Gaza transcends the scope of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory alleged on Wednesday.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council, Francesca Albanese maintained that Israel had used “humanitarian camouflage” to pursue nearly six months of intense bombardment in Gaza, in response to Hamas-led terror attacks on Israeli communities that left some 1,200 dead and more than 250 taken hostage.

“Israel has justified - has explained - its military actions as proportionate, as not targeting civilians; they didn't achieve that goal, considering that 70 per cent, 70 per cent of the victims have steadily been women and children, throughout the assault on Gaza.”

Ms. Albanese’s comments came a day after she presented her report to the Human Rights Council maintain that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide” had been met.

At a scheduled Press conference, the Special Rapporteur insisted that the “flagrant and systematic slaughter of Palestinian civilians, the deployment of unlawful weaponry, the utter obliteration of vital civilian infrastructure, including the deliberate targeting of all Gaza’s hospitals and the man-made starvation of the Palestinian people transcend the realm of war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

Speaking in French, the independent rights expert who is not a UN staff member referenced the “Nakba”, or “catastrophe”, that Palestinians use to describe the events of 1947 when many were displaced after the founding of the State of Israel, and the 1967 war between Israel and regional neighbours.

"To be pursued, pulled apart as a people, that’s the Nakba. The Nakba is what Palestinians have lived through since 1947 and also in 1967, nobody talks about it, but the destruction of villages, the forced depopulation – that’s what they went through. It’s for this reason that I’m saying this is not exactly new (but) now it has reached a level that we can no longer ignore.”

Ms. Albanese also made reference to the use of dehumanizing rhetoric about Palestinians in Israel after the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led terror attacks: “Having people in with command authority or having the Prime Minister and having the President of the State issuing statements, they are so dehumanising, evoking violence, not once, not twice, continuously for months; it's supported by jurisprudence in other in other cases that this is genocidal incitement.”

Citing international law, Ms. Albanese previously explained that genocide is defined as a specific set of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

“Specifically, Israel has committed three acts of genocide with the requisite intent, causing seriously serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, 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 birth within the group,” she said.

ends

HRC Press Conference: Special Rapporteur on oPt - 27 March 2024

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