Israel guilty of genocide and extermination against women and girls in Gaza

A devastating new report by a UN Commission of Inquiry is a timely reminder of the extent of Israel’s grave crimes over the last 17 months.

On my website, please read my latest article, UN Report Finds Israel Guilty of Genocide and Extermination Against Women and Girls in Gaza, Through “Systematic Destruction” of Reproductive Healthcare, my analysis of a devastating new report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

The Commission found that Israel is guilty of "the crime against humanity of extermination", through the deaths of women and girls "from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth due to the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities which have denied access to reproductive healthcare."

The Commission also found that Israel has engaged in acts "amounting to two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention"; namely, "deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births", through its "systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare" in Gaza.

The Commission also found Israel guilty of "the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of wilful killing" for targeted killings of women, and for female fatalities on "an unprecedented scale" as the result of Israel "deliberately targeting residential buildings and using heavy explosives in densely populated areas."

These are just some examples of the many horrors covered in the report, and mentioned in my article, although if you have the time the full report is worth reading, as a reminder of who the real criminals are as a peaceful pro-Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil, is being deprived of his First Amendment rights and treated as a terrorist in the US.

The timing of the UN report is appropriate, because, for the last two weeks, Israel has once more imposed a "complete siege" on Gaza, as part of deliberate attempt to sabotage the ceasefire in place since January 19, which can only compound the ongoing suffering of women and girls in Gaza.

Condemnation has been widespread, but, as I note in conclusion, there is is still no clear way forward towards a lasting peace, and in the meantime the death toll will continue to rise; perhaps, as the renowned surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta suggested in December, being as high as 300,000, of whom at least a third — 100,000 people in total — are women and girls.

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Note: The photo at the top of this post is by Samar Abu Elouf for UN Women.