The repercussions of the UN investigation into the Israeli military's deliberate targeting of Palestinian children extend far beyond Gaza. They raise fundamental questions about the future of international law itself.
اضافة اعلان
The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, has issued one of the most shocking reports ever produced by a UN commission of inquiry into Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The report’s title alone is almost unbearably painful: “The essence of childhood has been destroyed.” Behind this title lie grave accusations.
The commission concludes that Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children, and that these acts amount to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the Gaza Strip, as well as war crimes in the occupied West Bank.
The report, released on June 25, was not an emotional appeal. It was a meticulously researched legal document built on witness testimony, forensic evidence, satellite imagery, military analysis, medical records, and years of documentation.
The report presents more than just another record of civilian casualties. It argues that the killing, maiming, starvation, detention, and psychological destruction of Palestinian children cannot be explained away as collateral damage.The commission concludes that the children themselves have become targets. This is a deliberate policy of the Israeli military.
The implications of such a conclusion extend far beyond Gaza, raising fundamental questions about the future of international law itself. A deeply disturbing report the Commission estimates that since October 2023, at least 20,179 Palestinian children have been killed and more than 44,000 injured. Children constitute roughly 30 percent of all Palestinians killed.
These figures alone place the Gaza war among the deadliest conflicts for children in modern history. But the report's significance lies not only in the numbers but also in its conclusions regarding intent.
It documents repeated instances where children were shot by snipers, targeted by drones, injured while seeking food or water, or killed despite posing no military threat—as should have been obvious.
The report also examines the frequent use of high explosives in densely populated civilian areas—even when the foreseeable consequences for children are clear and undeniable.
It details attacks on maternity hospitals and units Newborns, schools, orphanages, and shelters are all targeted. The report examines the blockade on food, water, and medicine, demonstrating how starvation, disease, and the collapse of medical services have become weapons of war waged against an entire civilian population, whose youngest members are the most vulnerable.
The Commission also investigates Israeli detention practices involving Palestinian minors. Children detained in Gaza and the West Bank describe being subjected to torture, sexual violence, degrading treatment, and enforced disappearance within detention facilities without any information being provided to their families.
The Commission concludes that these violations are part of a broader system of collective punishment directed against Palestinian society across generations.
This UN committee report, while horrifying, was not new. It merely confirmed the findings of previous reports—for example, Save the Children’s report (“Palestinian children in Israeli military detention report increasingly violent conditions,” February 29, 2024); and UNICEF’s report, published long before this genocidal campaign began in 2023 (“Children in Israeli military detention,” February 2013). Palestinian journalist Wissam Afifi, in his recent book, *Survivors of Darkness*, documents the horrific violence perpetrated in Israeli detention camps established for Palestinians, including children.
Perhaps the most chilling conclusion of the UN report is that the destruction extends far beyond physical death. Childhood itself has become a battleground. Psychological trauma, orphanhood, repeated displacement, hunger, disrupted education, and permanent disability all combine to constitute what the committee describes as the destruction of “the very essence of childhood.”
The conclusions reached by the commission did not emerge suddenly, but rather followed a long-established pattern.
For nearly two years, Palestinian journalists documented children being pulled from the rubble of collapsed buildings, infants dying in incubators due to power outages, entire families being wiped out in airstrikes, and children being killed while trying to obtain food or water.
Many of these journalists paid with their lives. Gaza has become “the deadliest conflict for journalists ever recorded,” according to Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
Yet, despite the extraordinary dangers, journalists continued to document events that much of the world preferred not to see.
International human rights organizations reached similar conclusions long before this latest UN report. Save the Children repeatedly warned that Gaza had become one of the most dangerous places in the world for children.
Defense for Children International – Palestine documented numerous incidents of children being shot in circumstances that raised serious questions about military necessity.
Human Rights Watch investigated attacks on schools, hospitals, and refugee camps.Amnesty International examined repeated strikes that appeared to violate the principles of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law.
UNICEF repeatedly warned that children were being killed and injured in Palestine on an unprecedented scale. None of these organizations described these incidents as isolated occurrences. Rather, they identified recurring patterns that warranted an independent investigation.
Indeed, the new UN report brings together this vast body of evidence into a single legal assessment.In January 2024, the International Court of Justice found that South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide had reasonable grounds and issued provisional measures requiring Israel to cease acts prohibited by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, preserve evidence, and facilitate humanitarian access.
Subsequent orders reinforced these obligations as the situation in Gaza continued to deteriorate. While the Court has yet to issue its ruling on the genocide case, it has repeatedly acknowledged the grave danger facing the Palestinian population and reaffirmed Israel’s obligations under international law. The Commission’s new report provides further evidence that will undoubtedly have an impact on future legal proceedings.
Equally striking is the nature of Israel’s response. Instead of seriously engaging with the evidence gathered by the Commission, Israeli officials once again rushed to reject the report outright, dismissing its contents as politically motivated and inherently biased. They dismissed its conclusions entirely without offering any substantive response to the specific facts, witness testimonies, or forensic evidence presented by the investigators.
While every state has the right to defend itself against accusations, serious accusations demand serious answers. If children were not deliberately targeted, then the burden of explaining why thousands of children were killed in circumstances repeatedly documented by journalists, humanitarian organizations, medical personnel, and now a UN Commission of Inquiry, rests with the Israeli authorities.
Why were hospitals, maternity wards, schools, and refugee shelters targeted time and again? Why were humanitarian aid convoys repeatedly attacked? Why did children continue to die even after ceasefire arrangements? And why did military investigations result in so little accountability? Simply repeating accusations of institutional bias cannot be a substitute for a fact-based explanation.
The refusal to engage with evidence has itself become a disturbing feature of this war. International humanitarian law is based on the principle of holding states accountable for their conduct. Accountability becomes impossible when every investigation is dismissed before its evidence has even been examined.
Judge S. Muralidhar and the duty of a judge:
The conclusions of the UN Commission also remind us of the importance of judges who understand that the law is not merely a technical tool, but a bulwark against arbitrary power.
Few Indian judges have embodied this principle as steadfastly as Justice S. Muraleedhar, who, as a member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, chaired the committee that produced this new report.
For decades, Justice Muraleedhar has cultivated a reputation as one of India’s foremost constitutional law scholars, particularly in cases concerning civil liberties, communal violence, and the protection of vulnerable groups. He was a leading judicial voice in establishing accountability after the 1984 anti-Sikh violence, insisting that impunity could not become the norm simply because crimes were politically embarrassing. His commitment to his constitutional duty gained international recognition during the communal violence in northeast Delhi in February 2020.
As hospitals struggled to treat victims caught in the crossfire, Justice Muraleedhar and Justice Anup J. Bhambhani held an extraordinary midnight session at Justice Muraleedhar’s residence. The Delhi High Court ordered the police to ensure the safe passage of the injured to hospitals and directed that they be provided with immediate emergency medical treatment.
Later that day, Justice Muraleedhar sharply criticized the Delhi police for failing to register cases against political leaders whose inflammatory speeches had gone viral, reminding the authorities that the country could not afford another 1984.
Within hours of those hearings, the Indian government informed Justice Muraleedhar of its decision to transfer him to the Punjab and Haryana High Courts, even though the recommendation for his transfer had been formally issued by the Supreme Court of India earlier that month.
The timing of the decision sparked widespread concern among lawyers, retired judges, and civil society organizations, who saw it as raising serious questions about the independence of the judiciary.
Justice Muraleedhar’s career exemplifies a fundamental principle of the rule of law. Courts are not meant to rubber-stamp the actions of governments; their function is to examine evidence without fear or favor—especially when the victims are from the least politically influential groups.
This same principle guides the work of the UN Commission of Inquiry. Its conclusions may be debatable, but they cannot be dismissed simply because they are politically inconvenient. The proper response to serious evidence is to take it seriously. This is the first obligation of any state that claims to respect the rule of law.
The ultimate test facing humanity is not just about Israel or Palestine. The UN commission's report raises the question of whether the international legal order established after the defeat of European fascism still possesses the moral authority to defend children against systematic violence. If more than 20,000 children can be killed while international diplomacy largely continues as usual, then the promise embodied in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the Geneva Conventions, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been severely undermined.
This new report will not end the war. It cannot bring back the lives of those already lost. But it establishes a historical record that will become increasingly difficult to erase with time. Long after governments have changed and military campaigns have ended, that record will remain.
History will always remember those who committed atrocities, as well as those who turned a blind eye and looked the other way. *Vijay Prashad: An Indian historian, editor, and journalist.
He is a writing fellow and senior correspondent for The Globe Trotter, a book editor for Leftword, and director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute of Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His most recent book is Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism; And with Noam Chomsky, "The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power." *This article was published under the title: When Children Are the Target
