UN commission finds Israel committing genocide by deliberately targeting Gaza children
A United Nations commission of inquiry has concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza, and that this pattern of killing amounts to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
The finding, released Tuesday by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, is not the first time a UN body has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. A previous commission report in September 2025 reached the same conclusion. But this report goes further. It focuses specifically on children, documents the deliberate nature of the targeting, and ties the killing of children directly to the legal standard for genocidal intent.
The numbers are staggering. Between October 7, 2023 and October 7, 2025, at least 20,179 children were killed in Gaza, roughly 30 percent of the total death toll. By comparison, children made up approximately 24 percent of conflict-related fatalities in previous Gaza conflicts in 2008-2009 and 2014. The proportion is higher, and the commission says this is not an accident.
“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, the commission’s chair.
The commission found that Israeli forces continued to use high-payload munitions and weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated residential areas despite mounting child casualties. It concluded that “such attacks, which killed children in such high numbers, were intentional.” The report states that children were targeted collectively because Israeli security forces considered the civilian population as a whole to be associated with Hamas and other armed groups.
The report covers the period from October 7, 2023 onward, including the period after the ceasefire that took effect in October 2025. The commission said the continued killing of children after the ceasefire was a key element establishing genocidal intent: the intent to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza.
Muralidhar drew the explicit link between the killing of children and the destruction of a people’s future. By targeting children, he said, Israel was “undermining the capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.”
Israel’s response was swift and dismissive. Its mission in Geneva rejected what it called the commission’s “second defamatory advocacy report.” “Israel dismisses this libelous sham,” the mission said in a statement, adding that “every child deserves protection” and that the report ignored “the brutal tactics of Hamas.”
A rebuttal shared by the Israeli mission said Israel “consistently strives to minimize harm to children even in situations of conflict” and rejected the suggestion that it deliberately targets children “in the strongest terms.”
Beyond the killing, the commission documented other violations against children: systematic mistreatment in detention, including forced stripping, beatings, and food deprivation; attacks on healthcare and reproductive facilities that impacted newborn survival; increased miscarriages; and near-universal psychological trauma. The report found that nearly all children in Gaza require psychological support.
In the West Bank, the commission documented a sharp increase in settler violence against Palestinian children and torture during mass arrests, including sexual and gender-based violence.
The accusation is damning. A UN body with a mandate from the international community has found that a member state is committing genocide specifically by targeting children. That finding does not carry binding legal force. Only the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice can issue binding genocide determinations. But it carries moral and political weight that the international community cannot simply ignore.
The question that follows from the report is not whether the accusation is serious. It is whether the institutions that exist to prevent genocide have any answer to it. The UN commission has done its job. It has investigated, documented, and reported. What happens next is up to the member states that created the commission and the legal bodies that are meant to enforce the treaties Israel is accused of violating.
- George, 1ban.news