UN commission finds Israel deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza

A United Nations commission of inquiry says Israel is continuing to deliberately target and kill Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.

The new report alleges that Israeli authorities and security forces have "deliberately carried out acts inflicting death and severe bodily and mental harm on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children," and that the killings continued after last October's ceasefire in Gaza.

The commission believes it has reasonable grounds to conclude that those acts "form part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children."

Israel's foreign ministry said it "utterly rejects" the commission's report, calling it a "libellous sham" and "a propaganda piece as outrageous as its previous ones." Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, called it a "political blood libel disguised as a UN document."

"Instead of addressing Hamas' crimes, the October 7 massacre, the hostages, and Hamas' cynical use of children and civilians as human shields, the commission has once again chosen to place Israel in the doc," Danon said.

In response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7 2023, which killed around 1,200 people with 251 hostages taken, the Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza.

At least 73,035 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, including more than 21,280 children, according to the territory's health ministry.

The commission's new report says Israel has targeted Palestinian children in Gaza directly by shooting at their vital organs using precision weapons, and by using high-impact weapons in strikes on residential buildings, schools, and displacement camps.

The report also says that children in Gaza and the West Bank, particularly adolescent boys, have been "arrested, tortured, and ill-treated in Israeli prisons and detention facilities." It has documented "incidents of sexual and gender-based violence targeting Palestinian children, often during arrests or in detention."

Israel's attacks on neonatal and paediatric hospitals in Gaza have meanwhile "systematically dismantled children's access to life-sustaining care, undermining their survival as a protected group," according to the report.