UN genocide report puts Starmer in the dock

This week, the UN commission of inquiry concluded on reasonable grounds that “the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit [acts] of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.

The acts include killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

UN member states are consequently urged to employ all means reasonably available to them to prevent genocide in Gaza, including the cessation of arms transfers and the facilitation of legal investigations into Israel’s actions.

The commission of inquiry was set up four years ago by the UN human rights council, and is staffed by three independent experts. While it does not speak officially for the UN, it strongly reinforces the growing consensus around the genocidal nature of Israel’s war.

So what are the implications for Britain?

Perhaps most significantly, the commission flatly rejects the UK government’s argument that the duty to prevent genocide is only triggered when an international court has established that a genocide has taken place.

“Since at least January 2024, when the International Court of Justice ordered its first provisional measures, all states… have been on notice of a serious risk that genocide was being or would be committed”, the report notes.

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The UK government, in other words, has misconstrued its obligations under the Geneva Convention to prevent and punish genocide. Indeed, how is it possible to prevent genocide if you wait until it has taken place?

The report also notes how “Israeli security forces shot at and killed civilians, including children who were holding makeshift white flags”. Days before, a Dutch newspaper found that at least 114 Palestinian children had been hit with single gunshot wounds to the head or chest.

The UK government is clearly aware this is occurring, but it has covered up its own evidence on Israel’s killing of minors.

In June, the government’s lawyers refused to submit a research report to court on “Long-Range Shootings or Shootings of Minors”. Subsequent requests from MPs and the media for the report have been repeatedly refused.

And then there’s the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, who was welcomed to London last week by prime minister Keir Starmer.

The report found that Herzog, alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, “incited the commission of genocide and that Israeli authorities… failed to take action against them to punish this incitement”.

These are serious findings, and they require a serious response from the UK government. Yet ministers, unsurprisingly, have largely shied away from talking about the report – perhaps unwilling to incriminate themselves further.

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