Israel's 'deliberate targeting' of children part of ongoing Gaza genocide: UN probe

Israel is deliberately targeting Palestinian children in what has become a key factor in an ongoing “genocide” in Gaza, United Nations investigators charged on Tuesday, in a report slammed by Israel. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry said it had found evidence that “Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces”. This, it said, was a key factor in establishing “the genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the larger Palestinian group in Gaza”. The three-member investigative team, which does not speak for the UN itself, first determined in a report last September that Israel had committed “genocide” during its assault in Gaza — a finding Israel flatly rejected. In Tuesday’s follow-up report, they said the intense scale and systematic nature of Israeli military operations had continued, resulting in the “unprecedented” death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children. There were “reasonable grounds” to conclude that Israel’s authorities and security forces “have continued to commit the crime of genocide” in Gaza, they said. Israel, which has long been harshly critical of the commission, slammed the report as “defamatory” and a “libellous sham”. It accused the investigators of ignoring “the brutal tactics of Hamas”. Childhood ‘erased’ in Gaza The commission, which was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, examined for its latest report crimes affecting Palestinian children, and how living conditions imposed by Israel in Gaza were “resulting in preventable mortality of children”. “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip, and war crimes in the West Bank,” the team said in a statement. The commission said that severe physical and mental injuries, mass trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacements, starvation and