An independent UN commission yesterday said that Israeli attacks on schools, religious and cultural sites in Gaza amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of seeking to exterminate Palestinians.
“Israel has obliterated Gaza’s education system and destroyed over half of all religious and cultural sites in the Gaza Strip,” the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a report.
It accused Israeli forces of committing “war crimes, including directing attacks against civilians and willful killing, in their attacks on educational facilities that caused civilian casualties.”
Photo: Reuters
“In killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites, Israeli security forces committed the crime against humanity of extermination,” the report said. “While the destruction of cultural property, including educational facilities, was not in itself a genocidal act, evidence of such conduct may nevertheless infer genocidal intent to destroy a protected group.”
Commission Chair Navi Pillay in a statement accompanying the report said: “We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza.”
“Children in Gaza have lost their childhood,” the senior South African judge said. “They are forced to worry about survival amid attacks, uncertainty, starvation and subhuman living conditions.”
The three-member commission said Israeli attacks “targeted religious sites that served as places of refuge, killing hundreds of people, including women and children.”
The commission was set up by the UN to investigate violations of humanitarian and human rights law in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher last month urged the UN Security Council to take action “to prevent genocide” in Gaza.
Israel has denied committing genocide.
Fletcher demanded that Israel lift its aid blockade on Gaza, where the UN says the entire population of more than 2 million people is at risk of famine.
“For those killed and those whose voices are silenced: what more evidence do you need now?” Fletcher said on May 14. “Will you act — decisively — to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law?”
The UN commission’s report paid special attention to Gaza, but also focused on Israeli attacks on civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories as a whole, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel itself.
It said Israel had “done little” to prevent or prosecute Jewish settlers in the West Bank who “intentionally targeted educational facilities and students to terrorize [Palestinian] communities and force them to leave their homes.”
The report said that Israeli authorities had intimidated and, in some cases, detained Israeli and Palestinian teachers and students who “expressed concern or solidarity with the civilian population in Gaza.”
The commission is to present its findings to the UN Commission on Human Rights on Tuesday next week.
TAIWAN IS TAIWAN: US Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment was not controversial, as ‘Taiwan is not — nor has it ever been — part of Communist China’ The US House of Representatives on Friday passed an amendment banning the US Department of Defense from creating, buying or displaying any map that shows Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The “Honest Maps” amendment was approved in a voice vote on Friday as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 fiscal year. The amendment prohibits using any funds from the act to create, buy or display maps that show Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Wuciou (烏坵), Green Island (綠島) or Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) as part of the PRC. The act includes US$831.5 billion in
‘WORLD WAR III’: Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said the aid would inflame tensions, but her amendment was rejected 421 votes against six The US House of Representatives on Friday passed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal 2026, which includes US$500 million for Taiwan. The bill, which totals US$831.5 billion in discretionary spending, passed in a 221-209 vote. According to the bill, the funds for Taiwan would be administered by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency and would remain available through Sept. 30, 2027, for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative. The legislation authorizes the US Secretary of Defense, with the agreement of the US Secretary of State, to use the funds to assist Taiwan in procuring defense articles and services, and military training. Republican Representative
Taiwan is hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) for the first time, welcoming more than 400 young linguists from 43 nations to National Taiwan University (NTU). Deputy Minister of Education Chu Chun-chang (朱俊彰) said at the opening ceremony yesterday that language passes down knowledge and culture, and influences the way humankind thinks and understands the world. Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual nation, with Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, 16 indigenous languages and Taiwan Sign Language all used, Chu said. In addition, Taiwan promotes multilingual education, emphasizes the cultural significance of languages and supports the international mother language movement, he said. Taiwan has long participated
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
RSS