The 26 October press release came from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry established by the UN Human Rights Council on 27 May 2021, the perpetual Israel-only inquiry Navi Pillay chaired. “Independent” is letterhead. The Council created an open-ended political investigation after the May 2021 Hamas war, with no expiry, and named as chair a jurist who had already signed a petition titled “Sanction Apartheid Israel.” Its current chair, Srinivasan Muralidhar, delivered the line with the Commission’s October report, A/81/430. The mandate is the same.
A Council inquiry, not a court
This wording presents war crimes, “extermination,” rape and “genocide” as established. The record does not. The Commission’s terms of reference adopt “reasonable grounds”: the test for issuing an arrest warrant, not for proving guilt or the responsibility of a State. UN Watch and UK Lawyers for Israel record that the report never states that standard. Chris Sidoti, a sitting commissioner, told a Melbourne audience on 8 October that the panel is “not a court” and “not even prosecutors,” and called “reasonable grounds” “not a high standard.” UN Watch and UK Lawyers for Israel tested the report against its footnotes. More than 70 statements carry no source at all; 40 of those are statements on which a finding depends. Israeli accounts are “claimed” or “alleged.” Complainants are reported as fact.
In its 26 January 2024 order the International Court of Justice said it was not then required to ascertain whether Israel had violated the Genocide Convention; that finding could come only at the merits. Provisional measures are not a merits judgment. The Commission’s recommendations set those orders beside a genocide finding the Court has never made.
What they left off the page
October 7 opened this war. Hamas-led terrorists murdered about 1,200 people and abducted 251. JNS recorded Hamas named twice in the report, neither time as the author of that massacre. The Jerusalem Post counted the same two mentions, neither accusing Hamas of a crime. UN Watch’s joint rebuttal records the rest of the deletion: the 251 hostages, Hamas fighting from hospitals and among civilians, the UN’s own findings of sexual violence by Hamas-led terrorists on 7 October, and continuing attacks by Hamas and other armed groups. Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the document “a propaganda document detached from reality, aimed at undermining Israel’s right to self-defense, delegitimizing the Jewish state, and legitimizing jihadist terrorism against its citizens.” Israel’s mission in Geneva called the report “yet another manifestation of its misinformation campaign to demonize the State of Israel and portray its very existence as criminal.”
They used a Human Rights Council pamphlet and a present-tense press line as a substitute for a conviction.