Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

“The mur­der of Pales­tin­ian chil­dren num­ber 21,280,” states a re­port of the In­de­pen­dent Unit­ed Na­tions Com­mis­sion of In­quiry in­to the killings by Is­rael in Gaza; the re­port was re­leased over the last week. An ad­di­tion­al 55000 chil­dren are said by the Save the Chil­dren group to be un­der the rub­ble that Gaza has been re­duced to; the find­ings of the re­port are re­veal­ing and in­struc­tive.

“The Com­mis­sion found that much of the harm suf­fered by Pales­tin­ian chil­dren was not in­ci­den­tal, but in­tend­ed to de­stroy the ex­is­tence of the Pales­tini­ans in Gaza as a group.” The dri­ving mo­tive? “Since chil­dren em­body the bi­o­log­i­cal and so­cial con­ti­nu­ity of the group, the Com­mis­sion has rea­son­able grounds to con­clude that these acts form part of a de­lib­er­ate strat­e­gy to de­stroy the fu­ture of the Pales­tini­ans in Gaza by tar­get­ing their chil­dren.”

The Is­rael De­fence Force has “de­lib­er­ate­ly car­ried out the acts of in­flict­ing death and se­vere bod­i­ly and men­tal harm on hun­dreds of thou­sands of Pales­tin­ian chil­dren,” states the re­port as list­ed above.

“The Com­mis­sion found that Pales­tin­ian chil­dren in Gaza have been ex­plic­it­ly de­pict­ed as ‘ter­ror­ists’ by Is­raeli of­fi­cials in their speech­es, state­ments and rhetoric in the Is­raeli Knes­set, me­dia, and so­cial me­dia.” If you have the pow­er of pro­pa­gan­da, you are then able to de­fine the world.

“On 9 Oc­to­ber 2023, a mem­ber of the Knes­set (Is­rael’s Par­lia­ment) and deputy speak­er of the Knes­set, Nis­sim Va­turi, post­ed on so­cial me­dia: ‘Erase Gaza. Noth­ing else will sat­is­fy us. It is not ac­cept­able that we main­tain a ter­ror­ist au­thor­i­ty next to Is­rael. Do not leave a child there; ex­pel all the re­main­ing ones at the end, so that they will not have a res­ur­rec­tion.”’On Jan­u­ary 30, 2025, he again said: “Gaza is full of ter­ror­ists and every child born there is al­ready a ter­ror­ist, from the mo­ment of his birth.”

As a means of be­ing able to ap­pre­ci­ate the in­hu­man­i­ty of such killings in re­al time and of re­cent vin­tage, read­ers should rec­ol­lect the Feb­ru­ary 2026 bomb­ing at­tack on a chil­dren’s school in south­ern Iran, in which 175 chil­dren and their teach­ers were killed. US War (De­fense) Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth has main­tained the in­ci­dent is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion; Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is non-com­mit­tal, but as usu­al, not ac­cept­ing blame for any neg­a­tive hap­pen­ing. The bombs which hit the school were Amer­i­can-made, with on­ly a few oth­er coun­tries hav­ing such killing hard­ware.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the UN Com­mis­sion did not spare the ac­tions of Hamas in its killing of chil­dren, which ini­ti­at­ed the war in 2023 in south­ern Is­rael; the re­port states that it was re­spon­si­ble for killing 40 chil­dren, with sev­er­al hun­dred oth­ers in­jured.

Al­most need­less to state, Is­rael’s Gov­ern­ment de­nies the find­ings and con­clu­sions of the UN Com­mis­sion’s re­port; but that is to be ex­pect­ed, as to ac­cept it would be to hand a ba­sis to the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court of Jus­tice to con­clude on the mat­ter brought by South Africa to the court for geno­cide.

Be­low is a block of the find­ings and state­ments by the UN Com­mis­sion with­out any in­put from this colum­nist.

“Un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law, the Oc­cu­pied Pales­tin­ian Ter­ri­to­ry, in­clud­ing the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, re­mains sub­ject to bel­liger­ent oc­cu­pa­tion by Is­rael, to which in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an law ap­plies con­cur­rent­ly with in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights law.

“The Com­mis­sion finds that Gaza con­tin­ues to be un­der Is­raeli oc­cu­pa­tion be­cause of, in­ter alia, Is­rael’s con­trol over the en­clave’s air­space, ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters and land bor­der cross­ings, as well as the re-es­tab­lish­ment of an Is­raeli mil­i­tary pres­ence and con­trol on the ground in Gaza since Oc­to­ber 2023.”

In its de­fence re­gard­ing the mur­der­ous crimes, the Is­raeli Gov­ern­ment re­spond­ed in the man­ner it al­ways has when am­ple ev­i­dence has been as­sem­bled against it in such cir­cum­stances.

“Dur­ing its re­view by the UN Com­mit­tee on the Rights of the Child (UN Com­mit­tee) in Sep­tem­ber 2024, Is­rael main­tained its long­stand­ing po­si­tion that it does not have le­gal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty un­der the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child (CRC) for Pales­tin­ian chil­dren in the Oc­cu­pied Pales­tin­ian Ter­ri­to­ry, in­clud­ing Gaza.”

To that claim of not hav­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for such killings and se­ri­ous in­jury, the UN Com­mis­sion re­minds that “Cus­tom­ary in­ter­na­tion­al law recog­nis­es that chil­dren in armed con­flict are en­ti­tled to spe­cial pro­tec­tion, in­clud­ing pri­or­i­ty ac­cess to re­lief, safe­guards in evac­u­a­tion and fam­i­ly re­uni­fi­ca­tion, and pro­hibits their re­cruit­ment or use in hos­til­i­ties. To­geth­er with treaty law, it re­quires Is­rael to treat Pales­tin­ian chil­dren as a par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­tect­ed group whose spe­cif­ic needs must guide all se­cu­ri­ty, ad­min­is­tra­tive and mil­i­tary de­ci­sions.”

As all those who have watched the bomb­ing of Gaza by the IDF, the slaugh­ter of chil­dren in schools, hos­pi­tals, in their homes, in their play ar­eas by the IDF sol­diers, such per­sons with an open mind must sure­ly be per­suad­ed that the killings have been de­lib­er­ate.

But like its bene­fac­tor and some­times war as­so­ciate, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, such le­gal­i­ties are not ap­plic­a­ble to Is­rael; its lead­ers and its sol­diers op­er­ate by their own rules. The con­tents of the UN re­port are re­veal­ing of the ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ty by Is­rael.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.