The UN’s Gaza Genocide Report Summarized

I have read the 70 page document and given you most of the facts.

Today, on September nineteenth, the US blocked a resolution in the United Nations for a ceasefire for the 6th time.

I have read through the 70 page document detailing the findings of the UN commission, which has declared that the state of Israel is committing Genocide against the Palestinian people. Few people are going to read through the findings of a 70 page legal document, so I have endeavoured to provide it in simple English using subheadings for people to share, show and discuss with people. Please use this as a resource. All of this is sourced from the UN legal findings in the Human Rights Council published on the 16th of September, 2025. The information is extremely intense, and uncomfortable to read.

I have not included many of the disturbing stories and attempted to remain in the numbers. Still, I have included some stories to emphasize their findings. The commission gives many more stories and examples of these violent actions.

In regards to their stories around rape and sexual violence, I would not necessarily encourage anyone to read it. Simply keep this in mind– the details are horrifying, traumatic, and disturbing. I personally find it harder to read than other subjects. I have nonetheless detailed it, so please read with caution, and take care of yourself.

Importantly, there is a legal obligation on the part of nation states who are aware of a genocide to intervene if this is occurring. There has been no attempt at intervention from any western nation state. Bluster and words are the most that these states, including Canada, can muster. Although the UN has declared that what is occurring in Gaza has met the legal threshold of a genocide, not a single western Prime Minister, President, Chancellor, etc… has declared it a genocide.

It should also be noted that the commission only studied information from October 7th onwards, and did not study anything beforehand. Although there has clearly been intent for a genocide and an apartheid for generations, the focus of this commission is only from Oct 7th onwards. Keep that in mind, they did not weigh in on the facts before that date.

Here is the summary.

Introduction

The Commission of Inquiry’s report examines only the violations committed in Gaza since October 2023 and concludes that Israeli security forces have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes, including extermination, torture, rape, sexual violence and other inhumane acts, inhuman treatment, forcible transfer, persecution based on gender, and starvation as a method of warfare. The Commission further finds that Israeli authorities destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group by imposing measures intended to prevent births, and deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians as a group. Both are identified as underlying acts of genocide. The legal framing is explicit: genocide concerns acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. Citing the International Court of Justice’s recognition in the Barcelona Traction case of erga omnes obligations, the Commission emphasizes that all states have an obligation to prevent and punish genocide wherever it occurs and that the duty to prevent arises when a state is put on notice of information suggesting a risk of genocidal acts and has the capacity and means to prevent them.

Death Toll & Injuries

The human toll is stark. As of publication, 65,062 are dead and 165,697 injured. Within the report’s principal window—from 7 October 2023 to 31 July 2025— 60,199 Palestinians were killed. As of 15 July 2025, at least 46 percent of Palestinians killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023 were women and children, out of 58,380 verified deaths at that time. The war’s demographic impact is captured in a single metric: life expectancy in Gaza dropped from 75.5 years for the year before October 2023 to 40.5 years during the first 12 months of war—a decrease of 34.9 years, or 46.3 percent.

This calculation does not include indirect deaths due to inability to access healthcare or malnutrition; the Commission notes life expectancy would be lower if such information were included.

The Gaza Strip’s context aggravates civilian vulnerability: approximately 2.3 million residents live within 360 square kilometres, around 6,300 persons per square kilometre, placing it among the most densely populated areas on earth.

The Commission documents Israeli military operations targeting locations in densely populated civilian areas, including high-rise buildings and residential apartment blocks. Entire city blocks and neighbourhoods were levelled under sustained bombardment. On many occasions, apartment towers were destroyed, killing almost all civilians inside. Between 7 October 2023 and 30 July 2024, Israel carried out 498 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza; these direct attacks killed 747 people, including children, and the report concludes that hospitals were struck while civilians, including pregnant women and children, were receiving treatment or shelter. As of 15 April 2025, 1,400 healthcare workers had been killed, and 180 ambulances had been attacked. By mid-2025, only 36 percent of health facilities remained functional, all partially except for a single field hospital that was fully functional. The compound burden of injury is reflected in amputation statistics: by the end of 2024 there were 4,500 amputation cases attributable to the air and ground campaign, including an estimated 800 children and 540 women. Medical professionals told the Commission that from the very beginning of hostilities, half of patients on surgical lists were children.

UNICEF reported that by the end of November 2023 around 1,000 children had one or more limbs amputated, and many amputations were performed without anaesthesia. A doctor explained that a child amputee will need between eight and twelve surgeries before adulthood just to allow for growth.

Infrastructural Damage

The physical destruction of the built environment is corroborated by satellite-based assessments and damage surveys. UNOSAT reported on 13 December 2024 a total of 170,812 affected structures: 60,368 destroyed, 20,050 severely damaged, 56,292 moderately damaged, and 34,102 possibly damaged. Other assessments estimated 258,201 damaged housing units in total, alongside 70,436 destroyed structures and 18,588 severely damaged structures out of a total of 174,486 damaged structures. Cultural devastation is similarly extensive: 110 cultural and religious sites were damaged or destroyed since 7 October 2023, including 13 religious sites, 77 buildings of historical and artistic interest, three depositories of movable cultural property, nine monuments, one museum, and seven archaeological sites. The World Bank assessed in February 2025 that 53 percent of heritage sites in Gaza were damaged or destroyed. Educational infrastructure suffered catastrophic harm: 396 of 564 school buildings were directly hit and sustained damage, 80 schools were fully destroyed, and 66 lost at least half their structures. In a previous report covering 7 October 2023 to 25 February 2025, the Commission recorded 403 of 564 school buildings directly hit. The discrepancy reflects differing cut-off dates rather than a contradiction in trend.

Targeted Killings

The Commission describes a campaign that treated journalists, medics, children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities as presumptively targetable. By 3 March 2025, at least 170 journalists and media workers had been killed due to Israeli military operations, with killings even occurring during ceasefire periods contrary to their terms and without warning.

On 23 March 2025, first responders came under extended gunfire; given the duration and the identification of the victims as Palestinians, the Commission finds it reasonable to conclude intent to kill. The report also records statements by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich describing attacks as part of a gradual process planned since early March 2025.

Displacement and Detention

Displacement reached near-total proportions. Israeli military operations resulted in more than 1.9 million people—about 90 percent of Gaza’s population—being displaced from October 2023 to 25 June 2025. Calls by Israeli authorities for “migration” or “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza, including explicit calls for forced displacement, accompanied the ongoing offensive.

The Commission details a widespread pattern of abuse in detention. Numerous reports describe detainees stripped, transported naked, blindfolded, kicked, beaten, sexually assaulted, and threatened with disappearance or death. One released detainee recounted being told by a soldier, “I will kill you and can make you disappear. You will not see the sun, and nobody will know where you are.” Another explained how detainees were beaten during transfers, including a case where a detainee’s jaw was punched so hard that several teeth were broken.

Sexual Violence

The Commission verified more than 20 cases of sexual and gender-based violence affecting male and female detainees across more than 10 military and Israel Prison Service facilities. Sexual violence was used as punishment and intimidation from arrest through detention, including during interrogations and searches. Men reported beats and kicks to their genitals, often while naked, as well as rape and assault with objects such as sticks, broomsticks, and vegetables, and burns from an electrical probe to the anus. Women described sexual assault and harassment in military and prison facilities, threats to their lives and of rape, repeated prolonged invasive strip-searches before and after interrogations, and beatings mixed with sexual insults. Female detainees were photographed without consent in degrading circumstances, including in underwear in front of male soldiers, with some images posted on social media.

Basic Necessities & Famine

The report characterizes the siege on Gaza as instrumentalization of basic necessities, beginning as early as 9 October 2023. On 7 October 2023, the then–Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy, and Water, Israel Katz, ordered the cessation of electricity supply to Gaza. The siege was framed as retribution: “a complete siege… no electricity, no water, no food, no fuel. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.”

By December 2023, OCHA called the situation “apocalyptic.”

Starvation as a method of warfare is a core finding. The threshold for famine was passed in most areas, and malnutrition reached famine levels in Gaza City. Even before October 2023, the “Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Line” document calculated caloric intake to keep Palestinians on the brink of famine—an administrative apparatus that, in the Commission’s assessment, made starvation a policy tool.

Sanitation & Reproduction

Humanitarian aid was extremely restricted and requests for access repeatedly denied. Water shortages compounded sanitation collapse in camps and shelters, where damaged sewage systems and staffing shortfalls left approximately 400,000 kilograms of waste piling up daily, fuelling disease outbreaks including Hepatitis A.

Conditions for childbirth were unsafe: hospitals lacked specialized personnel, medication, and equipment; pain management and infection control were stymied by shortages of epidurals, hypertension medication, anaesthesia, and antibiotics. As of 19 May 2025, almost 11,000 pregnant women were at risk of famine. As of April 2024, severe starvation, dehydration, and acute malnutrition had caused at least 28 child deaths—25 of them under one year old—with the caveat that these figures reflect only those who reached hospitals. Overall, the Commission estimates that about 545,000 women and girls of reproductive age were affected by attacks on facilities providing sexual and reproductive health services. The Al-Basma IVF clinic was directly struck by a tank shell on a date identified in the record; five liquid nitrogen tanks exploded, destroying all reproductive material stored for future conception. The clinic sustained the most damage among neighbouring buildings, indicating it was the principal target.

Culpability and Conclusions

Against this backdrop, the Commission reiterates earlier determinations of willful killing and expands its findings. Israeli security forces used wide-impact munitions with knowledge that they would cause large numbers of civilian deaths, and killings were conducted on a large scale over a significant period and across a widespread geographical area. The victims were not targeted as discrete individuals but collectively “due to their identity as Palestinians.”

Accordingly, the Commission concludes that Israeli authorities committed the crime against humanity of extermination in Gaza. It also finds that Israeli security forces intended to target and attack Palestinian civilians—including children, women, persons with disabilities, and older persons—during evacuation, within designated safe zones, and in shelters, with foreseeability that civilians would be present in residential buildings, UNRWA schools, medical facilities, and other purported safe areas. The Commission finds deliberate targeting and killing of Palestinian medical personnel and aid workers. It concludes Israeli authorities knew the high civilian toll since 7 October 2023 yet did not intervene to change means and methods of warfare.

On genocide specifically, the Commission concludes on reasonable grounds that Israeli authorities and security forces have committed and are continuing to commit the actus reus of genocide—killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. On incitement to genocide, the Commission concludes that President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and then–Defence Minister Yoav Gallant directly and publicly incited the commission of genocide, and that Israeli authorities failed to take action to punish this incitement. Statements by other leaders, including Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have not been fully assessed and should be examined to determine whether they constitute incitement. On genocidal intent, the Commission identifies “fully conclusive evidence” in the statements of Israeli authorities, and determines that circumstantial evidence from the overall pattern of conduct makes genocidal intent “the only reasonable inference.” The conclusion is that Israeli authorities and security forces have had and continue to have the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The State of Israel, therefore, bears responsibility for failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide, and failure to punish genocide.

Recommendations

The recommendations follow the gravity of these determinations. To Israel, the Commission urges an immediate end to the commission of genocide in Gaza; full compliance with the ICJ’s provisional measures of 26 January, 28 March, and 24 May 2024; implementation of a complete and permanent ceasefire; an end to military operations in the occupied Palestinian territory that involve genocidal acts; restoration and unhindered access for all UN staff, including UNRWA international staff, and all international humanitarian agencies; an immediate end to starvation policy and to the distribution of food aid through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation; full, unimpeded aid at scale through multiple distribution points across Gaza, including food, clean water, medical equipment, and medicine, through a UN-led response; unhindered medical evacuations to third states; unhindered access for emergency medical teams; access for the Commission to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, to continue investigations; and credible investigations to punish genocide and incitement to genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza.

To all UN Member States, the Commission recommends employing all means reasonably available to prevent genocide in Gaza; ceasing the transfer of arms and other items, including jet fuel, to Israel or to third states where there is reason to suspect their use in operations involving or likely to involve genocide; ensuring that individuals and corporations within their jurisdiction are not involved in committing, aiding, or inciting genocide, and investigating and prosecuting those implicated; facilitating investigations and domestic proceedings and taking action, including sanctions, against Israel and against individuals or corporations involved in or facilitating genocide or incitement; and cooperating with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

To the ICC Prosecutor, the Commission recommends examining the crime of genocide within the Palestine situation for amendment to existing arrest warrants and inclusion in future applications, and examining the involvement of the officials identified in the report for inclusion among those most responsible for international crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The cumulative picture is unambiguous. Since 7 October 2023, the hostilities have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, including entire extended families across generations; devastated homes, hospitals, schools, cultural heritage, and basic infrastructure; displaced more than 1.9 million people; destroyed reproductive material and capacity; starved civilians; and used detention abuse and sexual violence as tools of punishment and intimidation. The Commission’s assessment holds that genocidal intent is evidenced directly in official statements and circumstantially in the sustained pattern of conduct, and that the legal duties owed erga omnes now require states to act—to prevent further destruction, ensure humanitarian access, and pursue accountability, including halting material support that could facilitate the commission of genocide and cooperating with international investigations and prosecutions.