ECAJ statement on the UN Human Rights Council report on war in Gaza.

The ECAJ has strong­ly con­demned the report of the so-called “Inde­pen­dent Inter­na­tion­al Com­mis­sion of Inquiry on the Occu­pied Pales­tin­ian Ter­ri­to­ry, includ­ing East Jerusalem, and Israel”, dis­miss­ing it as lack­ing any sem­blance of legal rigour or moral author­i­ty.

“The report is a col­lec­tion of alle­ga­tions, reports and opin­ions that have nev­er been test­ed in any court of law”, said ECAJ Pres­i­dent Daniel Aghion. “No wit­ness­es have been sworn, exam­ined and cross-exam­ined, and no con­trary or excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence has been con­sid­ered in any kind of judi­cial process.”

“Accord­ing­ly, con­trary to the asser­tions made in the report, the evi­dence of alleged geno­ci­dal intent is any­thing but ‘con­clu­sive’, and is far from the ‘only rea­son­able infer­ence that could be drawn’.”

“Civil­ian deaths in war, even on a large scale, espe­cial­ly in Gaza where Hamas delib­er­ate­ly uses civil­ians a human shields, is not “geno­cide” unless cer­tain oth­er cri­te­ria are met. The report refers only to ‘rea­son­able grounds’ for con­clud­ing that those cri­te­ria have been sat­is­fied. This is far below the evi­den­tiary stan­dard for a find­ing of geno­cide or any oth­er crime, which requires an impar­tial court to decide that each of the ele­ments of the crime have been proved beyond rea­son­able doubt.”

“There is abun­dant evi­dence that, even when it is mil­i­tar­i­ly dis­ad­van­ta­geous for it to do so, Israel in con­duct­ing a war of self-defence (a fact omit­ted from the report), has moved Pales­tini­ans out of harm’s way before an attack, giv­en advance warn­ings of strikes at spe­cif­ic loca­tions, set up human­i­tar­i­an cor­ri­dors, and facil­i­tat­ed the flow of aid in a way that pre­vents Hamas from steal­ing it, all of which points in the oppo­site direc­tion of a geno­ci­dal intent”, Mr Aghion said.

“The pre­sump­tion of inno­cence used to be a bedrock prin­ci­ple of fair­ness, but the con­cept that one is inno­cent until a court has found one guilty has been abro­gat­ed as far as Israel is con­cerned.”

“A legal opin­ion even from an emi­nent expert or untest­ed “find­ings” by human rights organ­i­sa­tions are not the same thing as a con­clu­sive­ly estab­lished find­ing by a court after a fair tri­al.”

“Legal opin­ions often vary great­ly and fre­quent­ly reflect the polit­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal views of those giv­ing them. This par­tic­u­lar Com­mis­sion of Inquiry con­sists of three indi­vid­u­als who have a long pri­or record of antipa­thy and prej­u­dice towards Israel, and have not even pre­tend­ed to be impar­tial.”

“In the case of the cur­rent con­flict in Gaza, the only geno­ci­dal intent that has been open­ly con­fessed to has been the geno­cide of Israelis by Hamas on Octo­ber 7, 2023: YouTube video; MEMRI video. And see a peer-reviewed analy­sis here. Yet the UN seems inca­pable of using the word “geno­cide” in asso­ci­a­tion with Hamas.”

“The alle­ga­tion that Israel has com­mit­ted geno­cide is cur­rent­ly before the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) in the South Africa v. Israel case. The ICJ has not expressed any con­clu­sion, or even any pre­lim­i­nary or pro­vi­sion­al con­clu­sion about this ques­tion, let alone a find­ing beyond rea­son­able doubt, because it has not begun hear­ing evi­dence. It has heard sub­mis­sions from lawyers, but sub­mis­sions from lawyers are not evi­dence.”

“There con­tin­ue to be reports in the media uncrit­i­cal­ly repeat­ing the false claim that in its Pro­vi­sion­al Mea­sures inter­im rul­ing on 26 Jan­u­ary 2024, the ICJ found that Israel had com­mit­ted ‘plau­si­ble geno­cide’. This false­hood has been firm­ly debunked by Judge Joan Donoghue who, as ICJ Pres­i­dent at the time, deliv­ered the Pro­vi­sion­al Mea­sures rul­ing in this case. Judge Donoghue said in a BBC inter­view “I’m cor­rect­ing what’s often said in the media – it [the ICJ] didn’t decide that the claim of geno­cide was plau­si­ble”. Instead, she explained, the ICJ held that it was plau­si­ble to claim that Pales­tini­ans in the Gaza Strip, like all nation­al, eth­nic, racial or reli­gious groups, have the right to be pro­tect­ed from acts of geno­cide.”

(Source: For­mer head of ICJ explains rul­ing on geno­cide case against Israel brought by S Africa (bbc.com), dat­ed 26 April 2024.)

“Judge Donoghue con­firmed that the ICJ had made it clear that it was not pre­judg­ing, even on an inter­im basis, whether any acts have in fact been com­mit­ted with geno­ci­dal intent, and will only con­sid­er this ques­tion in the tri­al phase. Until the full tri­al takes place and a deter­mi­na­tion is reached, any alle­ga­tion that the ICJ has made even a pre­lim­i­nary find­ing that geno­cide has occurred is com­plete­ly false.”

(Source: “The Court is not called upon, for the pur­pos­es of its deci­sion on the request for the indi­ca­tion of pro­vi­sion­al mea­sures, to estab­lish the exis­tence of breach­es of oblig­a­tions under the Geno­cide Con­ven­tion”, see para­graph 62, page 19, Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice Pro­vi­sion­al Mea­sures Order, avail­able at: Order of 26 Jan­u­ary 2024 (icj-cij.org), dat­ed 26 Jan­u­ary 2024; and Bri­an Doc­tor KC, Unherd, The flaws in the geno­cide case against Israel – UnHerd, dat­ed 1 March 2024.)

Mr Aghion also referred to a 311 page study into the war in Gaza released on 2 Sep­tem­ber 2025 by the Begin-Sadat Cen­tre for Strate­gic Stud­ies (BESA), an inde­pen­dent non­par­ti­san think-tank in Israel. The study based its find­ings not on opin­ions but on sta­tis­ti­cal facts via a foren­sic exam­i­na­tion of IDF tac­tics, casu­al­ty fig­ures, food truck deliv­er­ies and UN reports. The study con­clud­ed defin­i­tive­ly that there is no evi­dence of a sys­tem­at­ic Israeli pol­i­cy of tar­get­ing or mas­sacring civil­ians and no evi­dence that aer­i­al bomb­ing was a part of a geno­ci­dal pol­i­cy of killing inno­cent Pales­tini­ans.

“Although this study is also not a court deci­sion, it should give any fair-mind­ed per­son pause, and demon­strate why ques­tions of crim­i­nal guilt should be decid­ed by impar­tial courts rather than so-called Com­mis­sions of Inquiry with a bare­ly-dis­guised polit­i­cal agen­da.”

“This flawed report must not be used as a spring­board for intro­duc­ing the long list of sanc­tions against Israel and oth­er actions which it calls for, in an attempt to iso­late Israel and effec­tive­ly reward Hamas with vic­to­ry.”