The inquiry erases context, twists language, launders enemy claims into fact, whitewashes the crimes of Hamas, and stretches legal definitions until self-defense itself becomes a crime
September 18, 2025 11:21
Accusing a nation of genocide is the gravest charge in international law, meant to place it alongside the perpetrators of the Holocaust and Rwanda. It is supposed to rest on evidence so overwhelming that no other explanation is possible. Yet in its latest report on Israel, the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry has transformed this accusation into a political weapon, built not on proof but on omission, distortion, and invention.
The trick begins with erasure. Hamas’s massacre of October 7, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and raped and 251 were taken hostage, barely registers. Hamas’ estimated 30,000 fighters, 500 kilometers of tunnels, and more than 10,000 rockets fired into Israel are entirely absent. Even Hamas’ systematic use of human shields, documented by NATO and visible in real time, is ignored. Instead, the report opens as if the war that day began with Israeli attacks, presenting Gaza as a victim without an aggressor. In this narrative, Israel wages war against civilians alone. That is not oversight; it is deliberate rewriting.
Where facts are absent, words are twisted. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s warning to civilians to leave Hamas strongholds is repackaged as genocidal intent because he described Gaza as a “wicked city.” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s reference to Hamas terrorists as “human animals” is presented as proof of intent to kill all Gazans, despite his consistent record of naming Hamas, not Palestinians, as the target. President Isaac Herzog, who in the same breath detailed steps to protect civilians, is branded an inciter of genocide through one isolated sentence. A biblical reference to Amalek, inscribed on Holocaust memorials as a call to remember past evils against the Jewish people, is wrenched into a call for extermination. This is not evidence. It is entrapment by quotation, where every phrase or adjacent word not specifically explained is weaponized into “proof” of intent.
When quotations fall short, numbers are manipulated. The Commission treats Hamas casualty figures as gospel, as though a terrorist organization holding hostages can be trusted. It repeats the baseless claim that 83 percent of the dead are civilians by treating unnamed fighters killed as civilians and citing fringe outlets already debunked. The absurdities pile higher. The accidental destruction of an IVF clinic is solemnly enshrined as evidence that Israel is “preventing births,” though no proof exists that the building was hit by the IDF, deliberately targeted or even that the IDF knew embryos were stored there. When the IDF killed senior Hamas commander Mohammed Sinwar in tunnels beneath the courtyard of the European Hospital, the Commission described it not as a military strike but as evidence of Israel’s genocidal destruction of healthcare. Facts that contradict the narrative, such as Hamas’s own fatality lists showing a majority of combat-age deaths are male, are quietly set aside.
The final distortion is legal. The Commission equates the tragic realities of modern war, such as civilian casualties, displacement, trauma, with genocide. By its standard, the Allies at Normandy or U.S. forces in Mosul would be guilty of extermination as they “knew” civilians would die in these assaults. International law prohibits deliberate or disproportionate targeting of civilians. It does not forbid warfare itself. But in the Commission’s telling, Israel’s very act of defending itself is criminal. War itself becomes evidence of genocide.
These are not the errors of a flawed investigation. They are the methods of a political indictment: erase context, twist language, launder enemy claims into fact, whitewash the crimes of Hamas, and stretch legal definitions until self-defense itself becomes a crime. The outcome is not accountability but propaganda. If every war is genocide, the word ceases to have meaning. If Hamas is written out of the story, the actual genocidal actor faces no scrutiny. And if law can be manipulated in this way, it will fail where it is most needed.
Civilian suffering in Gaza is undeniable, and Israel must weigh its actions against strict standards. But to recast that suffering as genocide through distortion is not a defense of human rights. It is the abandonment of them. The Commission of Inquiry has not revealed the truth. It has built a lie.
Salo Aizenberg is a board member of Honest Reporting
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