Gaza: the record ·
Genocide in Gaza: what the UN inquiry, the courts and rights groups found
A UN Commission of Inquiry, the world's two international courts and the leading human rights organizations, including Israeli ones, have reached findings on Gaza that leave little room for doubt.
The UN Commission of Inquiry
On 16 September 2025, the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. It found reasonable grounds that four of the five acts defined in the Genocide Convention had been carried out: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births.
The commission cited statements by Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the pattern of conduct of Israeli forces as evidence of genocidal intent, and found that top officials had incited genocide.
The International Court of Justice
In South Africa's case under the Genocide Convention, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel on 26 January 2024 to take all measures to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza and to allow humanitarian aid in. On 24 May 2024 it ordered Israel to immediately halt its offensive in Rafah. The case continues.
The International Criminal Court
On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The judges found reasonable grounds that they bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and for the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.
Human rights organizations
In December 2024, Amnesty International concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The same month, Human Rights Watch found that Israel's deliberate deprivation of water amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination and to acts of genocide.
In July 2025, two of Israel's own leading rights groups, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, published reports concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
What NAZA adds
Intent is the hardest element of genocide to prove. In NAZA, the officers who selected the targets describe, in their own words, a system in which the deaths of civilians were known, counted and approved in advance.
Watch NAZA
NAZA is Israeli military slang for collateral damage: the number of civilians an officer is allowed to kill in a strike. In this documentary, 24 Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers, many from the army's most prestigious units, explain how that number was set, approved and exceeded in Gaza. What they describe is not a tragic accident of war but a system: targets tracked to their family homes, families watched for days, strikes approved knowing children were inside.
In cinemas now, and free worldwide on theguardian.com after the cinema run.
