ECAJ slams UN genocide report as lacking ‘legal rigour’

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has strongly condemned a UN Human Rights Council report accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, dismissing it as lacking “any semblance of legal rigour or moral authority”.

The report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry accused Israel of committing four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

ECAJ president Daniel Aghion said the report was “a collection of allegations, reports and opinions that have never been tested in any court of law”.

“No witnesses have been sworn, examined and cross-examined, and no contrary or exculpatory evidence has been considered in any kind of judicial process,” Aghion said.

“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’.”