ECAJ slams UN genocide report as lacking ‘legal rigour’
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'
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’.”
The commission announced it had concluded that Israel has carried out four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention: “Killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.”
Commission chair Navi Pillay said: “The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza. It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”
The report accused Israel’s leadership — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and former defence minister Yoav Gallant — of having “incited the commission of genocide”.
Aghion argued that civilian deaths in war, even on a large scale, did not constitute genocide unless certain criteria were met, noting the report only referred to “reasonable grounds” for concluding those criteria had 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,” he said.
“There is abundant evidence that, even when it is militarily disadvantageous for it to do so, Israel in conducting a war of self-defence 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.”
Aghion said this “points in the opposite direction of a genocidal intent”.
He criticised the commission’s composition, noting it consisted of “three individuals who have a long prior record of antipathy and prejudice towards Israel, and have not even pretended to be impartial”.
Aghion pointed to a recent 311-page study by the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies that “concluded definitively that there is no evidence of a systematic Israeli policy of targeting or massacring civilians”.
The ECAJ president also referenced former International Court of Justice president Joan Donoghue’s clarification that the ICJ had not found genocide claims against Israel to be “plausible”, despite media reports to the contrary.
“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,” Aghion said.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry immediately rejected the report, saying it came from “Hamas proxies, notorious for their openly antisemitic position”.
“The report relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others,” the ministry wrote. “These fabrications have already been thoroughly debunked, including in an independent, in-depth academic study by BESA (Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies), which refuted every single false claim regarding genocide.”
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught in Israel, in which terrorists murdered some 1200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages amid horrific instances of brutality and sexual violence.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 64,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
Israel vehemently rejects allegations that it has committed crimes against humanity amid the ongoing offensive in Gaza. It says it seeks to minimise civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Ariela Karmel, Luke Tress, Times of Israel Staff and Agencies contributed to this report.
WITH TIMES OF ISRAEL