Israel, Palestine accuse each other of ‘genocide’ at UN
Online desk: Israeli and Palestinian representatives at the United Nations on Monday traded accusations of “genocide” over the war raging in Gaza, with both sides demanding an international response.
Israel’s war against Hamas was repeatedly mentioned during an event at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, reports AFP.
“The attacks by Hamas on October 7 were motivated by a genocidal ideology,” Yeela Cytrin, a legal advisor at the Israeli mission in Geneva, told the diplomats gathered at the UN’s European headquarters.
Palestinian representative Dima Asfour meanwhile insisted to the council that the “man-made catastrophe” resulting from Israel’s massive bombing campaign and ground offensive was “a textbook case of genocide”.
Israel has responded with heavy bombardments and a ground offensive that have killed more than 15,500 people in Gaza, about 70 percent of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The genocide convention, signed on December 9, 1948, was the first human rights treaty in the history of the UN, adopted even before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It was adopted after World War II, highlighting the horrors of the Holocaust and emphasising humanity’s obligation to prevent and punish all such genocidal acts.
