Israel has called for a new UN report accusing it of genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children, to be rejected, describing it as a biased framing, unsubstantiated and outrageous.
The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
The same Commission that concluded last year that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip, further found that the intense scale and systematic nature of Israel’s military operations have continued – resulting in unprecedented death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children.
The title of the report: The essence of childhood has been destroyed”: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023, found that between that date and the 7 of October 2025, 20 179 children were killed and 44 143 were injured as a direct result of hostilities in Gaza.
Chair of the Commission, Srinivasan Muralidhar says, “Children are being killed mainly in two ways. One, through airstrikes using high-yield explosives with wide area effects. And second, using quadcopters, drones, and sniper rifles that specifically target and kill children. To their head and upper body.”
The report refers to the period following Hamas’ attack on Israel in late 2023, which resulted in 1 200 deaths and the capture of 250 hostages, resulting in the subsequent war in Gaza that has to date killed more than 70 000 Palestinians in the territory; as the Commission documented cases demonstrating what it viewed as a consistent pattern of children being deliberately targeted by Israeli forces.
Chris Sidoti serves as a Commissioner of the Inquiry.
“A 14-year-old boy was shot by an Israeli military patrol as he was leaving his house. The patrol had been in the area, but at the time there had been no fighting taking place. He was shot, badly injured and was lying on the ground. He was surrounded by a company of Israeli soldiers who were chatting and probably some of them smoking over a period of 45 minutes, while this 14-year-old boy bled to death. His mother was watching from the house that he’d just left. So, as the mother sought to leave the house to go to the child to rescue him or attend to him, she was shot at by the Israeli military patrol.”
Or this incident relayed by Commissioner Sidoti.
“Five teenagers, a girl, and four boys, all aged 16 or 17, went early that Saturday morning to Zikim Beach. Presumably they were having an early morning at the beach, going there maybe to swim, at least enjoying themselves. When a Hamas boat arrived at the beach and gunfire commenced, the five teenagers fled to a toilet block seeking safety there. They were joined by an adult fisherman and also by an Israeli soldier who sought to defend them. Unsuccessfully. The soldier was killed, the fisherman was killed, and all five children. A girl, four boys were killed.”
In a lengthy rebuttal of the report, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the Commission of evidentiary selectivity, arguing that it neglected to discuss the many significant steps taken by Israel to mitigate harm to civilians including children, and that it consistently strives to minimize harm to children even in situations of conflict.
It contends that the suggestion that Israel deliberately targeted children was libelous and rejected it in the strongest terms.
It further objected to what it viewed as the report’s one-sided framing of the conflict and the impact of Hamas and other Palestinian groups on Palestinian children.
A separate UN Children and Armed Conflict report verified over 38 000 grave violations against children in different theatres of conflict in 2025, affecting over 24 000 children including in the DRC, Nigeria, Myanmar and Somalia- representing the highest number affected since the beginning of the mandate 30 years ago.
Vanessa Frazier is the Secretary General’s Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict.
“For the first time, Government forces are the main perpetrators of grave violations against children overall, and specifically the killing and maiming of children, attacks on schools and hospitals and the denial of humanitarian access. That is not a marginal development. That is a profound and deeply troubling shift. When States become the main violators of the rights of children, this signals a dramatic disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law, and an erosion of the principle that States bears the primary responsibility to protect their populations, including children. This erosion signals a dangerous collapse in our collective humanity; one that future generations will judge us for.”
With calls for the international community to uphold their international legal obligations.
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