UN independent report says Israel targeted children in Gaza, committing genocide

A United Nations inquiry accused Israeli authorities and security forces of deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, concluding that the alleged conduct amounted to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. 

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel released the report June 23. The findings build on the panel’s September 2025 conclusion that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and that senior Israeli officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, incited those acts. 

Findings on Gaza: ‘Children have been deliberately targeted and killed’

The commission said Palestinian children have suffered “unprecedented death, injury, and trauma” during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which began after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel. The panel said the harm has continued after a ceasefire took effect in October 2025.

“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the commission, said in a press release accompanying the report. “Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”

According to the commission, children accounted for about 30% of those killed in Gaza between Oct. 7, 2023, and Oct. 7, 2025. The report said more than 20,000 Palestinian children were killed and about 44,000 were wounded during that period.

The commission said Israeli security forces continued attacking residential areas despite rising child casualties and despite knowing children were present in the areas being targeted. Citing that finding, the commission accused Israeli forces of treating Gaza’s civilian population as collectively associated with Hamas.

“The Commission has reasonable grounds to conclude that these acts form part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children,” the report stated.

The commission documented alleged cases of children being “deliberately” shot in “vital organs” by “precise weapons.” The report also said the commission investigated and documented allegations of sexual violence against Palestinian children in detention.

The report said attacks on health care facilities and hospitals have severely weakened maternal and newborn care, contributing to higher newborn mortality and more miscarriages. According to data cited in the report, birth rates in Gaza in the first half of 2025 were 41% lower than in the same period in 2022. 

Israel’s mission in Geneva rejected the report, calling it a “libelous sham” and accusing the commission of ignoring the “brutal tactics of Hamas,” according to a statement cited by Reuters. 

Israel said it “consistently strives to minimize harm to children even in situations of conflict” and rejects allegations that it deliberately targets children, the outlet reported. 

Findings in the West Bank: Settler violence

The commission also reported a sharp increase in Israeli settler violence against Palestinian children in the West Bank and documented allegations of torture against Palestinian children. It said Palestinian children, particularly boys, faced systematic mistreatment in detention, including forced stripping, beatings, and food deprivation.

Israel said the report’s findings on the West Bank omitted the “constant terrorist threat” facing Israeli security forces, according to the statement cited by Reuters.

The commission’s findings echoed concerns raised days earlier by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who published a June 18 column sharply criticizing Israeli policies in the West Bank and accusing the government of enabling organized settler violence against Palestinians. 

Contrary to the Israeli statement in response to the commission’s report, Olmert wrote that, in the West Bank, “I do not hesitate to assign direct and immediate responsibility to the government for war crimes and ethnic cleansing directed against hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have no involvement in terrorism, directly or indirectly.”

According to Olmert, the State of Israel is “conducting an organized, systematic, state-funded campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” in areas of the West Bank that are “under the exclusive security control of the state and its security and law enforcement apparatus.”

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Palestinians in the West Bank have faced increasing attacks by Israeli settlers, as Zeale News previously reported, and Olmert said the thousands of settlers involved in “these crimes” would not be able to act “without the assistance, protection, backing, and funding provided by government agencies at both the local and national levels.” 

Olmert wrote that while some reflexively dismiss criticism of Jewish organizations as antisemitism, antisemitism should “not be confused with condemnation of what the Israeli government is doing.”

“It is time to stop the self-righteousness, the hypocrisy and the charade – and confront the enemies within,” he said.

Church leaders offer support to Holy Land Christians amid humanitarian suffering

The commission’s findings come as Church leaders continue to raise concerns about worsening conditions for civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. 

On June 23, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III concluded a two-day pastoral visit to Gaza. The visit was aimed at supporting Gaza’s civilians who “continue to endure grave humanitarian suffering, fear, loss, and uncertainty,” according to a statement from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. 

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During the visit, Cardinal Pizzaballa made stops focused on education and medical care. He blessed a clinic in the region that officials said was urgently needed because many health care facilities have been damaged or destroyed, as Zeale News previously reported. On June 23, he also visited the Caritas Gaza Medical Center, which provides primary health care and psychosocial support to Gazans.

Cardinal Pizzaballa has also warned of deteriorating conditions in the West Bank, saying in an April 27 pastoral letter that expanding Israeli settlements there are creating the risk of a “permanent occupation” with no rule of law.

Pope Leo XIV in January similarly lamented “an increase in violence in the West Bank against the Palestinian civilian population, which has the right to live in peace in its own land.”

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Report comes amid wider regional tensions

The commission’s findings could also draw attention to Israel’s conduct beyond Gaza as U.S.-Iran peace efforts face pressure from Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon, which Israeli officials have explicitly said is modeled on their Gaza operations. As Zeale News has reported, more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced, and the Israeli military has seized large areas of land in the country.

Recent fighting in the region has tested efforts to de-escalate the Iran war. Though a memorandum signed between the U.S. and Iran June 17 provided for a ceasefire on all fronts, Israel has maintained that it retains the right to act against Hezbollah threats and has indicated that its troops will remain in Lebanon while those threats continue, as Zeale News reported.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu in recent days over his handling of Hezbollah and Lebanon. Trump has taken particular issue with reports of high numbers of civilian deaths in Israel’s strikes in Lebanon, saying in a June 16 meeting in France that Lebanon has “been treated the worst” out of “all countries.” 

"You don't want to knock down an apartment house every time you're looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses," Trump said, as Zeale News reported. "And they're not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you."

As Zeale News has reported, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is among the officials who have vocally rejected U.S. calls for restraint in Lebanon. In a June 19 social media post, Ben-Gvir wrote repeatedly: “All of Lebanon must burn!”

“I told the Prime Minister, even in our private meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep,” Ben-Gvir wrote in the same post. “Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don’t win with measured responses and restraint—you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror.”