Yes, it really IS genocide
If you shoot boys in the genitals, bomb fertility clinics and kill 16,000 children it could be argued that you are trying to wipe out future generations.
Trying to stop births in a population is one of the five marks of genocide according to the Genocide Convention, created by the UN in 1948. You only need to tick one of the boxes to be guilty of genocide. Israel ticks four of the five.
Technically it has not committed the fifth – forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. But it does abduct and lock up in Israeli prisons hundreds of Palestinian children every year.
And there’s ample evidence that its reaction to the Hamas break-out from Gaza in October 2023 bears all the other marks of genocide. Israel has slaughtered many tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, curtailing food and water supplies, destroying health services, decimating the land and continually herding people from one encampment to another.
Even after a ‘ceasefire’ that was supposed to come into effect in November last year, Israeli snipers and drones have murdered over 1,300 more Palestinians. The death toll continues to rise.
1. Killing members of the group
The killing has yet to stop but according to UN figures over 68,000 Palestinians were killed between October 2023 and October 2025. The accepted Gaza Ministry of Health figure is 75,200 but this does not include those uncounted under the rubble.
These figures include more than 16,000 children, more than 1000 of whom were babies. According to a UN report released this year, Israel has deliberately targeted children.
Spokesperson Srinivasan Muralidhar said: “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces.”
The medical journal the Lancet has a much higher figure of those killed. Its latest all-Gaza survey puts the number of deaths at 84,630 per year of the 2023 to 2025 bombardment, making a total of 169,260. Adding more than 1,300 killed since the ‘ceasefire’, the total is 170,380. The UK equivalent would be 4.7 million, like wiping out the combined populations of Glasgow, Bristol and Manchester.
Hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care workers have been killed, detained or tortured according to Healthcare Workers Watch. The UN says 2025 was the worst year on record for deaths of aid workers – half of whom were working in Gaza. Over 200 journalists have been targeted in Gaza according to the Committee to Protect Journalists
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Israel is still restricting the supply of food into Gaza. UNICEF reported in July this year that “1.4 million people – 67% of Gaza’s population – are currently experiencing crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity.” That follows the “man-made mass starvation” confirmed by the World Health Organisation last year.
Gaza now hosts the largest concentration of amputees in the world – including the largest number of child amputees in modern history.
Apart from the bombing and drones intensifying mental harm, almost the whole population has been displaced – many of them multiple times.
The psychological effects of the war on the children of Gaza are staggering. Many have become mute. And according to a report in The Guardian over 96% of children feel that death is imminent and almost half want to die.
And adults suffer too. According to recent research, all adults are suffering severe chronic psychological stress.
3. Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction
Healthcare, water, sanitation, education, transport, and food production, core components of life, have been destroyed.
Most people are forced to live in tents or flimsy plastic shelters. There’s no running water or rubbish collection. Israel destroyed the sewage system. Sewage flows past people’s tents.
Predictably there are epidemics of diarrhoea, dysentery, meningitis and acute respiratory diseases.
The land itself has been targeted too. Before 7 October, farms and orchards covered nearly half of Gaza. More than 90% of farmland has been destroyed. Forensic Architecture (FA) says the destruction was systematic.
“After initial damage from aerial bombardment, ground troops arrived and dismantled greenhouses completely, while tractors, tanks and vehicles uprooted orchards and fields of crops,” said FA spokesperson Samaneh Moafi.
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
In January 2026, 5,210 births were recorded in Gaza; in February, 3,433; in March 3,233; in April 2,004, and in May 1,701 births were recorded. Malnutrition, illnesses and the absence of medical care are the main causes. The fall in the birthrate by two thirds represents the erasure of an entire generation.
A UN commission found that Israel deliberately bombed nine out of ten fertility clinics in Gaza, destroying thousands of embryos and other reproductive material.
Reviewing an attack on a clinic in Gaza City, the commission found that the Israeli authorities knew the medical centre was a fertility clinic and they intended to destroy it.
“Therefore, the Commission concluded that the destruction of the Al-Basma IVF clinic was a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza,” it said.
And British surgeon Professor Nick Maynard told Channel 4 that he and colleagues working at the Nasser hospital had noticed a pattern of teenage boys being shot in the testicles.
