EXCLUSIVE: It's a GENOCIDE, say UN commissioners to Mehdi for the FIRST Time

On Tuesday, in a groundbreaking report, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory officially concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This, of course, comes as the members of the commission are set to soon step down, after announcing their resignations this summer amid the US’s escalating attacks on the UN.

In this exclusive interview, Mehdi speaks with two of the commissioners behind this report: Chair Navi Pillay and commissioner Chris Sidoti, one of Australia’s most prominent human rights lawyers.

In the interview, Pillay – who served as president for the UN’s International Tribunal for Rwanda – immediately draws parallels between Israel’s genocide and the Rwandan genocide.

Chair Navi Pillay: “It’s when I came to the deliberate shooting of the single standing building where the fertility clinic was and the embryos that immediately reminded me of the Rwanda genocide where I was a judge and where they ripped the bellies of pregnant women, pulled out the fetuses because they wanted to kill off the entire Tutsi group,”

Pillay and Sidoti also both point out that unlike the Rwandan genocide, Palestinians in Gaza do not have neighboring countries they can escape to.

Chris Sidoti: “There is nowhere that the people of Gaza can go to escape this slaughter”.

The commissioners also address criticism that their report does not cover Hamas’s war crimes, with Pillay noting that the commission has addressed Hamas’s war crimes in previous reports.

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