United Nations investigators on Tuesday accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza in a bid to “destroy the Palestinians,” blaming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials for incitement.

The report was immediately rejected by Israel as “distorted and false,” with Jerusalem noting its authors’ history of vehemently anti-Israeli positions.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) does not speak on behalf of the UN, and has faced harsh Israeli criticism. While it is not a legal body, its reports can influence diplomatic pressure and serve to gather evidence for later use by courts.

The commission announced it had concluded that Israel has carried out four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “Killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.”

The UN itself has not labeled the situation in Gaza a genocide, although the body’s aid chief urged world leaders in May to “act decisively to prevent genocide,” while its rights chief last week denounced Israel’s “genocidal rhetoric.”

Tuesday’s report was published after a two-year investigation by the commission following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, terror onslaught, to which it only made a fleeting reference, while not including any details on the attack that caused the war in Gaza.

According to the Commission, explicit statements by Israeli “civilian and military authorities,” as well as a “pattern of conduct” by the military, “indicate that the genocidal acts were committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a group.”

“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, chair of the commission. “It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”

The report accused Israel’s leadership — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and former defense minister Yoav Gallant — of having “incited the commission of genocide.”

The authors of the report, released just as the Israel Defense Forces began a major ground offensive in Gaza City, additionally accused Israel of numerous crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, including starvation, mass killing, systemic sexual and gender-based violence, and the direct targeting of children, among other things.

“The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons,” stated Pillay.

“The international community cannot stay silent on the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” insisted Pillay, presenting her final report.

“The absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity,” she warned.

The commission urged Israel to “end the genocide in Gaza” and called on UN member states to halt arms transfers to Israel and to prosecute individuals or corporations under their jurisdiction complicit in genocide.

The Foreign Ministry immediately hit back at the report, which it said came from “Hamas proxies, notorious for their openly antisemitic position.”

“The report relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others,” the ministry wrote in a statement on X.

“These fabrications have already been thoroughly debunked, including in an independent, in-depth academic study by BESA (Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies), which refuted every single false claim regarding genocide,” the ministry said.

“Needless to say, the three authors made no attempt to address the clear findings of the BESA study,” it said. “Israel categorically rejects this distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of this Commission of Inquiry.”

Israel has refused to cooperate with the commission, and has not granted it entry into Israel or access to Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and Gaza.

Pillay told AFP the commission was also cooperating with prosecutors for the International Criminal Court, which litigates acts committed by individuals. “We’ve shared thousands of pieces of information with them,” she said.

Last year, the separate International Court of Justice, which prosecutes nations, ordered Israel to prevent acts of “genocide” in Gaza.

The ICC later issued warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on suspicion of ordering war crimes during Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, massacre.

ICC warrants were also issued against three Hamas leaders, all of whom have since been killed by Israel.

Pillay, a South African jurist, was the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014, during which time she frequently criticized Israel’s actions.

In 2014, over 100 members of US Congress signed a letter to Pillay decrying the UNHRC’s bias against Israel under her leadership, saying the council “simply cannot be taken seriously as a human rights organization” while it was probing Israel but not Hamas.

She chaired the commission of inquiry, which Jewish groups, Israel, the US and other countries have condemned for its alleged bias, until she and its other two members resigned in July.

During her time chairing the commission, it released multiple reports bearing similar accusations of genocide, violations of human rights, and sexual and gender-based violence against Israel.

The commission overwhelmingly blames Israel for the war with Hamas and accuses the Jewish state of other misdeeds, such as stealing natural resources.

Miloon Kothari, another member of the commission who resigned alongside Pillay, caused a firestorm of controversy in 2022 when he said that social media was “controlled largely by the Jewish lobby,” a common antisemitic trope, and questioned why Israel was allowed in the UN.

Pillay defended the comment, saying it was intentionally taken out of context.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught in Israel, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages amid horrific instances of brutality and sexual violence.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 64,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel vehemently rejects allegations that it has committed crimes against humanity amid the ongoing offensive in Gaza, which began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel.

It says it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Luke Tress contributed to this report.