Gaza Tribunal finds Israel guilty of genocide, urges global action to end impunity

By Iftikhar Gilani

ISTANBUL, Türkiye (MNTV) — In a historic gathering at Istanbul University, the Gaza Tribunal — a global civil society initiative inspired by the moral legacy of the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam — delivered its final “Statement of Findings and Moral Judgment.”

The tribunal, after a year of hearings on Sunday, declared that Israel is perpetrating an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Richard Falk, former UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, presided over the initiative.

The sessions were held in London and Sarajevo, and finally, the four-day intense deliberations at Istanbul, the Tribunal came out with a sweeping indictment of Israel’s conduct and a call for action that its organizers say cannot wait.

The verdict is moral, not legal, but the jury insists that conscience should lead when states and institutions fail to enforce the law.

Reading the statement before an audience of jurists, academics, human rights advocates, and journalists, Christine Chinkin, professor and founding director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said: “When law is silenced by power, conscience must become the final tribunal.”  She chaired the Jury of Conscience.

The panel framed its work as an answer to impunity, arguing that civil society has both the responsibility and the opportunity to stop a genocide still unfolding in real time.

A civil society court for a silenced world

Formed in the United Kingdom in November 2024, the Gaza Tribunal grew from a simple premise. If formal mechanisms are blocked or weakened, ordinary people can gather evidence, hear witnesses, apply public international law norms, and deliver a judgment that galvanizes action.

The Tribunal’s structure was unusually detailed for a civic initiative. A Steering Committee set direction and cadence. Three chambers did the analytical heavy lifting: International Law; International Relations and World Order; and History, Ethics, and Philosophy. An Advisory Policy Council and administrative units supported logistics, outreach, and documentation. The Jury of Conscience, composed of respected figures with moral authority from different disciplines, weighed the record and issued the final judgment.

The design borrowed from the Russell Tribunal model, which placed public truth-seeking at the center of global conversation during the Vietnam War. Organizers say the precedent of the anti-apartheid struggle — when a sustained civil society campaign helped isolate South Africa — informed their decision to create a standing forum that could collect and preserve evidence, connect movements across borders, and insist on accountability.

The Tribunal held its first general meeting from October 31 to November 1, 2024, in London and then in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in May 2025, where participants reviewed chamber reports, heard testimonies, and debated a draft declaration.

Sarajevo mattered symbolically. It is a city that carries the memory of siege and atrocity, and it helped situate the Gaza record within a global history of mass violence and the failure to prevent it. The process culminated in Istanbul, where final testimonies and expert presentations were heard across four days before the Jury of Conscience delivered its moral judgment.

Richard Falk said the Tribunal’s record is an archive for future courts, scholars, and citizens, meant to outlast news cycles and partisan politics.

How the jury reached its decision

The Jury of Conscience said it evaluated a large body of oral and written evidence anchored in standards drawn from the Genocide Convention, international human rights treaties, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The inquiry focused on two questions at the core of genocide analysis.

First, whether prohibited acts occurred, including killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group’s physical destruction, imposing measures intended to prevent births, and forcibly transferring children. Second, whether those acts were carried out with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the protected group.

Members explained their approach in plain terms. They were not a court and could not assign individual criminal liability. They were not bound by strict rules of evidence and procedure.

They were, however, bound by a duty to reason publicly, to show their sources, and to test claims by reference to established legal definitions and patterns of state behavior. The judgment’s language reflects that balance. It enumerates categories of crimes. It links them to known legal concepts. It draws a distinction between humanitarian catastrophe and what it describes as an exterminatory policy.

The jury also addressed the larger context. It argued that the assault on Gaza is part of a longer settler-colonial project sustained by a system of apartheid against Palestinians. This framing is controversial in some capitals, but it matches the vocabulary used by many human rights organizations and legal scholars over the past decade.

The jury’s view is that a chronic structure of domination has enabled and normalized acute episodes of mass violence, and that without tackling that structure, temporary ceasefires and reconstruction schemes risk rewarding impunity.

A verdict born of testimony and trauma

The Tribunal said it took testimony from survivors, health workers, educators, journalists, jurists, and technical experts. They described life under bombardment, the collapse of hospitals, the destruction of schools and universities, and the systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure.

Several witnesses focused on the mechanics of starvation. They spoke about the destruction of bakeries and farms, about blocked food convoys, about contaminated water and sewage systems, and about rules that made aid delivery slow, sporadic, and dangerous.

Others detailed what they called the “scholasticide” of Gaza. They remembered classrooms reduced to rubble, libraries burned, principals killed with their families, and cohorts of students scattered by repeated displacements. Veterans of Gaza’s education sector emphasized how the killing of teachers severs the continuity of culture and language, produces fear across generations, and shrinks possibilities long after a ceasefire.

Health professionals described improvised surgeries, amputations without anesthesia, neonatal wards with failing power, and cancer patients unable to reach care. One clinician spoke about triage choices that would be unimaginable in normal settings. Another explained the mental health toll, using the language of collective trauma, complex grief, and multi-year recovery horizons.

Journalists and media workers testified to patterns of risk. They mapped incidents across time and districts, arguing that the statistics could not be dismissed as random. Staff from documentation platforms explained archiving protocols, metadata preservation, and chain-of-custody techniques used to make evidence usable for future legal processes.

The Tribunal organized these accounts into named categories that aim to capture the whole of a society under assault.

• Starvation and famine as deliberate policy through denial of food and water and the destruction of supply chains.
• Domicide as the intentional destruction of homes and basic utilities, which destroys memory and community as well as shelter.
• Ecocide as the ruin of land and water that makes recovery nearly impossible after the bombing stops.
• Reprocide as the targeting of reproductive health and conditions for safe childbirth, which prevents births and endangers infants and mothers.
• Scholasticide as the killing and displacement of students and educators and the demolition of educational institutions.
• Attacks on journalists as an effort to erase documentation and testimony.
• Torture, sexual violence, disappearances, and gender-based abuse across multiple settings.
• Politicide as the targeting of political and civic leadership and the destruction of institutions that hold social life together.

The jury said these elements do not stand alone. They combine into what it called a “coherent and consistent pattern of exterminatory violence.” The record, in its view, shows methods that go beyond the defeat of armed groups and instead punish and dismantle the civilian population.

Complicity and political economy of genocide

The judgment goes further than attributing responsibility to a single state. It describes a broader network that makes violence sustainable. It argues that Western governments, particularly the United States, have provided diplomatic cover, weaponry, spare parts, training, and intelligence that enable the assault. The jury called this a moral failure and a breach of the duty to prevent genocide. It framed silence and inaction as forms of complicity.

The statement also addresses non-state actors. It criticizes parts of the media for biased coverage that normalizes destruction and narrows public debate. It examines university investments and research partnerships that tie academic institutions to arms and surveillance industries. It looks at global supply chains that keep the machinery of war running. It names the role of technology companies in hosting data, modeling targets, filtering content, and shaping attention through algorithms.

Organizers described this network as the “political economy of genocide,” a phrase intended to capture how profits, contracts, and influence link faraway boardrooms to front-line suffering. The jury says this is not a conspiracy theory. It is a structural description. It calls for transparent audits, divestment, sanctions, and trade controls that match the gravity of the crimes alleged.

The United Nations system also came into focus. The jury argues that the Security Council’s veto power has paralyzed the body at key moments, making the UN promise to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” ring hollow. Yet the Tribunal distinguished between paralysis at the Council and important work elsewhere.

It commended special procedures at the Human Rights Council, including the Commission of Inquiry and the mandate led by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. It noted that these mechanisms have documented violations with rigor despite political pressure.

Inside the Istanbul sessions

The four-day final session at Istanbul University combined hearings with public programming designed to widen participation. The Honor Hall hosted exhibitions and documentary screenings. A memorial wall invited written messages and prayers.

 Public lectures examined the responsibilities of intellectuals in times of mass atrocity.

Testimony moved through themes. Thursday consolidated findings from Sarajevo and earlier forums across the three chambers. Friday centered on hunger, ecocide, domicide, and the destruction of public systems, especially health care and education.

 Saturday turned to complicity, international systems, resistance, and solidarity, taking evidence from activists, jurists, and former officials. Sunday closed with a roundtable and the delivery of the final judgment.

Statements from public figures punctuated the proceedings. Indian author Arundhati Roy called it a live-stream genocide. American actress Marcia Cross described families erased in minutes and hospitals rendered inoperable. Islamic scholar Omer Suleiman urged persistence in recording and speaking.

English musician Roger Waters argued that civic voice is a duty, not a choice. The point, according to organizers, was not celebrity. It was reach, so that a social record can travel beyond traditional policy circles.

Witness Eye, a journalist-led initiative, delivered a digital archive of testimonies from more than 100 people, explaining how its team preserves metadata and stores files redundantly to mitigate the loss of evidence. MAZLUMDER, a Turkish human rights group, submitted field reports and reminded those present that an eyewitness record becomes the backbone of future accountability.

The International Jurists Union outlined a stack of 13 reports covering the killing of journalists, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, arrests, abuse of the dead, and the collapse of oncology care. Speakers framed their submissions as a duty to history.

Richard Falk’s critique of the peace on offer

In his presentation, Richard Falk argued that the current diplomatic framework rewards perpetrators and punishes victims. He said ceasefire deals have been shaped as bargains between Israel and the United States, allowing Washington to claim credit for ending active hostilities while protecting Israeli freedom of action.

He warned that the arrangements envision external control over reconstruction funds and governance, a model he called a colonial framing. He also said that the UN structure was designed after World War II to protect the interests of the five permanent powers, and that this design creates an enforcement gap that is visible in Gaza.

Falk placed the Gaza struggle within what he called a “legitimacy war,” the contest over moral and legal narratives that often determines outcomes when military asymmetry makes conventional victory impossible for the colonized. He argued that the Tribunal contributes to that contest by consolidating a comprehensive record and by presenting a judgment that can be cited across movements and jurisdictions.

The Jury of Conscience affirmed that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and that this crime is inseparable from a broader regime of apartheid against Palestinians. It said the campaign is high-tech, highly visible, and prosecuted against a captive population in a sealed territory.

It noted that orders and advisory opinions by international courts have been defied with impunity, and that rather than sanction perpetrators, some governments have sanctioned those who pursue accountability.

The judgment calls for steps that range from the immediate to the strategic.

• Hold perpetrators, enablers, and complicit actors accountable across political, military, economic, and ideological lines.
• Suspend Israel from international organizations, including the United Nations, until compliance with international law is verifiable.
• Activate the Uniting for Peace mechanism in the UN General Assembly so that a protective international force can be mandated for Palestinians when the Security Council fails to act.
• Reaffirm the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and support their steadfastness on the land, resisting displacement.
• Build a coordinated global movement that targets the pillars of the system sustaining the crimes across politics, law, economics, academia, technology, culture, and sport.
• Clarify that the struggle is with Zionism as a racist and supremacist structure, not with Jews or Judaism, and that the horizon is a single rights-based political order grounded in equality, decolonization, restitution, and the unfettered right of return.

Tribunal organizers say the record will be sent to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and national parliaments.

They plan briefings with lawmakers and municipal bodies, outreach to trade unions and professional associations, and a series of campus presentations focused on academic complicity and divestment. They speak of a rolling program of public hearings in cities across the world to translate the judgment into practical campaigns.

What “Uniting for Peace” would mean in practice

The judgment’s call to activate the Uniting for Peace resolution is not rhetorical. It refers to Resolution 377 A(V), adopted in 1950 to allow the General Assembly to recommend collective measures when the Security Council is blocked by veto. In past crises, the Assembly has used the mechanism to call emergency special sessions, to recommend sanctions, and to authorize peacekeeping contributions.

The Tribunal wants states to treat Gaza as a test of whether the UN can still mobilize when the Council is frozen.

Supporters argue that a General Assembly mandate could create political cover for states willing to provide a protective presence, organize air and sea corridors for aid, and enforce basic rules on access to food, water, health care, and rebuilding.

Experts say the Assembly cannot compel action and that the politics are not favorable. The Tribunal’s position is that even a non-binding mandate would shift the cost of inaction, create a normative baseline, and strengthen domestic constituencies that push governments to do more.

Organizers are clear about what the Gaza Tribunal is not. It is not a courtroom. It cannot issue arrest warrants. It cannot compel discovery. Its power is reputation and reach. The jury acknowledges the risk that opponents will question its impartiality. Members respond that neutrality is not the point. Conscience is.

They argue that the record speaks for itself, that the definitions used are those accepted in international law, and that the judgment is an appeal to institutions that have the authority to act.

The Tribunal’s defenders point to the role of past people’s tribunals in changing public opinion. The Russell Tribunal’s reports did not end the Vietnam War, but they helped set the terms of the debate. Anti-apartheid trials and hearings did not topple the regime, but they helped create a climate in which sanctions became thinkable.

The Gaza Tribunal hopes to do the same. It wants to raise the political cost of complicity, to widen the circle of those who say the word genocide, and to standardize a set of demands that can be carried into legislatures and courts.

The moral judgment endorses and extends the Sarajevo Declaration adopted in May 2025. That document framed Gaza within a century of displacement and dispossession and called for a single rights-based political order.

The Istanbul Statement, read at the close of the final session, calls the present moment a historic darkness and a watershed for the world. It warns that if perpetrators and their enablers escape justice, a new frontier of impunity will be normalized. It rejects reconstruction formulas that exclude Palestinians from decision-making and that impose external control over their political future.

The Istanbul Statement also commits the Tribunal to continue documenting, archiving, and pressing institutions. It pledges support for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, for public protests, for criminal prosecutions where jurisdiction allows, and for the amplification of voices from Gaza and the diaspora. It ends with a line that the Jury of Conscience repeated: silence is not neutral. Silence is complicity.

A different kind of outcome

For many in the hall, the outcome was not just the words on paper. It was the network created, the evidence assembled, the survivors heard, and the promise to keep going.

 The Gaza Tribunal has made itself a node in a broader civic infrastructure, one that connects lawyers to archivists, journalists to medics, teachers to students, and artists to campaigners. That infrastructure is how past movements made the leap from statement to strategy.

The Tribunal’s next steps are practical. File the record with courts and UN bodies. Publish the archive in multiple languages. Convene working groups with unions, professional associations, and municipal councils. Train organizers on the legal arguments behind sanctions and divestment.

Coordinate legal filings in jurisdictions with universal jurisdiction statutes. Work with faith communities on sanctuary and relief. Engage tech workers on platform responsibility and cloud contracts. Track procurement by universities and city governments. Push for parliamentary debates tied to concrete votes.

None of this depends on agreement among states. It depends on persistence. It depends on the power of a thorough record and a clear set of demands. That is the lesson drawn from anti-apartheid history and from other movements that turned moral clarity into policy change.

Scene as the judgment was read

When Chinkin concluded the Jury’s statement, the room was still. Some in the audience had followed the Tribunal for a year. Others were students from Istanbul University who had dropped in between classes. Cameras whirred.

Translators in booths moved sentence by sentence into Turkish, Arabic, English, French, and Bosnian. On a side table, a stack of paper copies waited for distribution to media and delegates.

After the applause, Richard Falk returned to the podium. He dedicated the Tribunal to Palestinians everywhere, including those exiled for generations. He said the record would stand even if governments shied away. He asked people to carry the conclusions out of the room and into institutions that make decisions. He ended on a note of resolve. The struggle for legitimacy, he said, is won by those who keep telling the truth with patience.

Outside, as the crowd filtered into the courtyard, posters from the exhibition caught the late afternoon light. A section of the “Wall of Hope” was dense with handwriting. A teacher from Istanbul had written that she would assign the judgment as reading in her class. A young medic scribbled a pledge to volunteer with a relief mission. A student drew a kite and the word “steadfastness.”

The Tribunal’s organizers say that is the point. To turn witness into will. To turn a year of hearings into a decade of work. To make a people’s record into a people’s movement.

As the Gaza Tribunal closed its final session in Istanbul, the message that carried beyond the hall was simple and demanding. Genocide must be named and stopped. Impunity must be challenged. When states fail, people must act. The archive is ready. The judgment is delivered. The work now moves to the world.