Geneva, Switzerland — The UN rights chief accused Israeli officials on Monday of using overt “genocidal rhetoric” about Gaza and called for decisive international action to “end the carnage”.
In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council that was criticized by Israel, Volker Turk said the occupied Palestinian territory was already “a graveyard”.
He accused Israel of inflicting “indescribable suffering and wholesale destruction”.
“I am horrified by the open use of genocidal rhetoric and the disgraceful dehumanization of Palestinians by senior Israeli officials.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights did not provide examples, but his spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told AFP that “shocking and dehumanizing language” has been used by a number of high-level officials, stressing that “this is not a case of one senior official mouthing off”.
A number of countries have sanctioned far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has urged “total extermination” in Gaza, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has called for opening the “gates of hell on Gaza (to) encourage Gazans to emigrate”.
Shamdasani also pointed to Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman’s assertion in March that the “only solution for the Gaza Strip is to empty it of Gazans”.
And Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu said during a radio interview in July that “the government is racing to have Gaza erased”.
‘End the carnage’
Turk stressed that nearly two years after the war erupted following Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel, “the region is crying out for peace”.
The Israeli army bombed a Gaza City residential tower block on Sunday — the third in as many days — and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the military was “deepening” its assault on the Gaza Strip’s key urban center.
The UN estimates nearly one million people remain in and around Gaza City, where it officially declared a famine last month.
“Further militarization, occupation, annexation and oppression will only feed more violence, retribution and terror,” Turk warned.
He insisted Israel had “a legal obligation to take the steps ordered by the International Court of Justice to prevent acts of genocide, punish incitement to genocide and ensure enough aid reaches Palestinians in Gaza”.
The UN rights chief said the international community was “failing the people of Gaza.
“Where are the decisive steps to prevent genocide,” he asked.
Israel, which disengaged from the council earlier this year, was not in the room during Turk’s presentation but reacted angrily.
Turk “is led by the anti-Israel activism that plagues his office”, Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Daniel Meron, said on X, charging that Turk “continues to spread libelous rhetoric and undermines the security of the Jewish State”.
