How convenient. Just a week before the Prime Minister visits New York to address the UN General Assembly and recognise Palestine, a United Nations report has been published claiming that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. No doubt it is intended to be used to justify the establishment of the state of Palestine.

But here’s what’s incredible about this one-eyed work of bias. The report ‘only examines the violations committed in Gaza since October 2023 within the framework of state responsibility for genocide.’

What this means, in plain English, is that it only examines Israel’s actions in Gaza, not those of Hamas, which has ruled Gaza with an iron fist ever since it seized control in the bloody battle of Gaza in 2007.

In the spirit of fairness that characterises everything the UN does in relation to Israel, the report magnanimously states that the fact that it refuses to look at any actions of Hamas in Gaza, or indeed in Israel, before or after 7 October 2023, ‘does not foreclose the possibility of future analysis by the commission, under the same legal framework of genocide, of violations committed on 7-8 October 2023 in southern Israel against Israelis.’

So, there you have it. This commission looks at Israel’s actions in Gaza since October 2023 without looking at any actions of Hamas in southern Israel against Israelis, or indeed any actions of Hamas in Gaza. It’s absurd.

This is like examining British conduct in the second world war but stating that you will not look at Germany’s invasion of Poland or, indeed, German conduct between 1933 and 1945, although you may look at it someday.

And with Germany conveniently out of the picture, you will look at Britain’s conduct as if it has been conducted in peacetime, not in the middle of a total war launched by a genocidal aggressor seeking world domination.

This is not a legal report; it is a travesty of justice. Under international humanitarian law, assessing war crimes or genocide requires looking at both sides of a conflict.

What threat was faced? Who initiated hostilities? Was civilian infrastructure militarised? Was force proportionate to the military objective?

The Commission erases Hamas’s massacre in Israel from the frame, along with its rocket fire, terror tunnels, and the billions of dollars it receives from Iran and Qatar, so that it can present Israel’s actions as unprovoked, genocidal violence against civilians rather than a just war waged against a relentless foe hiding among civilians and posing an existential threat.

It is farcical. Take the destruction of Gaza’s only fertility/IVF clinic, which, according to the commission, demonstrates intent to destroy the Palestinian population by preventing births. Of course, the report does not bother to investigate whether Hamas had tunnels, command centres, or weapons stored under or near the clinic because it refuses to look at any actions of Hamas. Yet, international humanitarian law specifies that if a medical facility is used for military purposes such as shielding fighters, weapons storage, or tunnel access, it can lose its protected status.

The report also provides zero evidence that the clinic was deliberately targeted by Israel.

Indeed, in his Reuters interview, Dr Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, the founder and director of the clinic, confirmed the embryos were lost but admitted he did not know if the clinic was intentionally targeted or struck incidentally. So how did the commission know? As far as one can tell, the report simply assumes Israeli criminal intent.

The treatment of the Israeli hostages is even more obscene. The report omits the fact that Hamas took Israeli hostages and erases the fact that it continues to starve and imprison them. Instead, it accuses Israel of holding Palestinians hostage.

When it comes to proving genocide, the specific intent to destroy a protected group is the central and extremely high bar. The report fails on this threshold alone. It never proves genocidal intent. Rather, it relies on the tortured parsing of statements, selective quotations and conjecture.

Indeed, the whole evidentiary base relies on the Orwellian Gaza Ministry of Health

and its instant inflated statistics, which are uncritically accepted, and backed up by

NGOs that have aligned themselves with Hamas. It ignores Israel’s claims that at least 9,000 of those killed are militants and turns a blind eye to Hamas’s war crimes. Thus, there is no acknowledgment that Hamas uses hospitals, schools, and civilian infrastructure for its military bases and weapons depots. There is no analysis of how this affects proportionality and turns civilians into human shields, or recognition that it is not evidence that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians. The mental health impacts of war, the difficulty in accessing medical care, and the displacement of civilians fleeing fighting are depicted as evidence of genocide rather than the inevitable outcome of urban conflict, particularly fighting a belligerent that flouts the laws of war.

The Commission misuses legal standards, applying the standard that there are

‘reasonable grounds to conclude’ rather than the higher standards required for genocide.

Naturally, Palestinian dissent within Gaza against Hamas and the persecution of anyone who does not support Hamas for whatever reason is ignored.

Calls for international sanctions and obligations on third states to act against Israel, while exempting Hamas and its backers – Qatar and Iran – from accountability are despicable.

In short, this report is legally flawed, methodologically biased, and politically motivated. It weaponises the Genocide Convention against Israel while absolving Hamas of any responsibility, thereby distorting facts on the ground, making a mockery of international law and burying the truth under bias and betrayal.

This report should embarrass the United Nations. It is a double embarrassment for Australia because one of the three commissioners is Australian. Disgracefully, it is safe to say that those operating within the UN bubble are beyond embarrassment.

But when the UN uses this warped logic to twist the Genocide Convention into a weapon against the world’s only Jewish state, it is not promoting the rule of law, it is perverting justice.

This report will delight and embolden the billionaire antisemites in Qatar and Iran. As for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they must recognise that they will not find it at the UN.