{"id":182701,"date":"2025-10-01T14:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T14:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/182701\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T14:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T14:23:08","slug":"mass-slaughter-in-gaza-stands-apart-from-other-genocides-chris-sidoti-says-people-cannot-escape-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/182701\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass slaughter in Gaza stands apart from other genocides, Chris Sidoti says: \u2018People cannot escape\u2019 | Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe people of Gaza<\/a> have absolutely no way to escape the killing: they are literally a captive population.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Sidoti knows the brutality of conflict too well, his experience investigating international crimes is devastatingly comprehensive. But he sees a categoric difference in the violence in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople cannot escape.\u201d<\/p>\n

A former human rights commissioner and one of Australia\u2019s most experienced international legal experts<\/a>, Sidoti has spent the past four years \u2013 since before the 7 October 2023 attacks \u2013 as a member of the UN independent international commission of inquiry<\/a> on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.<\/p>\n

This month that commission of inquiry issued a report<\/a> stating that the Israeli government and military were committing genocide in Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Half a world away in Sydney, in the lead-up to a speech at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Sidoti considers the genocides that have blighted global history.<\/p>\n

Those fleeing were forced from their homes by some of the most horrific atrocities imaginable, Sidoti says.<\/p>\n

From Rwanda in 1994, Tutsis escaped Hutu mobs to Burundi and Tanzania. As Islamic State rampaged across Syria a decade ago, millions fled to neighbouring Turkey and Lebanon. Minority Rohingya fleeing Myanmar\u2019s military junta in 2017 crossed the Naf River into Bangladesh where hundreds of thousands remain, still, in vast camps.<\/p>\n

Palestinians in Gaza, he says, are trapped. They have nowhere to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael has been conducting this type of campaign from day one: of saturation bombing, mass slaughter, destruction of all infrastructure that can sustain life \u2013 healthcare, education, housing, religious and cultural sites; for significant periods it has amounted to the imposition of mass starvation.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnd all of that is occurring in a context where people have no means of escape. They are literally a captive population. It\u2019s distinguishable from any other conflict, certainly in recent decades and probably in my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sidoti says military operations in Gaza are a \u201cmass slaughter\u201d. In the early weeks of the conflict, he says, more than 300 people were killed every day. With the exception of a brief, fragile ceasefire period, that rate has remained at between 75 and 100 people a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn excess of 65,000 bodies have been firmly identified \u2026 half of them women and kids,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Israelis were serious in talking about the evacuation of parts of Gaza or the evacuation even of women and kids, they would have been letting them into Israel. \u201d<\/p>\n

Sidoti is careful to insist that the 7 October attacks by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad<\/a> were \u201coutrageous, traumatic atrocities\u201d. An earlier report from the commission of inquiry detailed those strikes on Israel<\/a>, establishing that the assaults \u201cconstituted war crimes\u201d.<\/p>\n

Displaced Palestinians return to the war-devastated Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza in January. Photograph: AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

But Sidoti says the response from Israel\u2019s government has been \u201ca betrayal of the people of Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael did fail. The government and the military failed on October 7. The strategy that has been pursued since then has not brought peace and has not destroyed Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sidoti argues that the overwhelming majority of hostages have been released as a result of negotiation, not military action. Meanwhile, Israel\u2019s economy has been drained, funding an expensive conflict and pulling workers from their jobs to fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael is not secure,\u201d he says. \u201cIsraeli prosperity has been compromised. Israeli security has been compromised.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a betrayal that lies very much at the feet of the Israeli government, the Israeli military, because they\u2019re implementing modes of military procedure that have broken down, that constitute crimes under international law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sidoti explains that to establish Israel\u2019s genocidal purpose, the commission relied on both direct and indirect evidence.<\/p>\n

The direct evidence is statements made by Israeli political and military leaders, which the commission concluded were \u201cdirect and public incitement to commit genocide\u201d. The report cites specific comments<\/a> from the former defence minister Yoav Gallant, the president, Isaac Herzog, and the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are statements that have been made by people who are in positions of command in the expectation their orders would be carried out. These statements become clear indicators, direct evidence of genocidal intent.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The indirect evidence is the totality of the Israel Defense Forces\u2019 actions in Gaza \u2013 \u201cmass bombardment, total destruction of infrastructure, high death rates, a strategy that constituted a war crime\u201d \u2013 designed to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinian people of Gaza.<\/p>\n

The threshold for establishing genocide is \u201cvery high\u201d, Sidoti says, \u201chigher than the beyond reasonable doubt\u201d standard of a criminal trial (one of the reasons he says declarations of genocide are so rare).<\/p>\n

Before publishing the report, the commission sent it to the Israeli government seeking its response. It received none.<\/p>\n

After its publication, Israel\u2019s foreign ministry issued a statement<\/a> saying it \u201ccategorically rejects this distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of this Commission of Inquiry\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sidoti says he is under no illusions the Netanyahu government will act on the report. Nor does he hold hope in the UN body charged with ensuring international peace and security.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe security council is totally useless,\u201d he says. \u201cTotally dysfunctional, you\u2019ve got to wonder why it exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The commission\u2019s report, then, is more a call to action for the international community, who have a legal obligation to prevent genocide and bring its perpetrators to justice.<\/p>\n

Palestinians hold out empty pots at a charity kitchen in Gaza City in August, the day after the UN declared a famine. Photograph: AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Sidoti says Australia should end all defence ties with Israel<\/a> and cease trade in anything with potential military application<\/a>, including raw materials, technology or so-called \u201cdual use\u201d material, such as drones.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should also be looking at our responsibilities for the prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide,\u201d he says. \u201cThese are crimes under Australian law. Anybody who is seeking to enter Australia, including Australian citizens, who have served in the IDF in Gaza over the last two years, is under suspicion: in police terms they\u2019re a person of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australia has done \u201cprecious little\u201d, Sidoti says, but has not been especially laggard, rather part of a lamentable pattern of inaction by western states.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are certainly not at the front of the pack and the pack is now moving rapidly \u2026 the recognition of Palestine<\/a> is an example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sidoti\u2019s first experience documenting genocide was close to home. The 1997 Bringing Them Home<\/a> report found that the Australian government\u2019s policy of removing Indigenous children from their families met the international legal definition of genocide: an attempt to destroy Indigenous Australia through the forcible transfer of children<\/a>, annihilating connections to family, country and culture.<\/p>\n

It was here, Sidoti says, he learned the value of bearing witness. In some instances he was the first authority to listen to a victim\u2019s account.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not stopped the fighting in Gaza, we have not stopped people being killed, kids being killed. But I carry with me the lesson from Bringing Them Home, that setting the historic record is the very least we have to deliver to victims.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sidoti and his fellow commissioners stepped down<\/a> from the commission in June. Asked for his reflections on the direction of the conflict, Sidoti is unsure sure whether he lands at optimism or fatalism. For now he laments the continuing suffering.<\/p>\n

\u201cKilling does not go on for ever,\u201d he says, adding: \u201cIt will be resolved because there is, in the end, no alternative to that. But I have no idea when \u2026 no idea how many thousands of people are going to die before it happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe people of Gaza have absolutely no way to escape the killing: they are literally a captive population.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-182701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}