LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Palestinian health authorities say the Israeli military has killed at least 260 Palestinian children since the ceasefire in Gaza last October. An independent U.N. commission concluded that Israel has been deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, killing at least 20,000 children in the last 2 1/2 years. Israel denies it's targeting children.
SRINIVASAN MURALIDHAR: We've interviewed witnesses, victims and sometimes children in person. And we've got a wide array of sources, and we subject all of them to rigorous scientific analysis.
FADEL: That's Srinivasan Muralidhar, the chair of the commission and one of India's most respected jurists. We reached him in Chennai, India. And as you continue listening, I do want to tell you that he and others describe in graphic detail the killing of children.
MURALIDHAR: Israeli soldiers have themselves admitted on camera how, for them, it was like a game. And they were also vying with each other for more and more targets of children. One of them says how his commander complimented him when he killed a child, which is why we know that children were deliberately targeted.
FADEL: The report is nearly a hundred pages. The team verified cases of children targeted by precision weapons like quadcopters.
MURALIDHAR: Quadcopters are basically a drone with four tiny blades. It's like any other drone, but it's more equipped with weapons. And it has a thermal imaging camera, so anyone operating the quadcopter can see on a screen if the target is an adult or a child. So we've got one recorded instance of a 10-day-old breastfeeding baby being shot through the head by a single bullet using a quadcopter. That is in one of the tents in Gaza. The breastfeeding mother is unharmed. There have been numerous other instances we've recorded where the child is accompanying the adult. The child is shot. The adult is unharmed.
FADEL: Testimonies they collected from doctors who worked in Gaza are posted publicly online, including this from Dr. Mimi Syed, who leads an emergency department in Washington state. Here, she's describing treating children.
MIMI SYED: In almost all of the cases that I saw, witnesses said that they were shot by quadcopters, outside playing by themselves. They were single shots to the head, to the neck and to the abdomen. I saw that both times when I was in Gaza, and it's hard to say that these are not intentional.
FADEL: And this from Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor who practices in Philadelphia.
TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: I even remember one mass casualty in 2025 where all we received was children.
FADEL: The commission also gathered a series of public statements by Israeli politicians that seem to be encouraging the killing of Palestinian children. Here's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir at a press conference in the spring of 2024.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ITAMAR BEN-GVIR: (SpeakingHebrew).
FADEL: "I appreciate him," he says, praising a soldier for killing a child Ben-Gvir referred to as a 12-year-old terrorist. And here's former Israeli Parliament Member Moshe Feiglin last year.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MOSHE FEIGLIN: (Speaking Hebrew).
FADEL: "Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy," he said on Israel's Channel 14. Here's Muralidhar again.
MURALIDHAR: The team go over the same pieces of, you know, video clips and audio messages and these photographs over and over again because they don't want to be found making a mistake. We were anticipating the casual accusation that Israeli authorities make that this is a propaganda. And so they take that extra precaution of looking at that same video again and again, and it is very draining emotionally.
FADEL: Israel has lambasted the report's findings and the commission as a sham. Among the accusations? The commission relied on unverified testimony, it has a bias against Israel and that it minimized Hamas' role in the harming of Palestinian children by operating in civilian areas. I put that to Muralidhar.
Now, Israel has issued a rebuttal to your report, saying...
MURALIDHAR: Yeah. It's an 18-page rebuttal. Yeah.
FADEL: Eighteen-page. They call your report a blood libel...
MURALIDHAR: Correct.
FADEL: ...That is based on flawed methodology. How do you respond to that?
MURALIDHAR: Israel instructs its citizens not to engage with the commission. It's a very specific instruction. They accuse this commission of relying entirely on evidence produced by Hamas. Now, I want to categorically deny this. We choose not to take on board submissions made to us by Hamas or Hamas-affiliated organizations. So we don't engage with them at all.
We do metadata extraction. We do geolocation. We use satellite imagery. We never, ever rely on any single source of evidence. And for this report, on top of all of this, we have Israeli soldiers who have themselves filmed their violent acts - spoken about it. We have all this evidence with us. So I'm very confident. Whatever Israel might say, this report is based on solid evidence.
FADEL: The Israeli government's 18-page rebuttal acknowledges its refusal to engage with the commission, calling it a principled position over what Israel sees as the commission's bias. Muralidhar also says the evidence they gathered bolsters the charge of genocide against Israel - the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. It's a charge that leading human rights organizations in and outside Israel have made, along with leading genocide scholars. Israel has repeatedly denied this accusation.
The charge of genocide - that hinges on intent.
MURALIDHAR: Yes.
FADEL: What evidence is there of that?
MURALIDHAR: Children constitute the social and biological continuity of a people. The deliberate targeting of children is to ensure that there is no continuity of the Palestinian people, and we have said that in so many words.
FADEL: You've briefed leaders of lots of countries on these findings of this report. Are any of them suggesting that they might take action based on what you found?
MURALIDHAR: They don't want to be committing themselves to any such statement formally to us. We've listed out 11 battalions, divisions and units of the Israel Defense Forces and linked each of them to the particular incident of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. There are many nationals of other countries who are serving on the Israel Defense Forces.
FADEL: As in dual nationals - Israeli and something else.
MURALIDHAR: Yes. There are over 12,000 Americans serving on the Israel Defense Forces, over 700 Australians, 6,000 French. About 17 country nationals are serving in the Israel Defense Forces. And those countries - many of them are treaty-ratifying members of several multilateral conventions. It could be the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It could be the International Criminal Court. Now, these countries have an obligation - international human rights law. They first have to investigate their role. They should prosecute them and try them.
FADEL: That was Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. We offered interviews for this piece to the Israeli military and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Neither made anyone available in time for air. The ministry spokesman provided a previously released statement calling the report a propaganda piece.
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