6 min readJun 27, 2026 07:54 AM IST
First published on: Jun 27, 2026 at 06:45 AM IST
In September 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory had concluded that Israeli authorities were committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. In June 2026, the same Commission — now headed by Justice (retired) S. Muralidhar, a distinguished Indian jurist — has poignantly reiterated that Israeli actions are intended to destroy the very existence of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children.
The 94-page report is a harrowing read, with grim details on the extent of the devastation perpetrated by Israel in Gaza and the genocidal intent underpinning its actions. At least 20,000 children have been killed, and another 44,000 have been wounded, many for life. The targeting of children is not incidental, but a deliberate strategy. Twenty-seven per cent of those killed or wounded have been children and many of the boys were found with bullets on the head and neck. Ninety-seven per cent of Gaza’s schools have been destroyed. Healthcare infrastructure, including paediatric hospitals, has been destroyed, resulting in a 300 per cent increase in miscarriage and childbirth complications.
In the two-and-a-half years since the dastardly, horrific, and absolutely unacceptable attack by Hamas on Israel, it has become clear that the retaliation of the Israeli armed forces and political leadership has been characterised by wanton cruelty and barbarity. Senior Israeli leaders, down from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his senior cabinet colleagues themselves, have called for the “complete siege” and “total annihilation” of Gaza, denounced the Palestinians as “animals” who have “no right to exist,” and defined success for Israel as “hundreds of thousands fleeing Gaza”.
Despite this clear genocidal intent, the support of President Donald Trump’s government in Washington DC has enabled the Israeli government to continue its brutal campaign against Palestinians. But the rest of the world has felt the pricking of its conscience.
The UN has been unable to act with any resolve due to American obstruction, but through its agencies it has played a stellar role in the documentation of Israeli war crimes. Leading powers historically associated with the Western bloc — including France, the UK, Canada, and Australia — have recognised Palestinian statehood after decades of indifference to the Palestinian cause. South Africa, a country with which India has shared a long history of anti-colonial solidarity, has dragged Israel to the International Court of Justice for its violations of the Genocide Convention of 1948. Several European states have restricted arms sales to Israel, and several Latin American nations have downgraded or severed their ties with the country. The International Criminal Court has even issued arrest warrants for the Israeli political leadership. A very large number of countries with whom India enjoys close relations have recognised Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.
Amidst the growing public backlash against Israel and the international community’s cognisance of the unjustifiable brutality unleashed on Gaza, India remains a lone voice of silence. Justice Muralidhar’s report, which has sparked renewed conversation and activism against the Gaza genocide, has been met with stony silence from the Narendra Modi government. It is hardly surprising — recall that Justice Muralidhar had been transferred out of the Delhi High Court after he called out the Delhi Police’s inaction on BJP leaders’ inflammatory statements in the run-up to the 2020 Delhi riots.
India was historically exceptional among the nations of the world for our commitment to postcolonial solidarity, national sovereignty, and international peace. Today we are exceptional in our continued indifference to the flagrant violation of the global rules-based order, to the suffering of our fellow peoples in the Global South, and to the abasement of human dignity that is on open display in Gaza and the West Bank.
Hind Rajab’s tragic story is emblematic of the unspeakable cruelty of the Israeli genocide in Gaza — a girl of just five, fleeing Gaza City with her family when Israeli forces fired 335 rounds at their car, killing her six family members, leaving her trapped in a car with her relatives’ dead bodies while paramedics attempted to rescue her. She was eventually killed, along with two paramedics. The citizens of India, as citizens of the world, have a right to know the story of Hind Rajab and countless other Palestinian children. Yet, to defer to Israel’s sensitivities, the movie was blocked for months in India, and has only now been cleared under immense public pressure.
The Modi government’s silence and inaction are not just morally reprehensible but also inexplicable from a national interest perspective. We are slipping further into Israel’s strategic orbit, at a time when the world is increasingly pivoting away from it. The Prime Minister’s visit to Israel amidst these circumstances, and only days before Israel’s war on Iran and the assassination of its top political leadership, will go down in history as a bewildering strategic decision. We have alienated ourselves from our historical allies in Palestine, Iran, and the larger Middle East. We have distanced ourselves from global public opinion. And we have let Pakistan, of all countries, itself a state that has and continues to harbour dreaded terrorists, swoop in to claim the space of a mediator — a role to which we would have a natural claim given our historically friendly ties with all players. Our sacrifice of our strategic interest and morality has yielded us nothing but the friendship between Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is now under attack all over the world, including in the USA.
The spirit of Indian nationhood demands that we speak up for our Palestinian brothers and sisters whose children have been so brutally targeted. The calculus of national interest demands that we respond to the global public opinion against the Israeli regime’s genocidal actions in Gaza and its brutal displacement and dispossession of lakhs of Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank. The Modi government’s continued silence simply cannot be explained rationally or morally.
The writer is chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party
Israeli soldiers occupy a military position overlooking the so-called Yellow Line in the central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo) 
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