On October 26, 2026, the Pillay Commission published its report to the UN General Assembly (A/81/430) purporting to examine “killing and causing bodily and mental harm by members of the
security forces of the State of Israel and of the State of Palestine since October 2023.”
UN Watch and UKLFI Charitable Trust (UKLFI) prepared a detailed legal rebuttal dismantling the Pillay Commission’s legal findings against Israel, which is summarized below.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL REBUTTAL
Summary of Joint Response to the UN Commission of Inquiry’s October 2026 Report
In its latest report, issued on 26 October 2026 (the “Report”), the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Palestinian Territory and Israel asks the General Assembly to accept that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and the crimes against humanity of extermination and persecution in Judea and Samaria. These are the gravest charges known to international law. The Report does not prove them. It reaches them by cutting the words of Israeli officials in half, recycling its own earlier allegations as evidence, citing sources that say the opposite of what is claimed, and erasing the killing of more than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, by Hamas and other armed groups on 7 October, the 251 people taken hostage and continuing attacks by Palestinian groups, including Hamas, with the support of the Palestinian Authority. This response tests the Report’s findings against its footnotes. They do not survive the exercise.
The Standard of Proof (Part One)
Every finding, including genocide, is made on “reasonable grounds” — the test for issuing an arrest warrant, not for proving guilt or State responsibility. The Report never tells its readers so, and one of the Commission’s members has since called it “not a high standard.” The findings do not in any event meet even that standard, because they rest on evidence the Report has distorted; and the Report does not demonstrate that any of the findings meet the Commission’s rule on corroboration. More than 70 statements in the Report carry no source at all, 40 of which are statements on which a finding depends. Israeli accounts are “claimed” or “alleged”; the accounts of complainants are, for the most part, reported as fact. Findings that are at most arguable are presented as established fact.
The History (Part Two)
The Report explains Israeli conduct today through a history of 1948 that is fundamentally distorted and unsourced. It leaves out the Arab rejection of partition and the invasion by five Arab armies, and treats Israel’s survival of that war, and its fewer dead, as evidence of guilt. That history is not part of this inquiry: the Commission says it has yet to examine 1948 and will deal with it in later reports. The Commission appears to be using this Report to establish a false account of Israel’s founding and give it the authority of a United Nations finding.
Partial Quotes (Part Three)
The Report quotes Israeli officials without the part of the sentence that explains them, and presents what is left as an admission. A defensive line becomes a “new border,” pressure on Hamas becomes territorial ambition, and a statement that most of those killed were armed becomes evidence that soldiers kill people who pose no threat. Every cut runs in the same direction. That cannot be put down to carelessness.
The Commission as Its Own Witness (Part Four)
The Commission treats its own earlier allegations as evidence. Claims made in one paper are repeated in the next, losing their qualifications on the way, until a single detainee’s account, published three times over, is offered as an example of the conduct from which genocidal intent is inferred. Figures from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health reach the Report through United Nations documents and are stated as the Commission’s own. Most of the earlier findings were made under a chair who had called for sanctions against Israel before she was appointed and with a member whose antisemitic remarks drew condemnation from Western governments, and this Report adopts them without re-examining them. Repetition is presented as proof.
Sources That Say the Opposite (Part Five)
The Commission’s footnotes repeatedly undercut its findings. Read to the end, the sources it cites on extermination, on the deaths in Gaza after the ceasefire, on the warnings given near the Yellow Line and on impunity demonstrate something different, and often the reverse. Either the Commission did not read its sources in full, or it chose not to report what they said. Either way, the reader cannot rely on the Report’s account of its own evidence.
What the Report Leaves Out (Part Six)
The Report sets out to explain the “drivers” of violence, and leaves out the facts that would do so: the hostages, the United Nations’ findings of sexual violence by Palestinian terrorists on 7 October, Hamas’s declared intent to kill Jews, the fact that Hamas embeds itself in the civilian population, and fights from hospitals and among civilians, its violence against Israelis and Palestinians alike, and the Palestinian Authority’s payments to prisoners and the families of attackers. What it does mention, it turns against Israel. The word “hostage” does not appear in the Report at all.
From These Facts to Atrocity Crimes (Part Seven)
The Report reaches the gravest charges in international law by skipping the step each one requires. Extermination is found without separating fighters from civilians; the Commission’s earlier finding that settler violence “may be attributable” to Israel becomes, in this Report, a finding that Israel intended it; a difference in policing becomes persecution; a continuing genocide is found on the strength of a handful of incidents, none shown to have been directed at Palestinians as a group; a finding that children are targeted for their age rests on a paper that infers a policy of targeting boys as “future terrorists” from the number of boys killed and one minister’s remark about one boy; and findings of rape and torture rest on allegations in cases that, with one exception, no one outside the Commission can identify.
Recommendations That Misstate the Law (Part Eight)
The recommendations present the Commission’s conclusions as the requirements of the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”). They overstate the Court’s Advisory Opinion and set the Court’s provisional measures orders beside a genocide finding the Court has never made. A State acting on them would be acting on the Commission’s views while believing them to be the Court’s.
