_On 26 October 2025, after three days of often harrowing evidence and testimony (23 to 25 October), the members of the Jury of Conscience at the Final Session of the Gaza Tribunal, in Istanbul, presented their Statement of Findings and Moral Judgment.

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The six-member Jury of Conscience heard from experts, scholars, journalists, the people of Gaza, doctors, medical specialists, lawyers, NGOs and activists. Their evidence, testimony and witness accounts of the genocide in the Gaza Strip was often heartbreaking and shocking in its cruelty, intention, sadism and systematised depravity.

As the Jury members stated after the session on health: “I thought I knew, but now I know I know nothing”. “What I hear today is more than I ever knew”.

For those of us attending (online in my case), the amount of documentation was overwhelming and yet there are still those, such as our political leaders, who are turning a blind eye.

When asked about the nature of the sadism of the atrocities committed, a mental health expert stated that the lack of boundaries and apparent lack of impunity enabled such systematised conduct. There were many examples which included the deliberate bombing of Gaza’s fertility clinic, the assassination of journalists (two of three after giving video testimony in March), the shooting of men in the genitals, the switching off of power for humidicribs of newborns, the destruction of research facilities and neighbourhoods, arbitrary detention, rape and torture and the killing of parents and entire family lines, leaving tens of thousands of orphaned children.

This vast and valuable documentary archive of deliberate war crimes, causes, collusion and complicity also records the resistance and resilience of Palestinians and Palestinian solidarity by people throughout the world; at its heart is the powerful hope and assertion that truth and justice will prevail.

As well as the evidence and testimony presented, the Jury’s findings were based upon the legal standards of the Genocide Convention, human rights treaties, “the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the moral imperatives of natural justice”.

The compelling expert oral and written evidence and witness testimonies demonstrate in graphic detail the sadistic nature and depravity of Israel’s actions as well as its oppression and dehumanisation of the Palestinian people. Over three days, the ongoing physical and psychological harm inflicted on Palestinians for more than 75 years by the racist and settler colonial ideology of Zionism was exposed.

The list of Israeli crimes committed in Gaza has required new terms and definitions that the Jury recognised: starvation and famine; domicide; ecocide; deliberate destruction and targeting of the healthcare infrastructure; reprocide; scholasticide; attacks on journalists; torture, sexual violence; politicide.

The Jury found overwhelming evidence of a “coherent and consistent pattern of exterminatory violence” by Israel in all of these areas that ‘cannot be justified by any claim of military objectives’.

Western government complicity and active collusion in the genocide, particularly by the US and others, was shown to include “provision of diplomatic cover, weapons, weapon parts, intelligence, military assistance and training, and continuing economic relations”. Such state actions, the Jury argued, constitute “moral failure and breach of their legal duty to prevent genocide”.

Non-state actors were also complicit. Specifically, this included biased media reporting and the role of academic institutions which have supported Israel through investment as well as by the silencing and disciplining of students and staff.

Further testimonies drew attention to the existence of global supply chains that sustain the political economy of the genocide – in technology and surveillance, weapons supply, transport, banking and other multinational corporations.

The root causes of this genocide are traced to a “racist, supremacist ideology – Zionism” which is supported and enabled by an “oppressive neocolonial power structure led by the US and its allies, and shielded by international complicity, including from many Arab and Muslim governments”.

The Jury of Conscience’s two recommendations to end the genocide and bring about justice and freedom for the Palestinians are: ending impunity and ensuring accountability; and resisting and dismantling oppressive structures.

In the first instance, all those responsible (politically, militarily, economically, ideologically) must be held accountable in law; and the Jury called for Israel to be suspended from the United Nations, its affiliates and other international institutions.

The Jury also endorsed the activation of the UN General Assembly Resolution 377 A(V) (Uniting for Peace) to mandate a protective force to stop the genocide.

In the second instance, the Jury reaffirmed the right of Palestinians to self-determination as well as their choice of “modes of resistance to achieve liberation, freedom, and independence”.

It further endorsed the dismantling of Zionist structures and elimination of its sources and enablers.

To achieve these recommendations the Jury of Conscience endorsed: Palestinian steadfastness and non-displacement; and ongoing comprehensive global confrontation and mobilisation in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle’s resistance to Zionism’s “racist, supremacist, settler-colonial enterprise”.

The precondition to put an end to genocide, the Jury argued, is a ‘single rights-based political order grounded in equality, decolonisation, restitution and the unfettered right of return".

The Jury of Conscience ended with this statement: “Silence is not neutral; silence is complicity; neutrality is surrender to evil.”

After three days of hearing, the breadth and scale of Israel’s war crimes and, by implication, of those who have remained silent or actively colluded in or enabled it, such as our federal state and federal political leadership, universities and arms manufacturers, media and transport companies, Zionist lobby groups and individuals, it was clear that there should be no rest until all have been named, shamed and brought to justice.

In the meantime, to achieve this, Australia needs its own Gaza Tribunal to prepare and document the evidence and witness testimony required.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.