genocide

Israel has rejected a UN Commission report that says its army deliberately targets Palestinian children. But there are cases of children being shot by precision weapons, making it difficult to argue they were accidents.
Al Jazeera’s @emmawithrow explains.

June 28 (UPI) — The Israeli government on Sunday voted unanimously to recognize the mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century as a genocide.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar proposed the vote during a cabinet meeting.

“Despite the extensive and unambiguous historical documentation, the Armenian genocide remains to this day the subject of an institutionalized campaign of denial and minimization, including manipulative rewriting of history, mainly by the Turkish government,” Sa’ar said during the meeting.

“It is widely believed that the Ottoman Empire committed crimes amounting to genocide in a systematic manner, with the aim of destroying the Armenian people.”

The fact that the Armenian genocide happened beginning in 1915 is well-accepted within academic circles. However, the Turkish government has continued to deny the culpability of its predecessor — the Ottoman Empire. More than 1.5 million Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1923.

Ahead of the vote, Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz described the Israeli resolution as “an attempt to cover up their own crimes.”

In 2024, the Armenian government officially recognized an independent Palestinian state, months after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that sparked the Gaza war. Armenia said a two-state solution, which is backed by other nations including the United States, is the best option to bring peace to the region.

In response, Israel summoned the Armenian ambassador for a “harsh reprimand conversation.”

Israel joins more than 30 countries across the globe that have acknowledged the Armenian massacres, using the term “genocide,” Politico reported. Among them are France, Germany, Lebanon, Syria and the United States.

President Donald Trump, however, has repeatedly declined to use the term and rejected a 2016 congressional vote to formally and symbolically recognize the genocide.

The last U.S. president to publicly acknowledge the massacres as a genocide was Joe Biden, who, in 2021, marked the 106th anniversary of the atrocities on April 24, Armenian Remembrance Day.

“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden said.

“We honor the victims of the Meds Yeghern so that the horrors of what happened are never lost to history,” he said, using the Armenian term for the genocide. “And we remember so that we remain ever-vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.”

Rats are invading displacement camps across Gaza, where piles of garbage, overflowing sewage and overcrowded shelters are worsening a public health crisis. Doctors report more severe skin diseases as families struggle without proper sanitation or adequate medical care.

Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, according to a new UN inquiry. The report says more than 20,000 children were killed between October 2023 and October 2025. Israel rejected the findings.

A United Nations commission of inquiry has accused Israel of systematically targeting Palestinian children in the occupied Palestinian territory, saying Israeli actions amount to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and war crimes in the occupied West Bank.

In a report released on Tuesday, the commission said about 30 percent of those killed in Gaza since Israel’s war began in October 2023 were children, and that attacks on maternity and neonatal units, along with an aid blockade, have devastated children’s chances of survival.

The commission says Israeli forces have destroyed orphanages and schools, and Palestinian children have been arbitrarily arrested, tortured and subjected to sexual abuse in detention. It warns that killings and serious injuries have continued even after the October 2025 “ceasefire”, in defiance of international law.

UNICEF estimates more than 50,000 children have been killed or wounded since the war began, with at least one Palestinian child killed on average every day in the eight months since the October “ceasefire” took effect.

These images document the lives and losses of Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank as they struggle to survive bombardment, displacement and imprisonment – and to hold on to a future that is being systematically stripped away.

Al Jazeera cameraman Ahmed Wishah dedicated his life to documenting the voices of his people, showcasing their grief, displacement, survival and resilience under Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, before he was killed by an Israeli attack.

Israeli settlers have vandalised and burned a mosque in the occupied West Bank village of Jaljulia, north of Ramallah. Racist slogans were scrawled on the walls by the settlers.

Pro-Palestine activists interrupted an army recruitment event during German Armed Forces Day. They climbed onto a tank and unfurled a banner reading ‘Genocide with German weapons’ and named Rheinmetall, a key arms supplier to Israel’s military.

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Macron, who has acknowledged French ‘responsibility’ in the genocide, called the memorial a reconciliation ‘milestone’.

French President Emmanuel Macron has presented a memorial in Paris dedicated to the victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, as France pursues closer ties with the East African country and continues to grapple with its role in the historic atrocity.

Speaking at the inauguration event alongside his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame on Tuesday, Macron said the monument marked “the culmination of a long and patient quest for truth”.

“An unprecedented reconciliation has emerged between Rwanda and France,” said Macron. “This monument, while it is an achievement, is not an end. It is a milestone on a path we have opened.”

Dubbed “L’Archive” (The Archive), the monument consists of two black brass steles, and it bears an engraved tribute to the estimated 800,000 men, women and children, mostly ethnic Tutsis, massacred between April and July 1994.

The memorial’s inauguration comes five years after Macron travelled to Kigali and first acknowledged France’s failure to heed warnings of impending massacres in Rwanda.

Macron has said Paris and its Western and African allies did not have the will to halt the genocide, though he has stopped short of issuing a formal apology.

‘Requires real courage’

Speaking at the ceremony, Kagame hailed France’s efforts to assume its share of responsibility, and praised Macron for his “courage and humanity”.

“France was not alone in falling short, far from it,” said Kagame, who had long accused France of “complicity”.

“Many other countries did so as well, but none has gone as far as France in setting the record straight and accepting its part in the tragedy.

“Confronting historical responsibilities requires real courage because it generates a fierce opposition by those with a case to answer,” Kagame said.

When the genocide against the Tutsis occurred in 1994, France had been a long-standing backer of Rwanda’s Hutu-dominated government, leading to decades of tensions between the two countries, including a break in diplomatic ties between 2006 and 2009.

A commission set up by Macron and led by historian Vincent Duclert concluded in 2021 that France had been ⁠blinded by its colonial attitude to events leading up to the genocide ⁠and bore a “serious and overwhelming” responsibility ⁠for failing to foresee the slaughter.

However, it said there was no evidence that Paris was complicit in the killings.

‘Part of France’s public history’

Duclert said the unveiling of the monument was a “powerful” step. “The genocide against the Tutsi is now fully part of France’s public history,” he said.

The French courts, acting on the principle of universal jurisdiction to try the most serious crimes committed worldwide, have convicted several Rwandans for their part in the massacre.

In May, France’s judiciary ordered the resumption of an almost two-decade investigation into accusations that the widow of late Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, who has lived in France since 1998, was involved in the genocide.

At least two Palestinians were killed and around a dozen wounded when an Israeli air strike hit a crowded cafe at Gaza’s seaport. Witnesses said people had gathered there to escape the heat and enjoy a public holiday, as attacks continue despite an October ceasefire.

Australian activists from the Gaza-bound aid flotilla have arrived back in Sydney, reuniting with loved ones as they describe beatings, sexual assault and torture at the hands of Israeli forces who intercepted their boats in international waters.

Video shows the moment Israeli forces struck Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza, injuring dozens despite an ongoing ceasefire agreement.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tehran says Iranian leaders are ‘projecting defiance’ and rejecting ‘public pressure’ from the US.

Bulgaria has won Eurovision for the first time, pushing Israel into second place amid boycotts and protests over Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. The result reignited debate over the apparent double standard with Russia banned for invading Ukraine.

Spanish actor Javier Bardem says speaking out against Israel’s genocide on Gaza has actually landed him more offers for work. Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival, he said he believes the global narrative about Gaza has changed.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has defended Spain’s boycott of the Eurovision Song Contest over Israel’s participation, saying ‘silence is not an option’ while citing the genocide in Gaza and the ‘illegal war’ on Lebanon.

British artist Matthew Collings says his exhibition “Drawings Against Genocide”, depicting Israeli violence against Palestinians, has been falsely portrayed as anti-Semitic. After outrage and protests, the London show has been cancelled.

Members of Extinction Rebellion France, an environmental and social activism group, scaled the Eiffel Tower on the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, displaying a Palestinian flag in protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The same tiny tungsten cubes that spray out of Israeli bombs, causing devastating internal injuries to people in Gaza are being found in wounded civilians in Lebanon, war surgeon Dr Tahir Mohammed says. He draws parallels between what Israel is doing in both places and describes the weapons as “indiscriminate”.

More than 30 Global Sumud Flotilla vessels have reached Marmaris on Turkiye’s coast, preparing for the final leg of their mission to break Israel’s siege of Gaza. At the end of April, Israel intercepted 22 boats off Greece and detained activists.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports from Al-Shati Refugee Camp, where families search through the rubble after overnight Israeli airstrikes despite a ceasefire. Residents described the attacks as a breach of the truce, saying they lost shelter, belongings and the only places they had left to stay.

A Palestinian boy mourns his father, one of three people killed in an Israeli strike on a security post in Gaza. The attack is part of ongoing Israeli violence, despite a fragile ceasefire, which has killed at least 846 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.