They Won’t Say “Genocide”—So We Will: Reading Between the UN’s Legal Evasions on Gaza

Genocide doesn’t need a verdict to be true. It needs to be stopped.

In May 2025, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued a statement on the catastrophic situation in Gaza. Like its 2024 predecessor, it described mass killing, starvation, displacement, the targeting of children, destruction of infrastructure, the deliberate obstruction of aid—and still refused to name what is happening:

Genocide.

Let’s be clear: genocide is not a court ruling—it is a crime in progress. A legal finding may formalize it, but genocide exists in the lives stolen, the children starved, the hospitals destroyed, and the policies designed to erase a people. To say otherwise is to collapse reality into courtroom procedure. That’s not justice. That’s delay.

And delay is complicity.

The 2025 CERD statement is a masterclass in bureaucratic hedging. It “raises serious concerns regarding the obligations of Israel and other State parties to prevent war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.” It calls on states to uphold the Genocide Convention and to halt military assistance if there's a “clear risk” it could facilitate such crimes. It references the ICJ’s provisional measures in South Africa v. Israel. It demands humanitarian corridors, an end to the blockade, and full access to food and medicine.

What it refuses to do is finish the sentence.

This is no accident. It’s diplomacy’s oldest trick: gesture toward atrocity, then let ambiguity do the killing. We’ve seen this tactic before—in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Sudan. While children die of engineered famine, the UN calls for “urgent action.” While entire families are buried beneath rubble, it “recalls its concern.” While 128,000+ Palestinians are dead or dying in Gaza, the system that enabled it finds synonyms for genocide rather than accountability.

But the truth doesn’t need a euphemism. It needs a reckoning.

By every metric in the Genocide Convention—killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy them—Israel’s actions qualify. The statements themselves confirm this through cited death tolls, deliberate destruction, and systemic starvation. The only thing missing is courage.

So we say it clearly:

This is genocide. Not a potential, not a risk, not a hypothetical. An unfolding, state-executed genocide against the Palestinian people, sustained by international cowardice and U.S.-backed impunity.

If the UN won’t name it, we will. If international bodies refuse to act, we must demand more. Because justice delayed is not only justice denied—it’s often the weapon that finishes the job.

Decolonize your language. Defend Palestinian life. And do not wait for permission to speak the truth.