“Kids aren’t terrorists,” Chris Sidoti advised the handful of journalists assembled within the quiet of the UN’s New York headquarters.
Hundreds of kilometres from the battle in Gaza he was documenting, Sidoti felt compelled to repeat it: “Kids aren’t terrorists.”
“On 7 October, 38 Israeli children were killed, one of them under the age of two years. Since then, at least … 13,319 children have been killed in Gaza, of whom 786 were under the age of one. In addition, 165 children have been killed in the West Bank,” he stated.
“It’s a statistic that, to me, says everything.”
Sidoti, Australia’s former human rights commissioner, advised Guardian Australia in a subsequent interview this week that he feared an already insupportable battle would solely worsen: “People are still being killed, in particular, kids are still being killed in very large numbers, and the likelihood is it will get worse before it gets better.”
Sidoti was in New York to current a report by the UN’s Unbiased Worldwide Fee of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, together with East Jerusalem, and Israel. He is without doubt one of the fee’s three members.
He advised the UN press briefing the continued bombardment of Gaza was sowing the seeds for generations of battle, day by day of violence making peace more durable to realize.
“When the current Israeli prime minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu talks about finishing off Hamas, I wonder about what the 1 million children in Gaza will be doing in 20 years’ time. The conflict in Gaza is an Israeli terrorism creation factory and there is no sign of it finishing.”
He stated the spiralling cycle of violence couldn’t be arrested by extra violence.
“There is no end in sight. To help these kids, to help Israel, it’s got to stop. Then, there is a possibility, but until it stops, there is no chance.”
Sidoti stated youngsters couldn’t undergo greater than a 12 months of unrelenting battle with out it impacting the remainder of their lives.
“That is certainly the case physically for kids who have lost arms or legs or both. And we’ve met them, we’ve met them in hospitals, we’ve interviewed them. For them, this is a lifelong result.
“But the kids who are traumatised by the loss of parents, siblings, aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins – who have experienced now 13 months of severe food deprivation, leading to a situation that is now described as acute malnutrition – these kids … can’t go through what they have had to experience without this having a severe impact on them and their lives for ever.”
The fee’s third report, introduced on 30 October, painted a bleak and deteriorating image of hostilities in Gaza, which remained “under belligerent occupation by Israel”. It centered on three key findings.
It discovered Israel had carried out a concerted coverage to destroy the healthcare system of Gaza.
“Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles, constituting the war crimes of wilful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination.”
Medical doctors advised the fee they handled youngsters with direct gunshot wounds, “indicating direct targeting of children”.
Second, the report discovered Israeli forces mistreated Palestinian hostages: “The commission received numerous reports of detainees being stripped, transported naked, blindfolded, handcuffed tightly enough to cause injury and swelling, kicked, beaten, sexually assaulted and subjected to religious slurs and death threats.”
Some detainees had been “subjected to beatings, including with batons and wooden sticks, even while immobilised, and intimidation and attacks by dogs … detainees were routinely subjected to sexual abuse and harassment”.
And third, the report discovered Israeli hostages had been mistreated by Palestinian armed teams.
“The commission received credible information about some hostages being subjected to sexual and gender-based violence while in captivity, including sexualised torture and abuse against men and women when they were held in tunnels. One released female hostage reported that she had been raped in an apartment.”
The report discovered that whereas some launched hostages said they’d not been mistreated, “the commission finds that the majority of hostages were subjected to mistreatment, and that some were subjected to physical violence”.
In a subsequent interview again in Australia, Sidoti stated “in both cases, we found there was strong evidence of torture, of significant mistreatment, and a wide variety of human rights abuses that, in both cases, constituted war crimes”.
“The practices were clear and systematic on both sides.”
Sidoti, certainly one of Australia’s most skilled human rights attorneys and advocates, stated that over 13 months of battle – aside from a short ceasefire caused by a safety council decision – the UN and different multinational our bodies had failed, regardless of concerted efforts, to finish hostilities.
On Thursday, Australia supported a United Nations decision to recognise the “permanent sovereignty” of Palestinians within the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a dramatic shift from its earlier place.
Sidoti stated when he was first appointed to the fee in 2021, he noticed potential for peace in generational change within the management on either side of the battle. That hope, he stated, had pale.
“This conflict started long before 7 October 2023, it’s been going on for 85 years. It’s a longstanding conflict that has consistently shown itself incapable of being resolved, because the parties are not willing to find a way to resolve it. There is even less sign of that now. I can’t see what the way ahead is.
“We just have to keep at our work – investigating, reporting, encouraging and enabling accountability – and know that at some point in the future, there will be accountability, that those who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity will be brought to justice.
“A resolution requires a willingness from parties to sit down and solve this. But one thing this fighting has done over the last 13 months has been to cement the position of extremists on all sides, and even the outside.”
