From the Liveblog of
Monday, September 8, 2025
UN rights chief expresses alarm over ‘genocidal rhetoric’ by Israeli officials on Gaza
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GENEVA, Switzerland — The United Nations rights chief voices alarm at the overt “genocidal rhetoric” by Israeli officials about Gaza and calls for decisive international action to “end the carnage.”
He says the Palestinian enclave was already “a graveyard.”
Israel has fiercely denied it is carrying out genocide in Gaza, asserting military operations are focused on defeating the Hamas terror group and rescuing hostages.
In his opening address to the UN Human Rights Council’s 60th session, Volker Turk slams “Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza (and) its infliction of indescribable suffering and wholesale destruction.”
“Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza; its infliction of indescribable suffering and wholesale destruction; its hindering of sufficient lifesaving aid and the ensuing starvation of civilians; its killing of journalists, UN staff and NGO workers and its commission of war crime upon war crime, are shocking the conscience of the world,” he says.
“I am horrified by the open use of genocidal rhetoric and the disgraceful dehumanisation of Palestinians by senior Israeli officials.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stresses that nearly two years after the war erupted following Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, “the region is crying out for peace.”
“Gaza is a graveyard,” he tells the rights council.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.