Top UN Gaza investigator hopeful Israeli leaders will be prosecuted

GENEVA, Switzerland, September 19 ------ The UN investigator who this week accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza said she sees parallels with the butchery in Rwanda, and that she hopes one day Israeli leaders will be put behind bars.

Navi Pillay, a South African former judge who headed the international tribunal for the 1994 Rwanda genocide and also served as UN human rights chief, acknowledged that justice "is a slow process". But as late South African anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela said, "it always seems impossible until it's done," she told Agence France-Presse in an interview.

The investigators also concluded that Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defense minister Yoav Gallant have "incited the commission of genocide". Israel categorically rejected the findings and slammed the report as "distorted and false." But for Pillay, the parallels to Rwanda — where some 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were slaughtered — are clear.

As head of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, she says watching footage of civilians being killed and tortured had marked her "for life." "I see similarities" to what is happening in Gaza, she said, pointing to "the same kind of methods". While Tutsis were targeted in Rwanda's genocide, she said, "all the evidence (indicates) it is Palestinians as a group that is being targeted" in Gaza. Israeli leaders, she said, had made statements, including calling Palestinians "animals", which recalled the demonizing rhetoric used during the Rwanda genocide, when Tutsis were labelled as "cockroaches." In both cases, she said, the target population is "dehumanized", signaling that "it's ok to kill them."

Source: manilatimes.net