Inside the solemn halls of Istanbul University, the Gaza Tribunal convened one final time — a moment charged with history, grief, and accountability. Led by Professor Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, the panel of international experts delivered what is now considered one of the most significant moral and legal judgments of our time: a recognition that Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza constitutes genocide.

After months of hearings held in cities including London, Sarajevo, and Istanbul, the Tribunal’s final report lays bare the devastating scale and intent of Israel’s campaign. It concludes that the systematic destruction of Gaza’s population — through deliberate deprivation of food, medicine, and humanitarian access, combined with relentless bombardment, forced displacement, and obstruction of medical care — amounts to the weaponization of life itself. These acts, the Tribunal affirms, are not isolated wartime excesses but components of a deliberate policy of collective extermination.

At the heart of the Tribunal’s findings lies a moral and legal indictment of Zionist ideology, described as the driving force behind decades of dispossession and domination. The genocide in Gaza, it asserts, is not a tragic anomaly but the continuation of a settler-colonial project designed to erase Palestinian existence and identity. Through extensive eyewitness testimonies, digital evidence, and documented field reports, the Tribunal reconstructs a harrowing record of systematic annihilation — families wiped out, hospitals targeted, and entire communities starved into submission.

Equally damning is the Tribunal’s conclusion on Western complicity. The United States and allied governments, it finds, have not merely turned a blind eye but have been active enablers of Israel’s crimes — through arms transfers, diplomatic protection, and economic cooperation. By shielding Israel from international accountability, these states have become indispensable partners in sustaining what the Tribunal describes as a machinery of destruction. “Accountability,” the verdict stresses, “knows no borders.” Every actor — political, military, or corporate — involved in the commission or facilitation of these crimes bears responsibility.

The Tribunal’s report also delivers a sharp rebuke to the paralysis of the United Nations Security Council, repeatedly incapacitated by U.S. vetoes. It urges the UN General Assembly to invoke the Uniting for Peace resolution to bypass obstruction and uphold the Palestinian people’s right to protection. The verdict calls for the creation of independent international mechanisms to pursue justice — a global network of legal and civil initiatives capable of dismantling entrenched impunity.

But beyond legal frameworks, the Tribunal’s judgment carries a deeper, moral resonance. It calls on humanity to confront the ideological, financial, and cultural systems that sustain oppression — to expose and dismantle the global networks that normalize Palestinian death. In its closing remarks, the Tribunal reminds the world that the genocide in Gaza is not just a political catastrophe but a test of collective conscience.

The voices of survivors and witnesses, preserved through testimony and digital archives, pierce the legal language with unbearable clarity: doctors performing surgeries without anesthesia under drone fire, children buried beneath rubble, families starved in silence. These are not numbers. They are the living pulse of Gaza’s agony — and now, the evidentiary core of a global demand for justice.

The Gaza Tribunal’s verdict is not merely a legal conclusion. It is an indictment of silence, a moral document that forces the world to reckon with its complicity. It declares that the truth can no longer be deferred, that Gaza’s suffering has entered the historical record, and that history will remember not only those who committed the crime — but also those who chose to look away.