“When law is silenced by power, conscience must become the final tribunal.”
That was the closing statement from Professor Christine Chinkin, Chair of the Jury of Conscience at the Gaza Tribunal in Istanbul.
That was the closing statement from Professor Christine Chinkin, Chair of the Jury of Conscience at the Gaza Tribunal in Istanbul.
The Tribunal isn’t a court backed by states. It’s a people’s tribunal. Built by jurists, academics, and human rights defenders. A response to a world where governments and institutions look away from genocide in Gaza.
Its task was simple: speak the truth when those in power won’t.
The verdict is damning. The Tribunal found Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of extermination in Gaza: the destruction of homes, hospitals, universities, food systems. The targeting of journalists and medics. The erasure of a people’s identity and future.
These aren’t “mistakes.” Not “collateral damage.” They are tools of genocide.
The Tribunal names it plainly: starvation. Domicide. Ecocide. A war against the very possibility of Palestinian life.
And it doesn’t stop with Israel. It finds Western governments — especially the US and European states — complicit. Not passive. Complicit. Through weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic cover.
It calls out corporations. Universities. Media outlets. All the structures that enable or whitewash these crimes. Silence, it warns, isn’t neutral. Silence is complicity.
The Tribunal demands real accountability. Suspension of Israel from international organisations. Activation of the Uniting for Peace resolution. A protective force for Palestinians. A global movement to dismantle Zionist structures and resist normalization.
And it makes one thing absolutely clear: this struggle is not against Jews or Judaism. It is against Zionism — a racist, settler-colonial project that denies Palestinians their existence, their return, their freedom.
The vision is a single rights-based political order. Equality. Decolonization. Restitution. Justice.
Silence is not neutral. Silence is betrayal. And neutrality in the face of genocide is surrender to it.
Its task was simple: speak the truth when those in power won’t.
The verdict is damning. The Tribunal found Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of extermination in Gaza: the destruction of homes, hospitals, universities, food systems. The targeting of journalists and medics. The erasure of a people’s identity and future.
These aren’t “mistakes.” Not “collateral damage.” They are tools of genocide.
The Tribunal names it plainly: starvation. Domicide. Ecocide. A war against the very possibility of Palestinian life.
And it doesn’t stop with Israel. It finds Western governments — especially the US and European states — complicit. Not passive. Complicit. Through weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic cover.
It calls out corporations. Universities. Media outlets. All the structures that enable or whitewash these crimes. Silence, it warns, isn’t neutral. Silence is complicity.
The Tribunal demands real accountability. Suspension of Israel from international organisations. Activation of the Uniting for Peace resolution. A protective force for Palestinians. A global movement to dismantle Zionist structures and resist normalization.
And it makes one thing absolutely clear: this struggle is not against Jews or Judaism. It is against Zionism — a racist, settler-colonial project that denies Palestinians their existence, their return, their freedom.
The vision is a single rights-based political order. Equality. Decolonization. Restitution. Justice.
Silence is not neutral. Silence is betrayal. And neutrality in the face of genocide is surrender to it.