In a podcast interview with The Wire this week, Justice Srinivasan Muralidhar, chairman of the UN-appointed Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said that several instances of Palestinian children being “deliberately” shot, tortured and sexually abused by Israelis have been recorded in the new report by the commission. He underlined that it is a “moment of reckoning” and India should “seriously introspect and ask itself, with this level of evidence having come forth on the atrocities against Palestinian children, does India want to take a stand at all or not?”The following is the full text of the discussion, transcribed by Falak Ali, an editorial intern at The Wire.§Sidharth Bhatia: Hello and welcome to The Wire Talks, I’m Sidharth Bhatia. A new report by the UN-appointed Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has just been released and it has not minced its words. What Israel has done in Gaza is genocide. It has also laid out in horrific detail the manner in which killings of Palestinian children have been carried out. The commission’s 100-page report was presented at a press conference by its chairman Justice Srinivasan Muralidhar, former high court judge in India. The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces. This is an exact quote from the report. To discuss this path-breaking report, we are joined today by Justice Muralidhar. His name, of course, is very familiar to us in India. In his long career, he took some unprecedented decisions, like decriminalising homosexuality and holding a midnight hearing during the 2020 Delhi riots. After he criticised the Delhi police for not taking action against BJP leaders, he was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana high court. He later retired as Chief Justice of the Orissa high court. Justice Murlidhar, welcome to The Wire Talks. Srinivasan Muralidhar: Thank you, sir. Sidharth Bhatia: So, could you tell us how and when was this commission set up and what was its mandate? Srinivasan Muralidhar: This commission was set up in May 2021 by the Human Rights Council and the first chair, the commission was Ms. Navi Pillay, a very renowned international jurist who served in the UN system for many many years.The other two members were Mr. Chris Sidoti, a senior lawyer from Australia, also a person with vast experience in the UN mechanisms and Mr. Miloon Kothari from India. In September 2025, both Ms. Pillay and Mr. Kothari resigned and it was at that stage that I was asked by the then president of the Human Rights Council. During an interaction, he was very keen that I should chair this commission and that was something that I could not resist because when you’re a chair of a commission you can direct much of its theme/topics that you pick up for consideration and even work on the draft.Today, we have a three-member commission as Chris Sidoti continues. There is Justice Florence Mumba. She’s a retired judge of the Supreme Court of Zambia, and again, comes with vast experience. So it was an exposure to seeing first of all, how professionally, investigations are carried out at the level of the UN mechanisms. We have a 12-member multi-national team, coming from various countries, but with great professional expertise. So, we have a gender expert, a child rights expert, we have a military analyst who tells us how missions operate, how drivers and weapons operate, including the operations of the drones. Then we have legal analysis by experts who explain provisions of the international human rights law, humanitarian law, international criminal law, and how they operate. So it’s a very elaborate exercise. Even drafting, we do it all online, because the UN is strapped for funds. We’’re not able to meet as often as we should. We are prevented by Israel from entering the territory. So, we are headquartered in Geneva. And we come from three different continents, literally. So, we have to find a convenient time when all of us can meet online, and the drafting exercise is very limited. We go literally line by line, see whether the finding is backed up by evidence. I’ll explain more about this as we discuss. So, this commission picks up two kinds of reports to work on. One is called ‘thematic topic-wise reports,’ because the commission is tasked with not only looking at the human rights and humanity and law violations in occupied Palestinian territory, by which I mean Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem, but also the geographical territory of Israel, which is what makes this commission slightly different. The second is this commission is not a tenured time-bound commission, it’s actually open ended. So this was very deliberately done by the Human Rights Council because they found that every time some major catastrophe happened in that area, setting up a commission just for that is unsatisfactory because the hostility has continued since long. It’s not 10 or 20 years, but much earlier too. So, all the countries constituting the Human Rights Council felt there must be a more permanent kind of an investigative mechanism. And this is apart from the other mandate holders, like the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, Ms Francesca Albanese. So, this commission is tasked with also looking at the underlying root causes of every such theme and topic. So, this is one kind of report we submit.We submit two reports annually, one to the Human Rights Council, and the other to the General Assembly. These are called mandated reports. Like, this year, we submitted one mandated report on non-state actors to the Human Rights Council. And in October this year, we have to submit a report on state actors. What distinguishes these mandated reports from other reports that we prepare, like the one on children, is that the mandated reports have to be not longer than 9,800 words. They’re very precise on this. This is because, again, lack of resources. The culprit of course is the United States of America which literally closed the financial tab. The US contributes more than 40% to the UN budget and the US has stopped its contributions completely over the last two years. So apart from the two mandated reports, we have these detailed reports which we call ‘conference room papers’. From the beginning of this commission’s institution, there have been several reports already submitted. One of the reports was on the 7th of October incident, where all the violent actions, illegal actions, unlawful violations of the international human rights law and humanitarian law by Hamas has been listed out. We have given a detailed report on sexual and gender-based violence against the Palestinians by the Israeli authorities. We’ve given the report on genocide in September 2025. So it’s an ongoing process. So even when the report is like the one we’ve done on children, it will have to be read in continuum with the earlier reports. There is a reference made to the earlier reports in each such report. What helps us to have a report like this, which is a conference room paper in the UN, is that there is no page limit, or word limit. And therefore, this is a very elaborate 94-page report, which can be very useful to other agencies. I will only add, I think to this long-ish reply: The work of this commission, which is basically an investigating body, and it is not a judicial body, is to gather evidence and come to certain conclusions on the standard of reasonable basis to believe. It is not beyond all reasonable doubt, as you would be in a criminal case before a court. So, this evidence can feed into the existing international adjudicatory mechanisms. By that I mean the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court which is created by the Rome statute, which is a multilateral treaty adopted by several countries – of course India and the US have voted negatively, they have not agreed with the Rome statute, but a majority of countries have. So, this report actually is today being acted upon in the proceedings before the ICJ as well as the International Criminal Court. They have told us what kind of evidence, I mean how the evidence gathering should happen, how its preservation should happen, how the analysis should take place. So, if you align our evidence gathering and analysis protocols with that of the ICJ and the ICT, this is why both those bodies find it very convenient to pick up what we have done. But they can carry on further investigations and they can come to their conclusions based on that evidence. So, ours is a very important foundational basis for many of these adjudicatory mechanisms. And the third is, of course, domestic courts, which may want to exercise universal jurisdiction. I will come to that as we speak. So this is broadly the outlay of the work of this commission, which is on an ongoing basis. It is thoroughly professional work where every piece of evidence is cross verified, trust checked and sought to be corroborated by independent sources. Sidharth Bhatia: Yes, so that’s what I was coming to. You’re saying it is thoroughly investigated, double checked. but considering that Israel did not permit you to enter, how did you go about collecting evidence? Srinivasan Muralidhar: So, every time this commission starts a particular theme for working on, it issues what is called a public call for submissions. So, anybody from around the world over can share with the commission any material they have. It could be a video clip, an audio clip, a photograph or any person in testimony of any witness or victim. Now, Israel instructs its citizens not to engage with the commission. So, you will not get anything from any Israeli citizen when we issue a public call for submission. Notwithstanding this, there are civil society organisations in Israel who feel strongly about the Palestinian cause and who do assist this commission with inputs and information. Second, before every report is finalised, we send the report in its draft form to the Israeli Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva, and we also send it to the Palestinian Authority for their comments. Palestinian Authority does respond to many of our draft reports, and we incorporate their comments into our final version. Israel never does respond to any of those requests. As a chair of this commission, I have, after taking over in November 2025, issued what in diplomatic circles we say as “note verbale”. It’s a formal communication that goes to the Permanent Mission for Israel. In that, you state that you would like to engage with Israel, you would like to meet their officials, you would like to visit the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel. None of this is a responsibility. So, Israel simply refused to engage with the commission. Israel cannot possibly say that Israel is deprived of an opportunity of presenting its version on the material it has before this commission. Fortunately for us in this report, Israeli soldiers have spoken not just to the commission but to the world through the videos they have filmed of their actions and they made statements on video before the Israeli television channels. All of this is available in the public media which we refer to extensively in our report. So, this time Israel can’t possibly say that Israel’s voice or Israeli soldiers’ voice is not found in this report. A girl carries bread as she walks past destruction left by Israeli air and ground operations in Gaza City Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025. Photo: AP/PTI.I must also say that after the report was released on June 23, 2026, Israel released in the public domain an 18-page rebuttal, where, of course, they accused the commission of being biased, one sided, partial, that it has relied entirely on what Hamas has given the commission. ‘It has given Hamas a clean chit.’ None of which is true. Actually, even when the issue of public calls for submissions is made, we make it clear that we will not engage with Hamas or Hamas-affiliated organisations, because they are themselves a subject matter of our inquiry, whether it was the 7th October 2023 report, or subsequent reports, including the report on non-state actors. So, these accusations that we simply take whatever evidence Hamas gives us is completely untrue. Second, like I said, not only in the report on 7th October 2023, but even the report on non-state actors which we’ve submitted just on 15th June, 2026, we have listed out all the atrocities committed by Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territory and in particular Gaza. We mention instances where Hamas accuses its own Palestinians of collaborating with Israel or sometimes for some petty crimes like a theft and punishes them disproportionately – and this includes children as well. So those also we listed out and discussed in great detail in that report. Our reports must be written in continuum. Israel of course, is choosing to ignore that report. Like I said earlier in other press conferences and interviews, we are still open to looking at any material Israel might have, which it thinks this commission has ignored or should have looked at and which things are relevant for the theme that is picked up – mainly children or any other theme on which we have already submitted the report. We have an open mind. We are still willing to look at those materials in the same way, in the same scientific way in which we looked at all the other pieces of things. Sidharth Bhatia: In fact, yeah, I think the Israeli ambassador to India has made some comments – negative and strong comments – saying you have fallen for propaganda and blood libel. Srinivasan Muralidhar: You know this ‘blood libel’ is a word that they like to use. In fact I had to go online and see what blood libel was and it goes back to having religious connotations so it is anything but that. Justice Florence Mumba is 78 years old and has retired from the Supreme Court of Zambia. Mr. Sidot is 76 years old, and has spent 25-30 years in UN mechanisms, teaching international humanitarian law and humanitarian law. I am from India with 40 years of legal experience. We have absolutely nothing to gain by falsely accusing either the state of Israel or its soldiers. We are law persons who go strictly by what is before us in the form of evidence. And we are not dogmatic about it. We are not saying, “Oh, we are absolutely right. Nobody else can question us.” No. Even today, if there is something that Israel has, which contradicts our findings, by all means, share it with us, share it with the world. Let us look at it. Sidharth Bhatia: Nonetheless, Justice Murlidhar, what you have said about the findings is so distressing, but it is also very shocking and hard-hitting. Did some members within your committee have any objections to perhaps make it a little less stark in its language? Srinivasan Muralidhar: No, no actually we work a lot to temper the language. See, investigators felt very strongly about some of the evidence and they’ve seen this evidence not just once or twice.Let’s say there’s a video clip of the two boys picking firewood and being shot, right? We’ve referred to that in paragraph 38, that on November 29, 2025, two brothers aged 10 and 9 were killed in an Israeli drone strike near Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. The boys were gathering firewood for the wheelchair-bound father. When the strike occurred, Israeli security forces stated the soldiers spotted two suspects crossing the yellow line, acting suspiciously and approaching the forces, so a drone eliminated the immediate threat. This is an admission by the security forces. Now we could only go by the video footage. We don’t do that. We could only go by the testimony of that wheelchair-bound father. We don’t do that. So this one incident was corroborated by many other sources. Now the investigators have to look at it over and over again because we explained in detail the methodology in paragraphs 8 and 10. We do chrono-location, we do metadata extraction because it is very easy to morph you know images to put out fake news. We are very deeply conscious of all of that. We don’t want to be, you know, caught on the wrong foot in relying on a piece of evidence which is created. So we follow multiple ways of analysing evidence and we are making sure it all corroborates. Now when they have to see this again and again and again, it can be tremendously emotionally draining. So, whatever could be the rough draft, we three sit online and go over it line by line. So, there’s a lot of tempering of the language that happens. And as far as possible, language that fits the legal requirement, because the evidence has to then come together to demonstrate that the conclusion we’ve reached is strictly legal terms.Bodies of unidentified Palestinians returned from Israel as part of the ceasefire deal are buried in a mass grave in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025. Photo: PTI. Sidharth Bhatia: Nonetheless, to pick up your point about emotionally draining, it must have been quite exhausting and quite, as you said, emotional to see these incidents and you have not seen one or two or three, you have seen so many. You have actually put a figure and you have said 30% of the people who have been killed are children. That’s quite something that is really, really shocking. I mean, that’s all I can say. But how did you feel personally when you were looking at these images and this? Srinivasan Muralidhar: Yeah, you see, even for us, it’s not easy. We do look at criminal records. I must say that when I’m hearing a criminal appeal, and I was hearing a criminal appeal as a judge. I would have to look at all the photographs, the gory details of the stab wounds, etc. Sometimes the victim could be a tender baby. So, it is actually quite disturbing even at that stage to look at it. But then you see yourself somewhere from within because you have to bring in a professional approach. Likewise with doctors, if somebody’s scared of the sight of blood, we can’t possibly be a surgeon. Now there were three doctors who deposed before us in the oral hearings we conducted in Geneva this time. Anyone who’s interested can go on our UN commission’s website, and you will get the link for those oral hearings which took place on 17th June. These three are doctors who visited Gaza on two or three occasions and treated the babies who were brought in. And this is after 7th October 2023 when the airstrikes intensified. And two of them actually again broke down when they were recounting what they had seen in Gaza. So these are professionals, medical professionals who are otherwise not used to seeing large scale injuries on a daily basis in an emergency ward. You know, the scale and the intensity of this kind of an attack on very, very tender children and babies is something that even these doctors said was unprecedented for them. One of them said she was made to perform amputation on a very young child without anaesthesia and not just on one child but several children. She said that the screams of those babies and these young children are still harrowing. I’m still not able to reconcile myself to that. So, when you look at those depositions and we have to interact with those doctors, even for us, it was very deeply moving. And despite which I must say, it’s very important to document all of this for the future. And what can only be a reminder to persons like us, the three of us, is that the person’s actually undergoing it have undergone a far, far greater degree of tragedy. And we are only somewhere vicariously looking at it. And how was it to a 10-year-old who has lost his entire family, and today is supposedly the head of his family looking after some two-year-old and one-year old siblings? That tragedy, I think, unfolds on a daily basis in Gaza and through Palestine. And that is something that reminds us to say that those voices should reach the world at least. Sidharth Bhatia: I’m going to read a tiny bit from the report, Justice Murlidhar. “Israeli security forces have also used sexual violence against children as part of the collective shaming and oppression.” Now, you know, as you were just saying, it’s going to affect those children and you can just imagine. This will brutalise the survivors for the rest of their lives. I mean, it is not something that you can put past you. You’ve lost a home, perhaps your parents, perhaps all kinds of things, but also the fact that as a young child, you have been brutalised in this fashion… Srinivasan Muralidhar: Right. Yeah, we can’t expect them to grow into healthy adults at all. It’s a very deep psychological trauma that they’ve undergone. Apart from sexual gender-based violence, you know, the kind of sexual violence here is of multiple forms. It’s not just about gang rape, or a young boy being gang raped by Israeli soldiers. It’s about children getting stripped down to their briefs. They’re getting filmed that way. And that being uploaded on the net on social media handles by Israeli soldiers. This includes a girl who was stripped. So this public shaming, we call it public nudity, if you subject children to this kind of shaming, it’s actually a very deep psychological trauma. And we also talk of what we call the ‘occupied psyche’. If you permit me, let me just read out that ’cause the formulation I thought was aptly described the phenomenon. This is paragraph 365 of our report: “We say that mental harm has become intergenerational, producing a distinctive occupied psyche in which the freedom to play, imagine, hope, and develop an identity has been eroded. Israel’s occupation and control have functioned as long-term mechanisms of domination, subjugation, and oppression, thereby damaging memory, identity and hope across generations.” So they are actually deeply affecting the psyche of Palestinian children. They’re not going to be able to come out of it easily. On the other hand, you know, there are a section of children who are being encouraged to act violently. There are Palestinian children being encouraged to act violently by Hamas. This we have mentioned in paragraph four of our report of using children as combatants. You know, this is another convention that we have internationally on child soldiers. Now, we don’t have the time or the resources to go into any aspect deeply, so we explained how this will require further investigation. Maybe this commission will pick it up as a theme, but all around you you find children are being targeted and subjected to severe trauma and they are not going to be able to come out as healthy adults at all. Forget that, whether they will have a healthy childhood is seriously in doubt because this report points out that 97% of the schools in Gaza are completely destroyed. No Palestinian child has been able to have a formal education in the last three years. Where a child should be sitting in a classroom, the child is running around looking for firewood for food, for some form of survival. A child is today polishing shoes to earn a living when he should be studying to be an engineer or a doctor. So this is a sad state of affairs. And you know, this is something I had not had time or occasion to share in other channels. Gaza City had the highest literacy rate even as recently as 2021. You target a place like that to destroy all its schools? The message is so clear. So it is very, very unfortunate when you look at the future of the surviving children, whether at all they will have a healthy childhood and would come out through it to become healthy adults.Palestinians carry plastic jerrycans filled with water amid stormy weather at a displacement camp in Gaza City, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. Photo: AP/PTI.Sidharth Bhatia: I was going to come to that actually, that if the schools and universities have been destroyed, assuming the bombing completely stops and assuming that things start getting built up again., and society starts reconstructing itself, will the children have schools to go to? It looks like the campaign was to completely demolish the very basis of Palestinian society. Srinivasan Muralidhar: So that is correct, correct. This is another phenomenon. People ask me, is this also part of the genocide? See, one of the elements of genocide is preventing childbirths. So, here, the target is reproductive health also. So, pregnant mothers are the target, ambulances are the target. So pregnant mothers don’t go to deliver in time, there’s no hospital to go for a delivery. There are many instances of stillbirths. There are many instances of underweight, low weight worse. A baby has been born which weighs just 900 grams. So here we are talking of a very systematic, organised way of ensuring, living children are killed, children are not allowed to be born, children who are born will not be allowed to survive.There is a category the doctors have had to devise, it’s called WSC NSF – wounded child with no surviving family. A large number of babies were brought into the hospital and have no surviving family members. Over 58,000 Palestinian children have been orphaned in the period of two years between 7th October 2023 and 7th October 2025. Now, Israel bombs the orphanages. So, it is so clear and I may be repeating myself, but there are numerous instances where an adult is holding a child, and the child is killed, even though the adult is unarmed. A 10-day-old breastfeeding baby boy was shot through the head. The mother is unhurt. So, there can be no doubt that these quadcopters drones pre-fitted with thermal imaging cameras are designed to target specifically children. And Israeli soldiers have admitted to doing this on television cameras. They’ve uploaded messages on social media. They filmed themselves doing all of this. So, this is a different kind of evidence that we have from the versions of the perpetrators themselves. And in that 18 page rebuttal, which I referred to, which Israeli state issued after this report was released in the public domain, they have not denied, you know, normally you find today, somebody’s videoclip has put on the public domain, that person will say, oh, this is taken out of context. This is not what was intended to be said. Oh, this is morphed. It’s been lifted from somewhere else. Israel does not do any of that. All it accuses is of doing is that giving Hamas a clean chit or relying on evidence that Hamas is being as both of which is untrue. And it says that Hamas is using children as shields and that is something that we have missed. Well, I want to clarify here, the instances that we have picked up are where children have been killed, and where children were involved in no hostilities whatsoever. A 10-day old baby breastfeeding on his mother is not involved in any hostility. He’s not being used as a shield by Hamas. A child who’s chasing the food aid truck, and desperately trying to get some food for his family and who’s been shot is not involved in hostility. A child walking along with her or his parents and getting killed, a child holding a white flag and getting killed. These are not children who are involved in hostilities. Children who are playing outside their house are being shot. So, to say that these are all children who are used as shields by Hamas, it’s completely wrong, it’s misleading. And this commission takes its work so seriously that we’re not going to be lightly making these conclusions unless we are on very sure footing. Sidharth Bhatia: Did any Israeli soldier come forward, did a traumatised Israeli soldier come forward to give any kind of evidence at all? Srinivasan Muralidhar: They will not be permitted to say anything. This is the strategy of it. Sidharth Bhatia: No, I understand that they’re not allowed to…Srinivasan Muralidhar: Yeah, we haven’t, unfortunately, had any such soldier yet come forward. It could happen in the future. You’re right. I remember how those veterans of the Vietnam War, even the Iraq War, came back home and years later disclosed to everyone what they underwent and how they felt when they were asked to do things that they consciously didn’t permit. So this probably when they are brought to trial, they might speak. We’re hoping that they will. Like I said, maybe this is the time to share with you that detail. see in paragraph 356 of a report, we’ve listed out 11 divisions, battalions and units of the Israeli defence forces and we have indicated which battalion or division was involved in which crime, including the incidents and the dates. Now this commission has the details of the names of those individual soldiers who constituted that battalion unit, We’ve not disclosed that for good reason. Now any member state, any country, anywhere in the world, which is a treaty party to the Geneva Convention or to international human rights law – by which I mean the UN’s the Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the Child Rights Convention – including India, have also ratified these conventions. Then there is a Rome Statute. So, three branches of law. If these countries are treaty parties, they are under an obligation to carry forth both investigations and then subsequent prosecutions of the crimes committed and of the violations committed by these bodies of international human rights and humanitarian law. So, to give you an example, there are over 12,000 US nationals today serving the Israel Defence Forces, around 8,000 Russian, 6,000 French, over 4,000 British, and over 700 Australian. They are all parties to the treaties and conventions. When these nationals get back to their countries, these countries can initiate investigation against those individual soldiers for the role played by them in these atrocities that we have listed. And if they need to use the evidence we’ve gathered, it is in the mandate of this commission to share the evidence it has with those authorities. That process, your viewership should know, has already begun. In countries now, prosecution have begun against some of the soldiers who are involved in these atrocities. And the commission has been requested and the commissioners in the process are sharing information with those countries. This is to say that they have obligations to member states apart from the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court, to institute proceedings against errant and guilty soldiers who have been found to have committed the war crimes, against humanity, or genocide, which we have spoken of.Mourners carry the body of Ahmed Hamdan Tabasha, a Palestinian policeman killed in an Israeli military strike, during his funeral at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, March 22, 2026. Photo: AP/Abdel Kareem Hana.Sidharth Bhatia: You must be aware of the case of one Israeli soldier who was holidaying in India, who was alleged to have actually taken part in an act of killing. And an NGO, or a civil society group, based in London started saying that India should investigate or arrest him. But nothing came of it. Is that tenable at all? Srinivasan Muralidhar: See, this is why when we made presentations to the European Union, we made presentations to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, we made a presentation to the Security Council. Many of them explained it away, saying political compulsions. Now, this is actually unacceptable. You can’t, on the one hand, be a ratifying party to a multilateral treaty, which requires you to contact yourself in a certain way. And when it comes to reckoning, the real moment comes to test, you shrug your shoulders and say, ‘What can be done?’ This is unacceptable and this will set a bad precedent. I was also told that many of our countries and including India have a vested interest in ensuring that these international law mechanisms, whether it’s the ICJ or the ICC or the exercise of universal jurisdiction by our domestic force, have a vital interest in seeing that these things work. You know when Kulbhushan Jadhav was, according to us, wrongly arrested by Pakistan and we were able to demonstrate that he had been denied a fair trial, we went before the International Court of Justice, if you remember Mr. Harish Salve appeared for us and we got an order from the international court of justice, agreeing with our point of view. And Pakistan, which participated in the proceedings was obliged to comply with the directions of the ICJ as listed out in that judgment. This is how we utilise the international mechanisms. We relied on Geneva Conventions. We relied on international human rights law. So, it is in our interest to say that it is not only for our own interests, but for any other countries’ interests too, like South Africa which instituted proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice. Those proceedings were telecast live, we saw what brilliant arguments were put forth, not just by South Africa, but so many other countries before the ICJ. Israel participated, three provisional orders have been given by the ICJ. All three orders have been violated with impunity by Israel, which is continuing with its airstrike, even after the so-called ceasefire of October 7, 2025. Now all of us as countries, member parties to the United Nations, how can we afford to just keep quiet about it? And pretend that it’s all hunky-dory, it’s all normal? We must be able to say, ‘We may have relations with you, but we will not accept your violation of the accepted manner of dealing with our country’s interstate problems.’ The country’s violations of international human rights law, we all have invested interest in, thus making sure that these mechanisms are allowed to work effectively. Sidharth Bhatia: You said a little while earlier of the political compulsions when you spoke in front of the European Union. And the Security Council. Is it correct to infer from this that there are countries around the world which have been shocked by this but have not been able to do anything? Srinivasan Muralidhar: Not only that, you know, there’s something happening here which we must acknowledge, particularly in the context of the same. Donald J. Trump put forth a Gaza Peace Plan. We took it to the Security Council. Now two of the countries which vetoed it were Russia and China. But it got the endorsement of the Security Council. Now that Board of Peace has actually done nothing except facilitate the exchange of hostages. It is supposed – in its peace plan which according to me is, of course, incomplete and ahistorical – to ensure lasting peace in Gaza. It is supposed to ensure that humanitarian aid comes into Gaza in good measure. And it submits a report in May, 2026 to the Security Council and says, “Situation in Gaza has vastly improved.” We have said it in a press conference in the UN and I’m repeating it, it’s anything but true. Gaza is in a very, very dire situation and humanitarian aid is trickling in, not in great measure as the Board of Peace claims. This Board of Peace has about 39 countries on it. And many of them belong to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation like Jordan, Egypt, Turkiye and Pakistan. But what is it doing? It has not even convened a meeting to consider reports given by bodies including ours. We can tell them what the ground reality is. It’s not as if they would be unaware, but they can’t make a claim contrary to the ground reality. A man walks past graves containing the bodies of unidentified Palestinians returned from Israel as part of the ceasefire deal during their burial in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. Photo: AP/PTI.So when we made a presentation to the Security Council, of course, the US and Russia did not participate in those delegations. But the other P3 members, that is China, UK, and France participated, and the 10 other countries, which are today constituting the Security Council, also participated. They asked us what we think they should do. So I gave the suggestion – why didn’t you convene in a meeting of this Board of Peace? Why don’t you allow us to make a presentation before the Board of Peace? And persuade the Board of Peace to get its act together and actually permit humanitarian aid into Gaza in the manner it should be reaching Gaza, including these critical areas? No child should die of salvation, no child should die of medical emergency needs. And there should be a reconstruction of the schools, of the colleges, of the shelters. So that, you know, every child can have a reasonably healthy childhood. Now this can’t wait for a court order or an order of the ICJ or the ICC. It has to happen today. This is one suggestion we gave, the other suggestion of course, was that all of us as countries should prevail on Israel to say whatever may be your compulsions, your campaign, whatever, a child in Palestine, she should not be made to bear the brunt of these hostilities. You can’t afford to have children dying of starvation. You know, more than 151 children have died of malnourishment in Palestine. This is unacceptable; we are in 2026. And with the whole world watching, how can we allow this to happen? Children are not being allowed to be evacuated from Gaza to the West Bank where the medical facilities are better. Israel prevents that. And so, all children and adults who need any urgent medical treatment are piled up at the Rafah border. And if 150 people have to be evacuated on a daily basis, Israel is not even allowing 10 to be evacuated. There are countries waiting to take these people for medical treatment. Israel is not allowing that to them. So as member states of the United Nations, if you don’t do these basic things, which the international humanitarian law requires us to do, then why have the Geneva Convention which forms the basis for this entire edifice of the international humanitarian law? We ask the Swiss members of parliament, you know, you should be concerned that this convention is called the Geneva Convention. There are four Geneva Conventions and there are some additional protocols. They’re all being violated at great impunity by Israel. You should be raising noise in front of the United Nations saying, ‘How can we allow this to be violated with such impunity?’ So, we are hoping that the swell of public opinion on the ground is quite contrary to this conduct of the United Nations. The Flotilla activists are telling us that whether our countries want to do it or not, we are going to stand up to be counted and be with the Palestinian people when it mattered. And that swell of public opinion, we are hoping, will increase with a report like this and put pressure on the respective member states to behave differently at least on this official. Sidharth Bhatia: You know, I was, while you were talking about the other countries and the Geneva Convention, I was recalling that for decades, I think right from independence and after the 50s, for decades, India has been a supporter of Palestine. We have stood by them, we have made it clear that we stand by them. And in the last few years, we have tilted, more than tilted, towards Israel. So, where do you think India fits into all this? Because you’re talking about multilateral organizations, but let’s talk about our own country. Where do you think India fits into this? Srinivasan Muralidhar: See India is keeping silent… Sidharth Bhatia: I’m sorry, let me conclude. You are an Indian judge, you know the Indian system. Where do you think we stand? Srinivasan Muralidhar: See, we can’t afford to keep silent. India, we should recall, was at the high table when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted. One of our eminent Constituent Assembly members, Hansa Mehta, made a very significant contribution to the framing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She was the one who suggested that it should say ‘human’ and not ‘person.’A yellow block demarcating the “Yellow Line,” which has separated the Gaza Strip’s Israeli-held and Palestinian zones since the October ceasefire, is visible in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip during searching for the remains of hostages, Monday, Dec. 1, 2025. Phoot: AP.We have a long history. We have been at the forefront of many international human rights movements, and we have a vested interest. Again, I want to repeat that we should not be found wanting in upholding these eternal values, which form the very basis of international human rights, the values of human dignity and human liberty, which also form the fundamental constitutional values in our Indian constitution.So, acting contrary to these values, when we stand up for the rights of the Palestinian people, particularly Palestinian children, India has not backtracked from its official stance that it stands with the Palestinian people and supports the two-state solution of Israel and Palestine.People should also realise that one origin of all of this is the 1947 UN resolution, which talks of the creation of two states, the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. That was the very basis of the formation of the State of Israel.So India cannot afford to ignore history. India cannot afford to ignore its own position in the international arena. I’m sure India would want to be seen as a country that stands for eternal human values and for upholding the norms of international human rights law and international humanitarian law.This is the time for India to say that it reaffirms its faith in these mechanisms. With this, India should seriously introspect and ask itself: with this level of evidence having come forth on the atrocities against Palestinian children, does India want to take a stand at all or not? This is a moment of reckoning.Again, let people not say, “Okay, what about other countries?” I’m saying it’s equally true of every other country. You asked me about India, and as an Indian, this is the expectation I have of my country. I don’t want it to be found wanting in this.Every other country has an equal responsibility in this regard. Nothing happens singularly. Many countries are in trade deals with Israel. Many countries are supplying arms to Israel, which includes India. There have been calls for ceasing all such arms supplies, particularly if these arms are going to be used to commit these kinds of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against the Palestinian people.This is the time when we should take a call. We should make clear what our stand is. Sidharth Bhatia: And why are we not doing that? Srinivasan Muralidhar: This is a question that we need to ask. We need to get a response. Sidharth Bhatia: So what next for the commission? You said it’s an ongoing thing. Srinivasan Muralidhar: So we are submitting the report of state actors in the General Assembly in October. And then we are already in discussions about the topics and themes we’ll be working on in 2027. There’s a lot of things to do, but I can’t say earlier since the US is closing the financial tab and China makes its financial contribution so late that you can’t plan enough. So we’re hoping that all that changes because as it stands now, we are supposed to have a staff of 26. We have a staff of 12 and they are also on contractual basis and it’s all precarious. We don’t know if the UN has money to extend their contracts. This means that they have a team of completely dedicated professionals who are going beyond the call of duty. So if we are allowed to function, then probably there are several other topics that we pick up for being worked on and the mandate of this commission will definitely continue. The spirit is very good and we are very clear that this kind of a documentation of the violations is very important for the future of humanity and future of humankind and some generation of right-thinking people somewhere down the line will pick it up and ensure that justice is done to the Palestinians.Sidharth Bhatia: Thank you, Justice Srinivasan Muralidhar for joining us and discussing your comprehensive report, documentation, and a record of what has happened in Gaza. Srinivasan Muralidhar: Thank you, Sidharth. It’s not only me writing it, it’s the whole team that works on it. I have my talk with commissioners. And may I add this, justice is also done to the Israeli citizens, the victims of Hamas violence against the Israelis. This is something, again, I repeat, again and again. We are not interested in ignoring any victim. We’re for justice for every victim, whether the victim is an Israeli citizen or a Palestinian or any other person. Sidharth Bhatia: What little I’ve seen is shocking but one hopes that the consciousness of many countries is shaken. It is clear that among those who will read it – those younger generations who will read it – it will spread because you’ve been talking about it. It is clear that this will have an effect on people. So I think it’s great documentation, a documentation of record. One looks forward to your next report also. Thank you for writing this. That was Justice Srinivasan Muralidhar talking about the UN Commission of Inquiry’s report that gives a stark view of the torture and killings of the children of Palestine. We will be back again next week with another guest on The Wire Talks. Till then from me, Sidharth Bhatia, and the rest of the team, goodbye.