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The South African Communist Party (SACP) welcomes the finding by the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry that there are clear signs and evidence that the apartheid Israeli settler regime is committing the crime of genocide in Gaza.

The report, delivered on 16 September 2025, following the Commission’s investigation of events on and since 7 October 2023, states categorically that the Zionist Israeli settler regime committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

In line with the Commission’s emphatic directive that all states are under a legal obligation to use all means reasonably available to stop the genocide in Gaza, the SACP reiterates its call for the international isolation of apartheid Israel and the prosecution of all those individuals involved in perpetrating the genocide. Such criminal prosecutions must also include United States leaders for their active military, political and propaganda support for the Israeli regime, among many other forms of support.

The UN Commission’s report comes only a few days after the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted on 12 September in support of the declaration for the affirming of a Palestinian state that is unencumbered by any occupying colonial power. The Israeli regime has violated every directive delivered by the International Court of Justice in 2024, including that Israel must take measures to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza, prevent and punish incitement to genocide, allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and take more measures to protect Palestinians. In furtherance of its ethnic cleansing policy, the apartheid Israeli regime has murdered about 66,000 people in Gaza since 7 October 2023. Thousands more remain under the rubble and feared dead as the Israeli genocidal machine continues to bomb Gaza.

In solidarity with the people of Palestine, the SACP calls upon the working class and justice loving people across the world to actively defend the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination and national sovereignty, for the end of the occupation. We further make the call to governments to use every material necessary to permanently halt the occupation of Palestine.

Issued by South African Communist Party