Trigger warning: Contains graphic descriptions of violence against children.

You have seen the headlines on Gaza so many times they have stopped landing. That numbness is exactly what this interview is built to break.

Former Orissa High Court Chief Justice S Muralidhar spent nine months chairing the UN’s Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Gaza genocide and Israel’s targeting of Palestinian children. In this conversation with Newslaundry’s Manisha Pande, he explains how the case was built – through eyewitness testimonies cross-checked against satellite imagery, geolocation analysis and metadata extraction, to rule out anything staged or fake. Crucially, much of the most damning evidence came from Israeli soldiers themselves, with footage they filmed and posted, which they have never been able to deny.

What emerged, he says, fit legal categories of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes with a clarity he had never encountered in decades of human rights law. The report names specific army brigades and divisions, with individual soldiers’ identities held in reserve for future prosecution.

He describes a pattern doctors call WCNSF – wounded child, no surviving family. Infants amputated without anesthesia while parents hold down their screaming children. A breastfeeding baby shot precisely through the skull, while the mother is left untouched. An ambulance targeted. Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi’s own words: “every child born there is already a terrorist from the moment of his birth”.

But Justice Muralidhar is candid about how difficult real accountability will be. 

Israel refuses to engage with the commission, denies it access to Gaza, and has ignored three ICJ orders with impunity. He points to one path forward: over 12,000 US nationals and thousands of British, French, German and Russian citizens serving in the Israeli military could be prosecuted in their own countries under universal jurisdiction, using evidence this commission has already gathered.

He also addresses India and Indians even as the Indian government deepens ties with Israel. As a country party to the Geneva Conventions and the Child Rights Convention, India – like every nation supplying arms to Israel – bears a responsibility to stop, or risk being complicit in these crimes, he says.

What about the Gaza peace plan touted by Donald Trump? 

“Despite this board of peace, the Gaza peace plan, nothing actually is being respected by Israel. So if 100 children need to be evacuated they'll decide that today only five will be allowed to leave. So many children are dying for want of medical relief at the Rafah border and you know you are not able to document it accurately.”

Justice Muralidhar also points to hope beyond the law: Israeli civil society groups risking backlash to share testimony, foreign activists on flotillas repeatedly attempting to break the blockade despite being turned back, and the words of a 13-year-old boy who watched his mother and sisters killed – and still says he wants to grow up to help others. It’s this, Justice Muralidhar says, that the world cannot afford to look away from. “When we routinise this scale of violence, we fail as human beings.”

This is a difficult watch. It is meant to be.

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