Iran urges ICC to hold Israel accountable for Gaza genocide

Iran’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Zahra Ershadi made the remarks in New York on Thursday. She was speaking before the 22nd Session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that created the court.

“A whole nation that has been subject to oppressive occupation for more than 75 years is on the verge of genocide and extermination,” she said, referring to the Palestinian nation.

“Every day that passes without accountability, innocent civilians, including children and women, are being killed and slaughtered, with their lands being confiscated and their homes getting destroyed,” the envoy noted.

Ershadi called the attention of the tribunal to the Israeli regime’s October 7-present war on Gaza that has killed upwards of 17,200 people and injured more than 45,000 others. Over 7,000 people are missing under the rubble, presumably dead, since the regime launched the war — in response to an operation staged by the territory’s Resistance outfit, she said.

“Half of the enclave is leveled, with no place being spared. Hospitals, mosques, churches, schools, and other purely civilian infrastructures have not been immune, with many hundreds of people being brutally slaughtered inside these places. In fact, no quarter is given.”

According to the envoy, the atrocities committed during the past weeks across the coastal sliver, include all the constituting elements of the most serious crimes, namely genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

The regime has also ramped up its aggression across the West Bank, killing hundreds of others across the occupied territory since the day when it started bringing Gaza under the unrelenting war.

She advised that the court apply the same level of attention, activity, and resources it applies to other situations, to the situation in Palestine, to avoid perceptions of double standards and selective justice, and to refuse judicial politicization of the proceedings.

The Iranian official also took to task the Israeli regime’s supporters and enablers for their emboldening the occupying regime “to continue its atrocity crimes with an absolute sense of comfort.”

The United States, the regime’s foremost Western ally, has supplied it with more than 10,000 tons of military equipment since the beginning of the Gaza war.

Defending Tel Aviv’s atrocities as an alleged means of self-defense, Washington has also been consistently using its veto power against the United Nations Security Council resolutions that would urge the implementation of a ceasefire in the besieged Palestinian territory.