ON TUESDAY the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, issued a damning report that found that the Zionist regime has deliberately and intentionally targeted Palestinian children.
The deliberate policy of intentionally targeting children, including after the so-called ceasefire came into effect in October 2025, is a clear case of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes the report found.
The accusations that the Israeli regime is committing genocide is not new. Numerous reports from independent commissions of the UN have levelled and it follows a report by UNICEF (the independent UN children agency) which said that 265 children have been killed since the ceasefire.
UNICEF reported that children have been shot, bombed, struck by quadcopters and have been killed while in tents, schools and while playing football or fishing.
Last September, the commission reported that a previous investigation had found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.
It also found that Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu along with other Zionist officials had been guilty of actively inciting these acts. Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.
What is new in this report is the finding that the key element in targeting Palestinian children is a deliberate strategy by the Zionist state to completely wipe out the Palestinians from Gaza.
The report said that targeting Palestinian children, inflicting death and severe bodily harm on hundreds of thousands of them, was part of a ‘deliberate strategy to destroy the future of Palestinians in Gaza’.
This latest damning report from the UN independent commission throws a spotlight on the leadership of the Labour Party following the resignation of Keir Starmer this week.
Starmer was unfailing in his support for Israel to the extent of waging war through the courts on support for Palestinian’s right to fight the Zionist occupiers.
While publicly issuing limp calls for a peaceful solution, the Labour government continued to supply military components to the Israeli military. Starmer famously refused to admit that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza saying the term was ‘unhelpful’.
Starmer’s gone, brought down in no small measure by the hatred of millions of workers and youth over his support for the genocidal Zionist regime.
Andy Burnham, the leading favourite to take over from Starmer, has a record on imperialist war in the Middle East. As a Labour MP in 2003 he voted in favour of the illegal invasion of Iraq by Tony Blair’s Labour government.
Since 2015 Burnham has been a member of the Labour Friends of Israel and during his election campaign for the Labour leadership in the same year he called the campaign to boycott Israeli goods and services ‘spiteful’ and praised the Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the establishment of the Israeli state through terror.
At the start of Israel’s genocidal war, Burnham was quick to call for a ceasefire, while backing Israel’s right to defend itself. During the course of the war to eradicate Palestinians from Gaza, Burnham has been involved in various ‘humanitarian’ calls to end the suffering in the Strip while calling for the ‘two state solution’, despite the fact that this has long been buried.
However, when asked directly by the Guardian paper before the by-election whether Israel has committed genocide Burnham refused to answer saying: ‘I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester’.
Burnham claimed he was unable to judge from Manchester whether genocide is being committed in Gaza and the occupied territories, but the working class and youth are in no doubt and see that Burnham is just another Labour opportunist with no principles except to serve the interests of imperialism.
Burnham will continue the complicity of the Labour government with Zionist genocide.
The working class must act by forcing the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Labour government replacing it with a workers government.
A workers government that will give all support required for the victory of the Palestinian revolution and the establishment of the independent state of Palestine!