A member of the United Nations commission that accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza has acknowledged that the panel did not independently verify a key statistic concerning Palestinian civilian deaths, raising fresh questions about the evidence used to support its highly controversial findings.
Chris Sidoti, an Australian jurist serving on the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Israel and the Palestinians, made the admission during a public discussion at Caulfield Hebrew Congregation, an Orthodox synagogue in Melbourne, where he faced questions from American military law expert Brian Cox and members of the audience.
The exchange focused on the commission’s conclusion that Israel had committed genocide during its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, an allegation the Israeli government has repeatedly and emphatically rejected.
Sidoti acknowledged that the commission had relied on a comparatively low evidentiary threshold in reaching its conclusions and stressed that the panel was an investigative body rather than a judicial institution empowered to determine criminal guilt.
He also conceded that the commission had not independently established the accuracy of a widely circulated claim that 83% of Palestinians killed during the fighting were civilians.
The discussion exposed a central disagreement over the legal requirements for establishing genocide, particularly the need to demonstrate that a government or military acted with the specific intention of destroying a protected national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Sidoti acknowledged that establishing genocidal intent involves “a very, very high test,” which he described as “higher than the criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt.”
Nevertheless, he argued that Israel’s stated objective of eliminating Hamas did not necessarily rule out the possibility that its military campaign could also constitute genocide.
According to Sidoti, “if we accept that the goal of the Israeli authorities in Gaza has been the destruction of Hamas, that does not preclude the possibility of genocide being the strategy by which their goal is going to be attained.”
His argument was that a military operation directed against a terrorist organization could still involve genocidal conduct if the methods employed were intended to destroy a protected population, in whole or in part.
Israel has consistently maintained that its military operations were directed against Hamas following the terrorist organization’s October 7, 2023, massacre and that it did not pursue the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population.
Sidoti explained that the commission had based its conclusions on what it considered “reasonable grounds,” acknowledging that this was “not a high standard.”
“We are not a court,” he told attendees. “We are not even prosecutors. We are an investigative body.”
The distinction is particularly significant because the 1948 Genocide Convention requires proof of a specific intent to destroy a protected group, known in legal terminology as dolus specialis. The existence of civilian casualties, even on a large scale, does not by itself establish that particular intent.
The controversy has been sharpened by comments from Navi Pillay, the commission’s previous chairwoman, who offered a markedly different description of the panel’s investigative procedures.
Pillay, a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights who was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize last week, told a German newspaper that the commission “essentially worked like a court” and operated with “all the instruments of the separation of powers.”
She also maintained that “Every fact was verified by us,” an assertion that appeared difficult to reconcile with Sidoti’s acknowledgment that at least one significant statistic had not been independently checked.
Pillay received the Nobel Peace Prize on October 9 in recognition of her decades of work promoting international law and accountability for serious human rights violations. Her selection drew criticism from Israel, which has accused the commission she chaired of anti-Israel bias.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, however, praised her contributions to international justice, including her work on international criminal tribunals and her efforts to strengthen the rule of law.
Another disagreement raised during the Melbourne event concerned the commission’s interpretation of proceedings before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The U.N. panel had previously asserted that the court “put all States on notice of the plausibility of the State of Israel committing genocide.”
Cox challenged that characterization by playing an audio recording of Joan Donoghue, who served as president of the International Court of Justice when it issued provisional measures in the genocide case brought against Israel by South Africa.
In the recording, Donoghue explained that the court had not determined that the allegation of genocide itself was plausible, contrary to how its preliminary decision had frequently been portrayed.
The court’s provisional-measures ruling addressed the plausibility of certain rights claimed under the Genocide Convention and the need to protect those rights while the case proceeded. It did not establish that Israel had committed genocide.
Sidoti nevertheless defended the commission’s description of the ruling.
“Our paragraph is entirely consistent with then-President Donoghue’s comments,” he told the audience.
The debate then turned to the methods the commission used to gather and evaluate evidence.
Sidoti insisted that the investigators did “not come to conclusions unless we ourselves have conducted an investigation.”
An audience member challenged that assertion by raising the commission’s use of a claim that 83% of Palestinians killed in Gaza were civilians.
The commission had cited the figure in connection with its allegation that Israeli forces were deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians. However, the statistic has been disputed, including over the underlying methodology used to distinguish civilians from combatants.
Asked whether the commission had independently confirmed the percentage, Sidoti acknowledged that it had not.
“No. We didn’t, because we don’t have that information,” he replied. “We literally don’t know, nor does the IDF know.”
The exchange was particularly significant because the civilian casualty rate had been presented as part of the evidence supporting the commission’s conclusions about Israel’s conduct during the war.
The Melbourne event, held October 8 before a packed audience at Caulfield Hebrew Congregation, brought together Sidoti and Cox for a public examination of the commission’s findings. Cox, a former professor of international law at Cornell University and a senior fellow at Canada’s Macdonald-Laurier Institute, has been a prominent critic of the legal reasoning underlying the genocide allegations.
Organizers reported that the event’s livestream was disrupted during the first half of the program by what appeared to be a coordinated denial-of-service attack involving hundreds of automated connections. The broadcast was restored for the second half.
The gathering was organized by several groups, including ABC Watch, the Australian Jewish Association, Allies for a Strong Australia and The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation. Organizers said the event had not been widely publicized beforehand because of security concerns, and attendees were screened individually.
Sidoti’s acknowledgment that the commission had not verified the 83% figure does not, by itself, establish that all of the panel’s findings were unsupported. It does, however, raise questions about how the commission distinguished independently established facts from outside estimates when reaching its conclusions.
The commission’s September 2025 report had accused Israel of committing four categories of genocidal acts in Gaza and asserted that Israeli authorities possessed the specific intent required under the Genocide Convention. Israel rejected those conclusions, maintaining that its military campaign was directed against Hamas and that its forces operated under the laws of armed conflict.
The report also accused senior Israeli officials of incitement to genocide, allegations that Israeli authorities have likewise denied.
The competing accounts of the commission’s investigative methods now leave a pointed question about the evidentiary foundation of its conclusions, particularly in light of Pillay’s insistence that every fact had been verified and Sidoti’s admission that the commission lacked the information necessary to independently confirm a prominent civilian casualty statistic.