Key Takeaways:
- UN COI commissioners lack military or ballistics expertise, and their report claiming the IDF targeted minors shows no evidence of consultation with forensic or weapons specialists. Instead, it relies on highly speculative interpretations of wounds and photos to assign origin, means, and malicious intent.
- Through an unclear process, the commissioners are able to determine exactly what weapons and projectiles are used in incidents. They don’t explain their investigative process, yet seem certain and specific about their findings.
- UN COI always blames Israel, yet it isn’t clear how they excluded other actors, such as Hamas, from suspicion.
News outlets and nonprofit organizations were quick to adopt the findings of the June 18 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (COI) report, alleging that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deliberately targeted Gazan children as part of a genocidal strategy during the October 7 War, yet few scrutinized how the commissioners came to their conclusion. A review of the report showed a flawed methodology that divined the origin, means, and intent of gunfire from gunshots and photographs of bullets.
The three commissioners, based on the biographies available on the COI website, do not seem to have any military or forensic expertise. While, according to the report, the commissioners consulted with forensic pathologists and doctors, it does not appear that they consulted with other relevant experts to inform their conclusions. Even if they had, the scant evidence seems insufficient for even a seasoned expert to leverage to reach such verdicts.
COI Divines Intent From Gunshots
Much of the report’s argumentation rests on case studies and details about how snipers deliberately targeted Gazan children. The evidence that children were deliberately shot was derived from the tragedy that they were shot at all.
The COI report states that the “killing of a child from a single gunshot wound indicates a high degree of precision in the use of force, suggesting that the shot was carefully aimed rather than incidental or the result of indiscriminate fire,” yet the writers do not explain how they came to this conclusion to exclude all other possibilities. The unfortunate reality of a warzone is that there is no shortage of projectiles hurtling through the air, be they fired by Hamas or the IDF. A single round fired in a warzone could just as reasonably be a stray bullet that traveled from far off, one of many in an exchange of fire between combatants, a mistake, or even the result of a child playing with an abandoned weapon. A single wound does not mean a single shot was fired, as bursts of fire can spread across an area, with that area of effect expanding with distance. Yet somehow in the COI’s eyes, not only is the source of the round always the IDF, but their intent is always deliberate and malicious.
The commissioners consulted with anonymous doctors who were able to make similar inferences. A great degree of information can be gleaned from a gunshot by a medical professional, but it is doubtful that the wound can be used to determine intent. Yet those involved in the report were able to do just that.
“Based on the clustering of injuries and the targeted body parts, I assess that the Israeli soldiers have been deliberately shooting teenage boys in a game of target practice – a different body part being targeted on different days… There is a very clear pattern that suggest this is a deliberate aiming of different body parts [of children],” an anonymous doctor told the Commission.
A wound does not contain the signature of who exactly pulled the trigger. Nor does it give insight into what the shooter was actually aiming at — bullets do not always hit their mark. Stray rounds travel long distances even in urban environments. A precise marksman and a mistaken sharpshooter produce the same wounds when they hit a body.
The doctor demonstrated the same impossible insight held by the commissioners, able to determine from wounds and their locations on the body the intent. More than this, the doctor was able to scry the context of the motive, that it was a game. The forensic process is unexplained because it is highly speculative.
Forensic Leaps to Determine the Means
The weapons used to cause these wounds invariably belong to Israelis, if the report is to be believed blindly. Yet even a cursory read of the report does not yield an explanation of how the commissioners reached a conclusion as to which weapons were used.
In two unsourced stories, a Gazan boy holding a white flag was reportedly shot and killed, and in a December 10, 2024 story, another boy was wounded in the Bureij area. In both instances, the Commission assessed that the children were struck by .338 Lapua Magnum bullets fired by Israeli sniper rifles. There was little in the way of explanation as to how the commissioners made the determination about the caliber of the offending projectile. In one of the incidents, the report detailed that a projectile three centimeters long was removed from the victim. Yet there are several calibers of bullets used by modern militaries that are about that size, and their appearance after striking their target could be impacted by a variety of factors. Bullets often deform or fragment when striking an object, making identification difficult. Yet the forensic process in which those challenges were overcome was not explained, nor was it explained whether experts were consulted.
In an August 2024 incident in which a Gazan girl was wounded, the commission viewed a picture of the bullet and concluded that it was 7.62x51mm munition. A discerning eye could identify the difference between a 7.62x51mm round and the 7.62×39 mm rounds more commonly used by firearms favored by Gazan terrorists, but the commissioners did not explain their certainty. Nor did they explain the process for confirming that the 7.62x51mm round was fired from an Israeli weapon, given the firearms capable of discharging such a round are not limited from Hamas use. The only corroborating elements of the story are the testimonies of the parents.
Not only was the Commission able to settle on a caliber of ammunition more likely to be used by Israeli forces, but they were also somehow able to specify which weapon type was used. In the case of the two boys, the COI specified that the bullets were fired by IWI Dan sniper rifles. It is not clear how the Commission was able to come to that degree of exactness. The mentioned rifles are not the only .338 chambering sniper rifles used by the Israeli military. The Barak model H-S Precision Pro 2000 HTR also uses .338 Lapua Magnum cartridges.
Drawing Targets Around the Outcome
In a sterile crime scene, which Gaza is not, it is possible to trace the ballistic trajectory of a bullet, just as it is possible to determine the type of bullet and weapon to which it belonged. Yet this is not explicitly what happened in the report. With an Israeli bullet and weapon determined through a dubious process, the proximity of any Israeli forces was enough for the commissioners to accuse them of war crimes and murder. In the case study section, the COI would note that an incident happened, and a unit was operating in the area. There was no further analysis to develop the connection between the two, but with those two elements established, the commission was able to explain in the “conclusions” section of the report that it had “concluded on reasonable grounds” that the specific units were responsible.
There could be no other culprit — Based on the report, the IDF is the only actor in the Gaza Strip. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, criminal gangs, armed clans, and a host of other factions in the strip are absent from the report. At no point does the Commission exclude these actors from suspicion in a sufficient manner. Somehow, Hamas is the only military force that has been able to avoid friendly fire and mistakes on the battlefield.
If there was a forensic method that was used by the COI, it should be explained, otherwise the trajectory of the information suggests that the commissioners worked backward from a predetermined outcome. The fixation on specific weapon platforms and calibers to determine that Israel is responsible is odd without them being featured as part of some express forensic process. The specificity can be explained by the Commission working backwards — If the culprit had to be Israeli, then they would have had to be using an Israeli weapon, and then a specific caliber of bullet would have necessarily been used. The inclusion of sniper rifles in a story conveys a sense of accuracy and intent in the mind of the reader, who has been primed to receive the narrative device after a lifetime diet of action films. Indeed, often the COI explains what the shooter must have seen, based solely on the capabilities of a weapon that they supposed had been used.
The supposition that a sniper is in the story doesn’t mean that there is a direct line between them and a target, in the same way that the COI’s conclusions and a tragedy don’t have a clear evidentiary line. In a folktale about a Texan sharpshooter, a marksman shot at the side of a barn, then painted the targets around where the bullets struck. He appeared to hit a bullseye every time to those who later examined the barn wall. Without seeing how the COI fired off its allegations, it appears that they painted around gunshots with signs of Israel’s culpability.
For the first article in this series examining the UN COI report, read here about the commissioners’ unlikely claims about quadcopters in Gaza.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
