Srinivasan Muralidhar: The trauma of Palestinian children

‘When it comes to humanitarian crisis, we should not allow children's future to be subject to geopolitics. We can't say that there are politically compulsions as a result of which we are allowing children to die of starvation. We can't say there are political compulsions because of which we are allowing children to die of want of medical aid. So the request before the Security Council was this. Cannot all countries agree on the minimum norms of humanitarian aid?’

Jugal Purohit speaks to Srinivasan Muralidhar, a lawyer turned judge in India for over four decades, in November 2025, he was appointed by the UN to lead an independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

The commission examined alleged Israeli violations against Palestinian children from the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023 to October 2025. In June 2026 it published its 94-page report.

Israel did not cooperate or provide information to the commission. It rejected the report and disputed its conclusions after publication.

The report found that Israel had deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip, as well as war crimes in the occupied West Bank.

Srinivasan Muralidhar talks about how the commission documented and verified the evidence of violations against children, the challenges it faced in establishing the facts, and the key conclusions it reached in its report.

This episode of The Interview contains discussion of the killing of children and other consequences of conflict.

The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, former Israeli hostage Keith Siegel, and the author Maggie O’Farrell. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Jugal Purohit Producer: Farhana Haider Editor: Justine Lang

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(Image: Srinivasan Muralidhar. Credit: BBC)