To the charge that the Commission ignored Hamas’s use of children as human shields and the hostages taken on October 7, 2023, Justice Muralidhar pushed back firmly. “I think this is the narrative in the media. So I need to correct this.” The record, he says, is otherwise: “When the 7th October incident happened, this commission was one of the first to produce a report, and that report detailed the atrocities of Hamas vis-à-vis Israel’s hostages.” On June 15, 2026, he notes, the Commission submitted a further report to the Human Rights Council “on actions of non-state actors — by non-state actors, we mean the settlers in the West Bank, and as far as the Gaza Strip is concerned, we mean Hamas and its affiliate bodies… particularly the abuses of children.”
