Of the thousands of bombs that have fallen – and fall still – on Gaza, there is one to which Navi Pillay returns: a lone shell, fired by the Israel Defense Forces at the Al-Basma fertility clinic in December 2023. A single strike that wiped out 4,000 embryos in a moment.
The strike was “intended to prevent births” among Palestinians in Gaza, says Pillay, the former chair of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Territory of Palestine and Israel.