Pakistan, June 24 -- The latest report from the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has added another uncomfortable chapter to a conflict already saturated with suffering. The commission's investigators have concluded that Israeli authorities deliberately targeted Palestinian children and have linked that finding to their assessment of genocidal intent. Israel has rejected the allegations, dismissing the report as biased and politically motivated.

Such exchanges have become routine but what makes this report difficult to ignore, however, is not merely its conclusions but the subject at its centre: children.

For decades, international humanitarian law has treated children as deserving ...