New Delhi, Sept. 25 -- NEW YORK - For the second consecutive year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the United Nations General Assembly not from the floor of its hall in Manhattan but from a video link, denied entry to the United States by a Trump administration that said granting him a visa would only "internationalise the conflict." He used the time to call what is happening to his people a genocide.

the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry released a report this month confirming that Israel's actions in Gaza meet the legal threshold for genocide.

The formal finding shifts the debate from political metaphor to legal conclusion, at least according to the UN's own expert body. Abbas, addressing the...