A report by UN “experts”, including an anti-Israeli one from South Africa, claimed that Israel committed genocide by “destroying the Palestinians’ ability to reproduce” – including by damaging an IVF center – and that IDF soldiers stripped and sexually assaulted Palestinians. Israel strongly rejected the accusations, Netanyahu: “This is the Council on Blood Rights, not Human Rights”
A new and unfathomable report by UN “experts” published today (Thursday) accuses Israel of acts of genocide, of systematically destroying women’s health systems in the Gaza Strip – and of using sexual violence as a “war strategy.”
Israel strongly rejected the report, saying it was biased and that the claims in it were baseless and unreliable. “The IDF has clear guidelines and policies that unequivocally prohibit such conduct,” the Israeli mission to the UN institutions in Geneva said. According to it, the committee deliberately relied on a “lower level of verification” for the report, “to allow it to include second-hand information and unverified sources.” Israel noted that “this conduct does not comply with the standards required for verification and the methodology accepted at the UN.”
The Foreign Ministry said that it was a “blood libel”: “This is one of the worst cases of blood libel the world has ever seen – and the world has seen many. It blames the victims for the crimes committed against them. Hamas is the organization that committed horrific sexual crimes against Israelis. This is indeed a sick document that only an anti-Semitic organization like the UN could have produced.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also commented on the report, saying: “The anti-Israel circus called the UN’s ‘Human Rights Council’ has long been exposed as an anti-Semitic, rotten, terrorist-supporting, and irrelevant body. It is not for nothing that Israel decided to withdraw from it about a month ago. Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the UN is once again choosing to attack the State of Israel with false accusations, including unfounded accusations of sexual violence. This is not the Human Rights Council – this is the Blood Rights Council.”
The report was compiled by the “UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry into the Situation in the Palestinian Territories,” including East Jerusalem and Israel – which was established by the Human Rights Council, known for its anti-Israel bias and from which the US recently withdrew. The report alleged that IDF forces forced Palestinians to undress in public and committed sexual offenses as part of “standard procedures” to punish Palestinians following the October 7 massacre.
It was further alleged that “the Israeli authorities partially destroyed the Palestinians’ ability to reproduce as a group – including through birth control, which is considered genocide under the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.” Israel, it was alleged, deliberately damaged in December 2023 Gaza’s central in vitro fertilization institute, “Al-Basma,” where thousands of embryos were stored, “with the aim of preventing Palestinians from giving birth in Gaza.” According to the committee, “the Israeli actions – along with a sharp increase in the deaths of pregnant women due to their limited access to medical supplies – constitute a crime against humanity of genocide.”
The commission, established after Operation Wall Street in 2021 with an indefinite mandate to investigate war crimes by both sides in the conflict, is headed by South African lawyer Navi Pillay, an anti-Israeli who previously served as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a judge at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. When the report was released today, she claimed that the attack on the Gaza IVF center, as well as what she described as a “warfare method of starvation,” affected “all aspects” of Palestinian reproduction, causing not only “immediate physical and psychological harm to the women and girls who suffer,” but also “long-term and irreversible consequences for the mental health and ability of Palestinians, as a group, to have children.”
The report’s conclusions also state that “Israel’s use of starvation as a method of war, the denial of humanitarian assistance, and policies aimed at destroying the health system in Gaza, combined with the lack of water and access to sanitation facilities, have caused severe reproductive harm to women and girls, affecting all aspects of reproduction, including pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum recovery, and breastfeeding.” Regarding allegations of alleged sexual violence by Israel, the conclusions state: “Israel has systematically used sexual, reproductive, and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023. The Committee concluded that there has been a major increase in sexual and gender-based crimes committed against Palestinians by members of the Israeli security forces since 7 October 2023, intended to retaliate and collectively punish them for the attacks carried out by the military wing of Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups in southern Israel on 7 October.
“Palestinian men and boys have been subjected to specific acts of persecution designed to punish them collectively. The manner in which these acts, which are often of a sexual nature, are carried out – including their filming, recording and distribution online, combined with similar incidents documented in several locations – shows that forced public stripping and nudity, as well as torture and sexual abuse, are part of a persecutory attack against men and boys carried out to punish, humiliate and intimidate Palestinian men and boys into submission,” the report said.
The UN report also mentions the harsh policy that former Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir introduced against Palestinian prisoners during the war. It claims that “imprisonment in Israel is characterized by widespread and systematic abuse and sexual and gender-based violence” and that “these practices have significantly increased in severity and frequency since October 7, 2023, following the instructions and statements of Minister of National Security Ben-Gvir, who is responsible for prisons.” The report further states that “the inappropriate treatment of Palestinian detainees by the Israeli authorities is the result of a deliberate policy that exploits sexual violence,” which is ostensibly aimed at “humiliating Palestinians in detention.” It should be noted that a previous report by the same UN committee, from June last year, accused Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations of “grave violations” of human rights during the October 7 massacre, including torture and humiliation. A wealth of evidence collected also indicates horrific acts of rape and sexual violence committed by the terrorists who invaded the western Negev communities, and Israel and its supporters around the world have in the past been highly critical of the silence of international women’s and human rights organizations regarding those cases.
State Camp Chairman Benny Gantz said this morning in response to the new UN report: “I read the main points of the shameful UN report on my way from Kibbutz Re’im to Bari – where adults, women and children were massacred, raped and kidnapped. This report is a moral low and blindness that will not be erased. Whoever wrote the report and whoever signed it is not only lying, he is also harming world security and giving a boost to terrorism, anti-Semitism and blood libels.”
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that “the UN has become Hamas’s useful idiot. The worst regimes in history have accused their enemies of what they themselves are doing. Now history is repeating itself, with the UN adopting this evil method. Hamas was the one who attacked, raped and murdered Israelis. Everything is documented. Hamas is the one who uses sexual violence against hostages. The UN has turned justice into evil, good into evil. Decent countries must renounce the UN.”