A United Nations panel has accused Israel of “genocidal acts,” including “the systematic use of sexual, reproductive, and other gender-based violence” in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The commission, in a report released on March 13, said the widespread destruction in Gaza, the use of heavy explosives in civilian areas, and Israeli attacks on hospitals and clinics led to “disproportionate violence against women and children.”
It accused Israeli authorities of destroying “in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians as a group.” It alleged a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted medical supplies. It described the destruction of a fertility clinic in a bombing.
The report also contained allegations of sexual abuse by former prisoners, such as sexual touching, being stripped of clothing, or being threatened with rape.
Israel’s U.N. representatives rejected the accusations and accused the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestine Territory of relying on “second-hand, single, uncorroborated sources.” It refused to cooperate with the commission, which was created by the U.N. Human Rights Council, accusing the groups of systematic bias against Israel.
The commission’s findings can be used by the International Criminal Court and other groups prosecuting war crimes.
Israel said it took extraordinary measures to avoid harming civilians during the war. It attributed civilians’ deaths and destruction to Hamas’s operations in civilian areas, saying the terrorist group used civilians as human shields.
Israel’s permanent mission to the U.N. in Geneva said in a statement on Thursday that the allegations are “a shameless attempt to incriminate” the Israel Defense Forces and “manufacture the illusion of ’systematic' use” of sexual and gender-based violence.
The Commission of Inquiry “deliberately adopts a lower level of corroboration in its report, which allowed it to include information from second-hand single uncorroborated sources,” the mission said.
“This means that Israeli forces are subject to an entirely different standard than any other actor—any unsubstantiated information that supports the [commission’s] predetermined narrative is deemed credible, even if not verified.”
The mission said the U.N. panel’s accusations demonstrate a double standard.
“Indeed, the [commission] applied different standards in its June 2024 determinations on the use of sexual violence by Hamas on Oct. 7, where only corroborated information was presented.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the report in a statement released by his office:
“The anti-Israel circus known as the U.N. ‘Human Rights Council’ has long been revealed as an anti-Semitic, rotten, and irrelevant organization that supports terrorism. For good reason, Israel decided to quit it approximately one month ago.
“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and the war crimes that were perpetrated by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre carried out against the Jewish People since the Holocaust, the U.N. has again chosen to attack the state of Israel with false accusations, including baseless accusations of sexual violence.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman called the report “one of the worst cases of blood libel the world has ever seen,' adding that ”it accuses the victims of the crimes committed against them.”
Opposition leader Benny Gantz called the U.N. report “deceitfully false.”
“It’s appalling that anyone would take information tendered by a terrorist organization as credible information,” Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli ambassador, told The Epoch Times.
Hamas has “defied the fundamental elements of human rights, subjecting its own people to a most ruthless and intolerant treatment,” Ettinger said.
The U.N., as well as international women’s groups, have been largely silent about Hamas’s sexual violence during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Israeli and U.S.-based women’s scholars and activists have presented extensive documentation of the crimes.
