Israel Slams UN Report Charging IDF with Sexual Violence in Gaza

Debbie Weiss

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Delegates react to the results during the United Nations General Assembly vote on a draft resolution that would recognize the Palestinians as qualified to become a full UN member, in New York City, US, May 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Israel has been accused of committing “genocidal acts” and employing sexual violence as a weapon of war in a new report published Thursday by a United Nations commission. The report drew sharp criticism from Israel, which dismissed it as an antisemitic blood libel, while Hamas welcomed its findings. 

“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” the report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry stated.

It also accused Israeli security forces of using forced public stripping and sexual assault as a punitive measure in Gaza. 

The report, citing testimonies from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, alleges that civilians were stripped of their clothing in public, sometimes without gender separation. Israel’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva has rejected the allegations, calling them unfounded and based on uncorroborated sources. 

“In a shameless attempt to incriminate the IDF 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 in a statement.

Israeli officials say the Commission of Inquiry has applied different standards in evaluating evidence against Israel compared to its assessment of Hamas’ actions on October 7, when it only included corroborated information. 

The COI last year released another report last year saying it had “not been able to independently verify” allegations of rape citing “a lack of access to victims, witnesses and crime sites and the obstruction of its investigations by the Israeli authorities.” 

It’s three members are Navi Pillay, who orchestrated both the discredited Goldstone Report and the Durban II Zionism is Racism conference and who routinely denounces “apartheid” Israel; UN Special Rapporteur Miloon Kothari who questioned the influence of the “Jewish lobby” and Israel’s right to be a UN member state; and Chris Sidoti, who said accusations of antisemitism are “thrown around like rice at a wedding”. 

“All of the people on that commission have expressed hostile views and prejudicial views to Israel, even prior to serving on the commission,”Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor and UN Representative for NGO Monitor, told The Algemeiner. 

“The staffing is completely secret. There’s no way to even know who is writing the reports, how they’re gathering the evidence. So this COI has no credibility.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the report and the UN Human Rights Council, calling it “an antisemitic, rotten, terrorist-supporting, and irrelevant body.”

“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 Israel with false accusations, including unfounded accusations of sexual violence,” Netanyahu said.

Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who heads the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, said the report followed many other instances drawing “a false comparison between Israel and Hamas, especially in the context of sexual violence.”

“Sadly, this pattern has repeated itself across various UN bodies since October 7th. This moral comparison is painful and wrong because its purpose is to establish false historical narratives and inflicts irreparable harm both on the victims and on justice,” she said.

Herzberg said the COI was “a main vector of atrocity denial and inversion.”

“Since October 7, the COI has outrageously accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza while refusing to say the same about Hamas. It also downplayed the mass sexual violence committed on October 7 against Israeli women and girls, while now issuing an entire report dedicated to defaming the IDF with the false claim of perpetrating systematic gender-based violence against Palestinians,” Herzberg said.

The report will likely be exploited by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and provide fuel for campaigns by the BDS movement against Israel, Herzberg said. She expressed her hope that the Trump administration would defund the UNHRC in the near future. “It should never have been established in the first place,” she said.

The Hamas terror group welcomed the report, saying it confirmed Israel’s “genocidal” campaign against Palestinians. Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told AFP, “The UN’s investigation report on Israel’s genocidal acts against the Palestinian people confirms what has happened on the ground: genocide and violations of all humanitarian and legal standards.

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