Israel faces accusations of orchestrating a systematic campaign of gender-based violence against Palestinians, with the UN commission alleging that Israeli forces have deliberately targeted women, destroyed reproductive healthcare, and used sexual violence as a tool of oppression since October 2023.
In a report released Thursday, the United Nations Human Rights Council's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory alleges that Israeli security forces have systematically employed sexual, reproductive, and gender-based violence against Palestinians since Hamas' deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The report details a range of violations, from targeted killings of women and girls to the destruction of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure, framing these acts as part of a broader campaign to oppress and destabilize the Palestinian population.
According to the report, spanning over 600 incidents, as of January 2025, over 46,000 people have been allegedly killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, with women, children, and older persons comprising nearly 59% of the 40,717 identified fatalities. Among them, 7,216 women – approximately 18% of the total – have died since hostilities escalated following Hamas' Oct. 7 attack.
The report claims "This is a war against women," as quoted by an obstetrician in Gaza, with the commission attributing these accusations to the Israeli forces' increased use of heavy explosives in residential areas.
The Human Rights Council publication cites a November 2023 killing of Hala Abd Al-Ati, an elderly woman shot by a sniper while holding a white flag in Gaza City and an incident in December 2023 when a mother and a daughter were killed by snipers at Gaza City's Holy Family Parish.
The report details "reproductive violence" through the destruction of healthcare facilities, including the December 2023 shelling of Gaza's largest fertility clinic, which destroyed thousands of embryos and sperm samples, adding that attacks on maternity hospitals and restrictions on medical evacuations have led to increased maternal deaths and miscarriages.
Commission investigators also documented allegations of sexual violence by Israeli forces against Palestinian detainees, including forced nudity and sexualized torture targeting both men and women.
The report concludes these acts potentially constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute, including "measures intended to prevent births," which may be considered genocidal acts.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office denounced the report, saying: "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 UN has again chosen to attack the State of Israel with false accusations, including baseless accusations of sexual violence."
Prime Minister Netanyahu added, "The anti-Israel circus known as the UN 'Human Rights Council' has long been revealed as an antisemitic, rotten and irrelevant organization that supports terrorism."
Israel's Foreign Ministry said in a statement: "In regard to the blood libel published by the 'Commission of Inquiry': It is one of the worst cases of blood libel the world has ever seen (and the world has seen many). It accuses the victims of the crimes committed against them." It further emphasized that "Hamas is the organization that has committed horrendous sexual crimes against Israelis. It is indeed a sick document that only an antisemitic organization such as the UN could produce."
Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon has issued a scathing response to the UN report, calling it "another malicious and distorted document from the UN, which continues to serve as a propaganda mouthpiece for terrorist organizations."
Danon stated: "While Israel fights against human beasts who slaughtered, raped and murdered thousands of innocent people on October 7 – the UN repeatedly chooses to stand with the murderers and spread despicable blood libels against the only democratic state in the Middle East."
The ambassador dismissed the report as "not even worthy of the paper it was printed on," adding that "anyone who supported this false publication is complicit in whitewashing Hamas's war crimes and trampling the truth."
Danon claimed that "while Israel goes above and beyond to avoid harming innocent civilians – terrorists fortify themselves in hospitals, use women and children as human shields, and abuse their own population." He concluded by asserting that "history will judge those who supported echoing these lies."
Hagit Pe'er, chairwoman of Na'amat, an Israeli women's organization, said: "The UN supports Nukhba forces and Hamas. This outrageous report attempts to turn the victim into the aggressor. This is a report with a strong smell of antisemitism. There is an attempt here to create an alternative reality that inverts the sexual massacre carried out by Hamas against Israeli women and men amid the deafening silence of international institutions."
A previous report published by the same UN commission in June 2024 accused Hamas and other Palestinian organizations of serious human rights violations during the Oct. 7 attack, including torture, degrading treatment, and "severe acts of rape during the massacre."
