Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lashed out against a United Nations report accusing Israel of committing "genocidal acts" against Palestinians, calling the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) an "antisemitic, rotten, terrorist-supporting and irrelevant body."
The report, commissioned by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, alleges widespread sexual and gender-based violence by Israeli forces, as well as the systematic destruction of maternal and reproductive healthcare facilities in Gaza.
Netanyahu dismissed the findings outright, stating that the report was a politically motivated attack on Israel while ignoring the crimes committed by Hamas. “Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and the war crimes perpetrated by Hamas in the worst massacre against Jews since the Holocaust, the UN has again chosen to attack Israel with false accusations,” he said in a statement.
Israel’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva also refuted the allegations, calling them "a shameless attempt to incriminate the [Israel Defense Forces] and manufacture the illusion of 'systemic' use of [sexual and gender-based violence].”
The UN commission’s report is based on victim testimonies, verified photos and videos, and accounts from civil society and women’s rights organisations. According to the findings, there has been a “deplorable increase” in sexual violence used by Israeli forces as a tool of war against Palestinians.
The report claims that Israeli forces engaged in acts such as forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment and threats of rape, targeted violence to the genitals of male detainees, and sexualised torture, allegedly carried out with implicit encouragement from top civilian and military leadership.
The commission argues that these patterns of abuse constitute crimes against humanity and are part of a broader Israeli strategy to "terrorise and oppress" Palestinians.
In addition to gender-based violence, the report highlights the systematic destruction of maternity hospitals, clinics, and reproductive health centres across Gaza. It states that these actions amount to the crime against humanity of extermination and fall under two categories of genocidal acts defined in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.
One of the most damning allegations concerns the deliberate targeting of the Al-Basma IVF Centre in Gaza City, which served thousands of patients each month. The commission determined that Israeli forces intentionally shelled the clinic in December 2023, destroying 4,000 embryos, along with sperm and egg samples. The report claims this was a measure to prevent Palestinian births, a recognised indicator of genocide under international law.
The findings of the UNHRC report could have significant legal implications, particularly as South Africa pursues a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide. The commission’s report strengthens claims that Israel has engaged in systematic acts designed to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.
The report also underscores the wider devastation caused by Israel’s war on Gaza. Since the conflict began on 7 October 2023, over 48,500 Palestinians have been killed, and nearly 70% of Gaza's infrastructure has been destroyed. Millions have been displaced, and severe shortages of food, water, medicine, and shelter have exacerbated the humanitarian catastrophe.
See more from the BBC here, Al Jazeera here and Sky News here.