Report by UN-backed experts cites crimes by Israeli forces, Palestinian militants starting 0ct. 7
GENEVA — U.N.-backed human rights experts say in a report released Wednesday that Israeli forces and Palestinian militants committed sexual and gender-based violence during the early months of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The independent experts said in a detailed chronicle of the events, reported mainly in the media, that Israeli forces and Palestinian militants committed war crimes, while Israel also committed crimes against humanity.
Israel, which refused to cooperate with the organization and accused it of bias, rejected the accusations.
The report, which covers the time between the Oct. 7 rampage and the end of last year, outlines a wide range of alleged rights abuses and crimes by both sides during the conflict. It said that Israeli forces had committed acts including forced starvation, murder or deliberate killing, collective punishment and deliberate attacks on civilians, and that the military wings of Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups had committed deliberate killings and abuses of civilians and hostage-taking.
It said the frequency, prevalence and severity of sexual and gender-related crimes against Palestinians by Israeli security forces during the period amounted to signs that some forms of such violence “are part of the ISF’s operational procedures.”
Despite the denials by Hamas’s military wing sexual violence against Israeli womenAccording to the report, the experts had documented “cases indicative of sexual violence” against women and men near the site of a major music festival, a military outpost and several kibbutzim that the raiders had attacked.
The expert panel was tasked by the UN-backed Human Rights Council in 2021 to investigate human rights violations and abuses in Israel and the Palestinian territories it controls. Led by Navi Pillay, former UN human rights chief, they are independent experts and do not speak on behalf of the world organization itself. Israel has refused to cooperate with the team of experts.
The Israeli diplomatic mission in Geneva responded that the report “scandalously and abhorrently attempts to create a false equivalence between IDF soldiers and Hamas terrorists regarding acts of sexual violence” and reiterated long-standing claims of anti-Israel discrimination by the experts.
The report and Israel’s response marked the latest sign of the growing rift between the UN and its member institutions and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over its response to the October 7 deadly rampage and hostage taking in Israel by armed Palestinian militants.