UN experts accuse Israel of “genocide acts” and sexual violence

UN experts have accused Israel of increasingly using gender and gender -based violence against Palestinians and of performing “genocidic acts” by systematic destruction of maternal and reproductive health facilities.

A report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council documents alleged violations, including rape, in Gaza and the occupied cyisordan from October 7, 2023, the attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza.

He also says that the destruction of maternity sections in Gaza and embryos at a fertility clinic could indicate a birth -prevention strategy between a particular group – one of the legal definitions of genocide.

Israel said he “categorically rejects the unfounded accusations.”

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded angrily, naming the Human Rights Council “an anti -Semitic, rotten, which supports terrorism and irrelevant body.”

Instead of focusing on war crimes committed by Hamas, he said, said Israel with “false accusations.”

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The independent International Commission on the Palestinian territory was established by the UN Human Rights Council for Human Rights to investigate all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and human rights.

The three -member commission declared its new report It was testified on the part of victims and witnesses of sexual and reproductive violence, some of them speaking in two days of public hearings organized in Geneva earlier this week, as well as verified photographs and video images from civil society and women’s rights.

The chairman of the commission, Navi Pillay, a former head of the UN human rights in South Africa, said that the evidence collected “reveals a deplorable growth of sexual violence”, which he claimed was committed by Israel against the Palestinians “to terrorize and perpetuate a system of oppression”.

The report says that specific forms of sexual and gender violence – such as forced public undress and nudity, sexual harassment, including rape threats, as well as sexual aggression – “include part of the standard operating procedures of Israeli security for Palestinian.”

Other forms of such violence, including rape and violence of genital organs, were “committed either in accordance with explicit order, with default encouragement by the best civil and military leadership of Israel,” says.

The report does not provide examples of explicit commands from commanders or senior officials. But quotes statements from the Israeli ministers who defended themselves Soldiers who have been accused of severely mistreated a Palestinian prisoner at the SDE Teiman military base last year.

The member of the commission, Chris Sidoti, an Australian lawyer for human rights, told the BBC: “Sexual violence is now so widespread that it can only be considered systematic.

Israel rejected the accusations of widespread mistreatment and torture of the detainees in Gaza and insisted that he is fully employed with international legal standards.

The report says that the Commission also found that Israeli forces systematically destroyed the sexual and reproductive medical assistance facilities during the 17 -month war.

He concludes that women and girls have died due to complications related to pregnancy and birth due to the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities who have denied access to reproductive health and say that they refer to the crime against humanity of extermination.

The Commission also argues that the Israeli authorities have “partly destroyed the breeding capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group” by “systematic destruction” of sexual and reproductive medical assistance facilities, including maternity hospitals and maternity sections of hospitals and the main fertility clinics in Gaza.

This amounts to “two categories of genocide acts in the Statute of Rome and the Genocide Convention, including deliberately the living conditions calculated to produce the physical destruction of the Palestinians and the imposing measures for the prevention of births,” concludes.

According to the report, the Al-Basma Embryology Laboratory was hit in early December 2023, destroying about 4,000 embryos, as well as 1,000 sperm and unfertilized eggs.

He says that the Commission established by visual analysis of the images that the damages were caused by a large -caliber projectile, most likely a peel of Israeli tank and that it was intentionally attacked by the Israeli forces. However, the Israeli army told ABC News at that time that she was not aware of a clinic strike. BBC contacted IDF for comments.

“The deliberate destruction of a health unit is a serious problem for international humanitarian law and human rights. But, from our analysis of this clinic, it has been aware and intentionally towards the destruction of breeding services,” said Sidoti. “The consequence of this is the prevention of births.”

In a statementThe mission of Israel at the UN in Geneva said that the report was “an unhearded attempt to incriminate (Defense forces in Israel) and to produce the illusion of” systemic “use of sexual violence).

He criticized what he called the Commission’s decision to use “information from second-hand unique sources”, which he said is not in accordance with the established UN standards and methodologies.

The statement also stressed that IDF has “concrete directives, procedures, orders and policies, which unequivocally prohibit such an incorrect behavior”, as well as mechanisms to investigate any incidents of alleged sexual violence.

The Prime Minister of Israel also rejected the findings of the report and appointed the Human Rights Council an “anti-Israel circus”.

“Instead of focusing on crimes against humanity and war crimes that were committed by the Terrorist organization in Hamas in the worst massacre against the Jewish people in the Holocaust, the UN again chose to attack the State of Israel with false accusations, including accusations without sexual violence,” Netanyahu said.

The International Court of Justice hears a case bought by South Africa that accuses the Israeli forces to commit genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza strip. Israel vehemently denied the accusation.

The Israeli army launched a campaign to destroy the Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross -border attack on October 7, 2023, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

Over 48,520 people have been killed in the Gaza since then, according to the Ministry of Health of Hamas, led by Hamas.

Most of the 2.1 million population in Gaza has also been moved several times. Almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed; The systems of medical assistance, water, sewerage and hygiene have collapsed; And there are deficiencies of food, fuel, medicines and shelter.