The UN accused Israel’s security forces of using forced public stripping and sexual assault as part of their standard operating procedures to punish Palestinians after the October 7 Hamas attack – allegations Israel has rejected as ‘unfounded’
Israel carried out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities during the conflict in Gaza, and used sexual violence as a war strategy, according to a new report by United Nations experts published Thursday.
“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,” said the report, written by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
Those actions, in addition to a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies, amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination, the commission said.
The report accused Israel’s security forces of using forced public stripping and sexual assault as part of their standard operating procedures to punish Palestinians following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023.
In one case mentioned in the report, several male IDF soldiers enter the home of a Gazan woman, violently interrogate her and threaten her with rape. In another incident, the report says a 14-year-old girl was dragged by IDF soldiers to a location that did not have cameras, where she was subject to violence and sexual assault.
The report includes testimonies from Gazans as well as Palestinians from the West Bank, some of whom describe incidents where civilians were stripped of their clothing, sometimes without separation between men and women.
Israel’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva described the allegations in the report as unfounded, biased, and lacking credibility.
“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 on Thursday.
“This means that Israeli forces are subject to an entirely different standard than any other actor – any unsubstantiated information that supports the CoI’s predetermined narrative is deemed credible, even if not verified. Indeed, the CoI applied different standards in its June 2024 determinations on the use of sexual violence by Hamas on October 7th, where only corroborated information was presented.”
“The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] has concrete directives … and policies which unequivocally prohibit such misconduct”, the mission said, adding that its review processes are in line with international standards.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the UN Human Rights Council “an antisemitic, corrupt, terror-supporting and irrelevant body.”
“Instead of focusing on crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the UN once again chooses to attack Israel with false accusations, including absurd allegations of sexual violence,” Netanyahu added.
Caution: The remainder of this article includes graphic details of sexual violence
The report presents testimonies from civilians, most of them collected by human rights organizations from Palestinian women, regarding forced stripping and humiliation of women during the evacuation of the population from northern to southern Gaza, at the Salah al-Din Road checkpoint, and in other locations across the Strip.
Based on these testimonies, the report concludes that soldiers forcibly stripped women, touched their bodies, threatened them with rape, and forced them to remove their hijabs.
In one case detailed in the report, a woman testified that several male soldiers entered her home in Gaza, beat her, and groped her. She further stated that one soldier threatened to “check if she was still a virgin.”
A Gazan man testified before the UN commission that in early November 2023, when he and his family were evacuated from their home, they – along with other displaced people – were ordered to strip while surrounded by armed soldiers, snipers, and tanks.
According to his testimony, men and women were not separated. The men were completely stripped, while the women were left in only their underwear. They were instructed to hold their identification cards in the air while undressing. The witness stated that soldiers threatened to shoot them if they did not comply.
According to the report, the committee documented more than ten cases in which men and boys were filmed in degrading and humiliating circumstances while being subjected to “to acts of a sexual nature, including forced public nudity and stripping, full or partially.”
In one video, which the report says was likely filmed at Ofer Prison and published on Telegram in November 2023, Palestinian men are seen completely naked and blindfolded as they are forcibly loaded onto a bus by IDF soldiers.
The committee has around 20 videos and images documenting these incidents. Some of the footage and photographs depict mass arrests of Gazans in December 2023 in Beit Lahia and at a stadium in Gaza City.
The report says that images from these events, showing bound men wearing only underwear, were widely circulated online. Former IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari denied that the images originated from the Israeli army.
Some of the cases mentioned in the report describe the destruction of medical facilities, including fertility clinics and maternity wards. According to the report, the largest fertility clinic in Gaza was bombed in December 2023. Reports indicate that the facility’s destruction led to the loss of approximately 4,000 frozen embryos, as well as around 1,000 samples of eggs and sperm donations.
The report states that about a year after the outbreak of the war, approximately 45,000 pregnant women suffered from varying degrees of hunger. Several women testified before the committee that due to severe hunger, they were unable to produce breast milk for their infants; health experts confirmed these testimonies.
The committee also reported that it documented instances of sexual violence against Palestinian detainees in more than ten IDF and Israel Prison Service detention facilities, particularly at the Sde Teiman detention center, where male detainees were held, and at two other prisons where female detainees were held.
According to the report, Palestinian women held in detention testified about sexual harassment, attempted sexual assaults, blows targeted at their genital areas, and instances where soldiers touched their breasts or tried to kiss them. One detainee recounted that a soldier asked her: “How do you want us to rape you? One by one or all together?” After she reported the threat to her lawyer, she testified that she was denied the right to see him.
In another case, a Palestinian woman transferred to detention at an Israeli prison was sexually harassed and physically attacked in front of her husband. According to her testimony, a soldier unzipped his pants in front of her and threatened to force her to sit on his lap. Another soldier made degrading comments about her body. Later, according to the testimony, the woman – who had given birth two months earlier – was beaten by the soldiers until she lost consciousness.
Israeli opposition MK Benny Gantz said that “The UN report asserting Israel carried out ‘genocidal acts’ and weaponizing ‘sexual violence’ as a war strategy is not only deceitfully false but a disgraceful new low in the moral depravity of the UN.” He added that the report peddles “antisemitic libels and playing into the hands of murderous terrorists.”
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein called the report “one of the worst cases of blood libel the world has ever seen,” adding that “It accuses the victims of the crimes committed against them.”
“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,” the Foreign Ministry spokesperson added.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett described the UN as “Hamas’ useful idiot,” adding that “The worst regimes in history accused their enemies of what they themselves were doing … It was HAMAS that attacked, raped and murdered Israelis.”
A previous report published by the Commission in June 2024 accused Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups of serious rights violations in its October 7 attack, including torture and degrading treatment.
Israel is party to the Genocide Convention and was ordered in January 2024 by the International Court of Justice to take action to prevent acts of genocide during the war against Hamas.
It is not party to the Rome Statute, which gives the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to rule on individual criminal cases involving genocide and crimes against humanity.
South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel’s actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice.
Israel officially informed the UN in February 2022 that it would not cooperate with its Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, and would not allow its representatives to enter the country.
Israel’s long-standing position is that the UN Human Rights Council is a politically biased body that discriminates against it.