Eloise Goldsmith
Common Dreams / March 13, 2025
“Nothing to see here, just a 49-page U.N. report documenting Israel’s ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza and its systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war,” wrote one historian.
A report released Wednesday by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel says that Israel has “systematically” used reproductive, sexual, and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians since October 7, 2023.
Additionally, Israel committed “genocidal acts” when systematically destroying reproductive and healthcare facilities in Gaza, according to the report’s authors.
The report was submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which as of February Israel no longer engages with.
“Sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities have been systematically destroyed across Gaza” and Israeli authorities have simultaneously prevented “humanitarian assistance at scale, including necessary medications and equipment to ensure safe pregnancies, deliveries, and neonatal care,” according to the report.
“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,” the report states.
The report also says that harms for pregnant people and new mothers in Gaza is of an “unprecedented scale.” The lack of access to sexual and reproductive care has caused harm and suffering with “irreversible long-term effects” on the “physical reproductive and fertility prospects of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group.”
“The underlying acts amount to crimes against humanity and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians as a group, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” according to the report.
The commission also “documented a pattern of sexual violence, including cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture, and other inhumane acts that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Additionally, Palestinian men and boys have been subjected to “often sexual” acts committed to “punish, humiliate, and intimidate” them into subjugation, per the report.
“Nothing to see here, just a 49-page U.N. report documenting Israel’s ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza and its systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war,” wrote Zachary Foster, a historian who focuses on Palestine, on X on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the report in a statement.
“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization… the United Nations once again chooses to attack the state of Israel with false accusations,” he said, according to Reuters.
In October 2023, Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing over 1,000 people and taking roughly 250 hostages—prompting Israel to carry out a fierce military campaign in the Gaza Strip that killed tens of thousands of people, according to local health officials.
Multiple human rights groups have said Israel is guilt of committing genocide or “acts of genocide.”
Israel faces an ongoing genocide case, led by South Africa, at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri in November 2024. Hamas has since confirmed his death.
A shaky cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect in mid-January. The New York Times reported Thursday that Israel-Hamas negotiations to extend the cease-fire are in limbo.
Eloise Goldsmith is a staff writer for Common Dreams
