Jewish groups and elected officials censured a report published by the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday, accusing Israel of committing “genocidal acts” and sex crimes in the Gaza Strip.
The American Jewish Committee told JNS the report, issued by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, “is egregiously flawed.”
AJC said the “attempt to distort the legal framework of genocide to demonize Israel is wrong and harmful. The U.N. Human Rights Council should never have established this one-sided entity, and the governments sitting on it should disband it now.”
The findings claimed that Israel’s actions in Gaza led to a surge in maternity deaths. The report also charged IDF soldiers with employing forced public stripping, sexual assault and threats of rape during its military operations in the wake of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Hamas and Palestinian operatives slaughtered 1,200 people that day, wounded thousands, and kidnapped 251 men, women and children into the Gaza Strip, where 59 remain in captivity.
The report said Palestinian confessions of raping Israeli women were “alleged.”
Israel forcefully denied the accusations, calling them unfounded, biased and lacking in credibility.
“The corrupt U.N. Human Rights Council’s new baseless report is antisemitic and anti-Israel slander,” wrote Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the global body. “The so-called ‘Human Rights Council’ has failed to condemn the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israel, including the brutal slaughter, torture, kidnapping of thousands of innocent civilians, and Hamas’ horrific use of rape and sexual violence against Israeli women and girls, yet disgracefully attacks Israel with unfounded smears.”
“This report exposes the disgraceful and obsessive antisemitism of UNHRC and reaffirms why President Trump took the strong, correct, decisive executive action to withdraw from it,” she said. (U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew America from the council in February).
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee posted on X: “This U.N. report reflects the rampant anti-Israel disease that has infected U.N. agencies and is a repugnant example of blaming the actual victim of sexual violence. … Now, the so-called U.N. Human Rights Council is perversely attempting to create a false equivalence between the victims of these crimes and the perpetrators.”
AIPAC said Trump was “right to cut off all U.S. funding to this morally bankrupt U.N. agency” and called on people to reject the report and pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages still in captivity.