Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday strongly rejected the United Nations Human Rights Council’s report accusing Israel of committing “genocidal acts” in Gaza.
He dismissed the council as an “anti-Israel circus” that has been “exposed as an antisemitic, corrupt, terrorist-supporting and irrelevant body.”
Netanyahu emphasized that Israel withdrew from the council a month ago due to its bias and accused the U.N. of ignoring Hamas’s war crimes, including the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, which he described as the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
Instead of addressing Hamas’s crimes against humanity, he argued, the U.N. has “once again [chosen] to attack the State of Israel with false accusations, including baseless charges of sexual violence.”
He concluded with a direct condemnation of the council:
“This is not the Human Rights Council, this is the Council of Blood Rights,” the prime minister said.
Gideon Sa’ar, the Jewish state’s foreign minister, called the report “one of the worst blood libels the world has ever seen,” speaking during a joint press conference with his Greek and Cypriote counterparts on Thursday.
“It accuses the victims of the crimes committed against them. Hamas is the organization that has committed horrific sexual crimes against Israelis on October 7. It is indeed a sick publication that only an antisemitic organization could produce,” he said in Athens.
The report was submitted to the Human Rights Council on Thursday.
Anne Herzberg, legal adviser and U.N. representative for NGO Monitor commented on the report from the U.N.'s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which accused Israel of systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities in Gaza and using sexual violence as a war strategy since Oct. 7, 2023.
“This latest report yet again reveals the U.N. Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry against Israel as a main vector of atrocity denial and inversion,” Herzberg said.
“Since October 7, the COI [Commission of Inquiry] has outrageously accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza while refusing to say the same about Hamas. It also downplayed the mass sexual violence committed on October 7 against Israeli women and girls, while now issuing an entire report dedicated to defaming the IDF with the false claim of perpetrating systematic gender-based violence against Palestinians.
“Moreover, the COI has done zero advocacy to free the hostages, while just this week held another two days of anti-Israel propaganda hearings. We hope the new U.S. administration will cut all funding to the U.N. bodies responsible for providing millions of dollars to this egregious panel and that all countries of conscience will swiftly follow suit,” Herzberg said.
