UN accuses Israel of ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza for targeting reproductive healthcare facilities
The UN Commission of Inquiry has said Israel had “intentionally attacked and destroyed” the Palestinian territory’s main fertility centre and had simultaneously imposed a siege and blocked aid, including medication for ensuring safe pregnancies, deliveries and neonatal care.
The commission found that Israeli authorities “have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare”, it said in a statement. It said this amounted to “two categories of genocidal acts” during Israel’s war in Gaza.
Of its five categories, the inquiry said the two implicating Israel were “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”.
“These violations have not only caused severe immediate physical and mental harm and suffering to women and girls, but irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group,” the commission’s chair Navi Pillay said in a statement.
Israel “categorically rejects” the allegations, its mission in Geneva said.
‘Sick document’: Israel blasts UN report on ‘genocidal acts’ against Palestinians
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has strongly condemned the report, calling it “one of the worst cases of blood libel the world has ever seen”, referring to accusations against Jews in Europe of using Christian blood for ritual purposes, which often inspired deadly attacks on them.
“It accuses the victims of the crimes committed against them. Hamas is the organisation that has committed horrendous sexual crimes against Israelis,” it said in a post on X. “It is indeed a sick document that only an antisemitic organisation such as the UN could produce.”
Israel often makes allegations of anti-Semitism to respond to its well-documented abuses against Palestinians.
In regard to the blood libel published by the ‘Commission of Inquiry’:
It is one of the worst cases of blood libel the world has ever seen (and the world has seen many). It accuses the victims of the crimes committed against them. Hamas is the organization that has committed… pic.twitter.com/64rb5DTyEN
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) March 13, 2025
Netanyahu slams UN report on genocide, sexual violence in Gaza as ‘absurd’
The Israeli prime minister is the latest high-level official to take aim at the expert UN report accusing Israel of acts of genocide and sexual violence in Gaza.
In a statement issued by his office, Netanyahu said the report is full of “false accusations”.
“The anti-Israeli circus known as the UN Human Rights Council … once again chooses to attack the State of Israel with false accusations, including absurd claims” of destroying sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities in Gaza, said the statement.
UN report on ‘genocidal acts’ to give boost to ICJ case against Israel
The United Nations report is detailed and not very easy to read. It contains very graphic details and testimonies from not only the victims but also the perpetrators of these acts.
The report relies on information and videos published by the soldiers themselves documenting themselves carrying out some of the acts detailed in the report. This includes humiliating Palestinian detainees, assaulting them, and stripping them down to their underwear.
The report also talks about the targeting of health facilities, including Gaza’s main fertility clinic. About 4,000 embryos were deliberately destroyed in that attack, in effect denying thousands of families the possibility of giving birth.
The report also talks about acts of sexual violence committed against Palestinian detainees, men and women alike. This includes rape by foreign objects of men and women in Israeli custody.
Israel has categorically denied the conclusions reached by the report, with former PM Bennett saying the UN has become Hamas’s useful idiot.
We’ve heard these kinds of accusations and statements against the UN before, but they really don’t hold up in court. As we’ve seen before, the International Court of Justice rejected Israel’s claims and attacks against the UN and found that there’s plausible evidence for genocide. This report will only increase that plausibility in the eyes of legal experts.
UN report on Israel’s attacks on reproductive healthcare could end up in ICC, ICJ
Former UN relief chief Martin Griffiths told Al Jazeera he predicts the report will be formally submitted to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, adding that it was “very good the UN now itself is talking about genocide”.
“As you know, it [UN] has been very careful about that word in the past, but now this is a gateway,” he added.
Moreover, Griffiths said the report goes beyond reproductive health and attacks on women and girls, examining the broader conditions imposed on Gaza, describing them as “life-threatening”.
Al-Basma IVF Centre in Gaza City, Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, was struck by an Israeli shell
