A United Nations commission investigating the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing conflict in Gaza accused both Palestinian armed groups and Israel of committing war crimes, and the commission said the conduct of the war by Israel included crimes against humanity.
In a report released Wednesday, the three-person commission – led by Navi Pillay, a former top UN human rights official – provided the most detailed review ever by the UN into the events of October 7 and since. The report itself does not carry any sanction. , but it presents a legal analysis of actions in the Gaza conflict that will likely be examined by the International Court of Justice and in other international criminal proceedings. Israel did not cooperate with the investigation and protested the committee’s assessment of his behavior, the committee said.
The report says Hamas’ military wing and six other Palestinian armed groups – aided in some cases by Palestinian civilians – killed and tortured people during the October 7 attack on Israel in which more than 800 civilians were included. among the more than 1,200 killed. An additional 252 people, including 36 children, were taken hostage, the report said.
“Many kidnappings were committed with significant physical, mental and sexual violence and degrading and humiliating treatment, including, in some cases, parading of the abductees,” the report said. “Men and their bodies have been used as trophies of victory by men. »
Hamas has rejected all accusations that its forces engaged in sexual violence against Israeli women, the commission noted.
The commission also cited significant evidence of desecration of corpses, including sexualized desecrations, decapitations, lacerations, burning and severing of body parts.
But Israel, during its months-long campaign in Gaza to oust Hamas, also committed war crimes, the commission said, such as using starvation as a weapon of war through a total siege of Gaza.
He said Israel’s use of heavy weapons in densely populated areas amounted to a direct attack on the civilian population and contained the essential elements of a crime against humanity, disregarding the need to distinguish between combatants and civilians and causing a disproportionate number of civilian casualties. especially among women and children.
The conflict has killed or maimed tens of thousands of Palestinian children, a number and rate of casualties “unprecedented among conflicts in recent decades,” the commission said.
Other crimes against humanity committed by Israel in Gaza, the commission said, include “extermination, murder, gender-based persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, forced population transfer, torture and treatment inhumane and cruel.”
The panel said Israeli forces used sexual and gender-based violence, including forced nudity and sexual humiliation, as an “operational procedure” against Palestinians during evacuations and forced detentions. “Victims, both men and women, were subjected to such sexual violence,” the report said, “but men and boys were targeted in particular ways.”
“The treatment of men and boys was intentionally sexualized as an act of retaliation for the attack,” the text adds, referring to October 7.
In a statement responding to the report, the Israeli mission to the United Nations in Geneva denounced what it called “systematic anti-Israeli discrimination.” He said the commission ignored Hamas’s use of human shields and attempted “scandalously and repugnantly” to draw a false equivalence between Hamas and the Israeli military when it comes to sexual violence.
The commission – which includes Chris Sidoti, an Australian human rights law expert, and Miloon Kothari, an Indian human rights and social policy expert – said Israel had refused to cooperate with its investigation and had denied the group access to Israel, Gaza and the Western Banks. Israel also did not respond to six requests for information, the panel said.
The group based its findings on interviews with survivors and witnesses conducted remotely and in person during visits to Turkey and Egypt. The study also relied on satellite imagery, forensic records and open source data, including photographs and videos taken by Israeli troops and shared on social media.
The commission said it had identified those most responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity, including senior figures from Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and senior Israeli political and military officials, including members of its war cabinet. The commission said it would continue its investigations focusing on those with individual criminal responsibility and command or superior responsibility.
