Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today rejected as “false and absurd“ allegations by a UN inquiry commission that Israel has committed “acts of genocide“ in the Gaza Strip, Agence France-Presse reported, BTA reported.
“Instead of focusing on crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the terrorist organization “Hamas“ "In the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, the UN has once again chosen to attack the State of Israel with false accusations, including absurd allegations of sexual violence," Netanyahu said in a statement.
Non-governmental organizations, including Amnesty International, and independent UN experts have accused Israel of genocide in Gaza since the start of the war in the Palestinian territory, triggered by Hamas' unprecedented attack on the Jewish state on October 7, 2023.
“The anti-Israel circus known as the UN Human Rights Commission has long proven itself to be anti-Semitic, corrupt, pro-terrorism and inept”, the Israeli prime minister added.
A report by UN experts published earlier today said Israel had committed “acts of genocide” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women's health facilities during the Gaza conflict and using sexual violence as a military strategy, Reuters reported.
“The Israeli authorities have partially destroyed the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a group, including by imposing measures aimed at preventing new births – one of the categories of acts of genocide in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention“, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel said.
These actions, in addition to a rise in maternal deaths due to limited access to medical supplies, constitute a crime against humanity – extermination, the commission said.
The new report by the UN Commission cites as an example the destruction by Israeli security forces of the largest in vitro fertilization clinic “Al Basma“, which stores thousands of embryos.
The destruction was “aimed at preventing Palestinian births in Gaza“ and constitutes “an act of genocide”, says the Commission, which was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021.
The report accuses Israeli security forces of using forced public undressing and sexual assault as part of their standard operating procedures to punish Palestinians following attacks in southern Israel in October 2023.