In Gaza, the Gender-Based Violence Against Palestinians ‘Can Only Be Described as Systematic’
UN investigator Chris Sidoti told Jezebel that the targeted attacks are "about humiliation and inflicting pain, denying Palestinians, as a people, all dignity.”
Earlier this month, a 50-page report on “genocidal acts” committed by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians was published by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It’s the fifth report by the Commission since October 2023, and this one specifically focused on gender-based violence against Palestinians, including rape, sexual torture, and targeted attacks on their ability to safely give birth.The Commission ultimately concluded Israel is guilty of “the crime against humanity of extermination.”
“When you look at Israeli soldiers, you wonder how they could be ordinary human beings after this, to come out of a genocidal campaign of this brutality, to their families, kids, communities,” Chris Sidoti, an international human rights lawyer who serves on the Commission and co-wrote the report, told Jezebel.
In addition to extensive testimony from Palestinian victims detailing rape and sexual torture, the report’s findings also accuse Israel of targeted reproductive violence against Palestinians. The Commission determined that Gaza’s 540,000 women and girls of reproductive age have been left without access to sexual and reproductive health care; consequently, rates of deadly infections, miscarriage, and maternal and infant mortality have surged. C-sections in Gaza hospitals are sometimes performed without anesthetic and adequate medical supplies. Describing her struggles with starvation and no access to health care, one new mother who’d given birth told the Commission, “It was a lot for me, it was a lot for women. It’s more than a human can bear.” Some of the strongest evidence of Israel’s deliberate war on Palestinians’ reproduction, Sidoti said, is Israel’s destruction of a fertility clinic in Gaza, which destroyed at least 4,000 embryos.
“The legal definition of genocide is very technical and not always the same as popular understanding,” Sidoti, who’s worked in international human rights law for over four decades, told Jezebel. But he maintains that Israel has “created conditions that make continuing life impossible, impaired birth, and impaired the reproductive capacity of women, also men, through deliberate injuries to their genitals,” all of which entail “genocidal acts.”
Perhaps the most devastating part of this harrowing UN report is the attack on Gaza’s maternity, fertility and reproductive health clinics, attacks which the commission describes as genocidal acts.
The IDF bombing of the Basma IVF Centre killed 4,000 embryos.
Sexual violence has long been a feature of Israeli forces’ occupation of Palestine, Sidoti continued. “It can only be described as systematic, at this point, and it’s far more intense now than what was experienced [before Oct. 7].” Since then, forced nudity and violent “body searches,” sometimes as a pretext for rape, have all escalated. “We came to the conclusion [acts of gender-based violence] are a specific policy, a method of war on the part of the Israeli military. It can’t be said these are isolated incidents by rogue soldiers—it really is part and parcel of the way Israeli forces are conducting this fighting. That is very disturbing.” The Commission wrote that sexual violence was both ordered and encouraged by Israel’s military leadership.
Palestinians of all genders and ages are being subjected to this treatment when detained, but Sidoti says the most testimonies about sexual violence in Israeli-run camps were from men and boys. “We have testimony from men and boys who suffered grievous physical harm to their genitals, anus, from mistreatment and sexual violence from Israelis—we believe this is far more widespread than previously known.” Many detainees are kept naked out in the cold or alone in prison cells “for several days.” Sidoti added the strategy “really is about humiliation and inflicting pain, denying Palestinians, as a people, all dignity.”
In addition to testimony from victims, witnesses, and humanitarian workers, the report draws heavily from social media posts and public comments from Israeli soldiers and politicians themselves. “I don’t think there’s ever been a war that’s been so well photographed and videoed than this one, where Israeli soldiers in particular post all this material on the internet, and made it so easy for all of us investigators to to view,” Sidoti said. “It’s an enormous amount of digital evidence, this much I’ve never seen before.”
Since the report’s publication on March 13, the response from the international community has been “enormous,” Sidoti says, pointing to outrage among activists and humanitarian agencies around the world. In a statement earlier this month, Amnesty International’s senior adviser on gender, conflict, and international justice, Lauren Aarons, wrote: “These damning findings are another clear illustration of the devastating impact of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its use of gender-based violence to oppress… Palestinians of all genders, especially in Israeli detention centers.” She continued, “No discussion of human rights is possible without tackling Israel’s decades long impunity for its violations against Palestinians.”
The UN has reported war crimes and acts of genocide in Gaza, including attacks on women’s healthcare and sexual violence as a weapon of war. I’ve written to the Foreign Secretary to ask for clarity on what the UK will do—especially if British nationals in the IDF are implicated.
Meanwhile, the silence from U.S. politicians has been deafening. To Sidoti, who’s extensively documented human rights violations by Israel over his decades-long career, it’s not surprising. He says he’s used to American media conspicuously ignoring systematic sexual violence against Palestinians. “There’s never much U.S. response to anything we [the Commission] produce. But so far as Israel-Palestine is concerned, the U.S. is irrelevant,” he said. “U.S. political leaders’ views just don’t matter—they’ve established their position, which is one-sided and uncompromising. They don’t have credibility because of that.”
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 50,500 Palestinians in Gaza; the United Nations reported in November that 70% of the dead are women and children. The New York Times and other organizations report the death toll is substantially higher. The Commission’s report states that Israel has ignored all of its requests for information and declined to take any steps toward accountability. The country also disengaged from the UN’s Human Rights Council in February. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s only response to the report was to deny it all and cry anti-Israel bias.
Sidoti says he remains “confident” Israel will face accountability, even if it’s not immediate: “We’ve already seen the International Criminal Court issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, other Israeli officials, and the court said that’s just the start,” he said. “There’s no statute of limitations on international atrocities. I hope they know they’ll be pursued to the grave.”
