UN Report Accuses Israel of Sexual, Reproductive Violence and ‘Genocidal Acts’ in Gaza

The report found a pervasive belief among Israeli government officials and soldiers that “Palestinians in Gaza are considered complicit, despite age, gender or civilian status, and should be exterminated."

By Kylie Cheung | March 13, 2025 | 1:42pm

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UN Report Accuses Israel of Sexual, Reproductive Violence and ‘Genocidal Acts’ in Gaza

On Wednesday, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory published a harrowing, 49-page report on “genocidal acts” committed by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians, subjecting them to widespread sexual abuse, and targeting their ability to safely give birth or give birth at all. “Gender-based violence—which has risen in frequency and severity—is being perpetrated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a strategy of war for Israel to dominate and destroy the Palestinian people,” the Commission’s press release presenting the report states. “Forms of sexual and gender-based violence including rape” are “committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership.”

Further, the release asserts that Israeli forces have “systematically destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza,” and “deliberately” imposed “measures intended to prevent births.” Taken together, the report concludes that Israel is guilty of “the crime against humanity of extermination.”

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The report extensively details the atrocities that pregnant and postpartum Palestinians have faced during the war and under Israel’s siege on Gaza. The Commission found that “direct attacks” on facilities offering sexual and reproductive care have severely impacted 540,000 women and girls of reproductive age across Gaza. As of January, just seven out of 18 partially functional hospitals in Gaza offered emergency obstetric care, the report says. Due to a lack of anesthetic, antibiotics, or basic cleaning supplies, infections are rampant, and maternal and infant mortality have soared.

As humanitarian agencies have previously told Jezebel, C-sections in Gaza hospitals are sometimes performed without anesthetic and adequate medical supplies, resulting in infections and death. Those who are able to give birth in overrun hospitals are almost immediately discharged. Many women give birth in tents. The Commission spoke to Palestinians who prepared for their births by watching online videos because they knew they wouldn’t be able to receive care. In some cases, pregnant or postpartum women are killed by Israeli forces: “One of my patients had just given birth to twins when her apartment was attacked” in August, a lactation consultant in Gaza told the Commission. “The attack happened while the father was at a local government office to register the birth. The woman and her newborns were killed instantly in the attack,” he said, and “there was no militant in sight.”

“Entire families in Gaza have been killed together in their homes in unprecedented numbers,” the report states, further referencing previous UN reporting that “95% of women were killed together with at least one child.”

“Other forms of sexual & gender-based violence including rape” targeting Palestinian men, women, and children “were committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian & military leadership”

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— Kylie Cheung (@kylietcheung.bsky.social) March 13, 2025 at 9:34 AM

Then, drawing on both witness and survivor testimony, as well as social media posts from Israeli soldiers and settlers themselves, the Commission describes pervasive sexual violence against Palestinian men, women, and children. These behaviors have escalated since Oct. 7, 2023, but the report stresses that “sexual and gender-based violence is by no means a new element of the Israeli occupation,” under which Palestinians are routinely subjected to strip and body searches at checkpoints, or rampant sexual abuse and beatings on their genitals in jails and detainment camps. Palestinians of all ages and genders report being arrested without charge. In detainment camps, male survivors recount sexual torture and being stripped naked and repeatedly, severely beaten, especially on their genitals. Their humiliation, they said, appeared to be the goal. Women and girls recount similar experiences, including being subjected to strip searches, forced nudity, beatings on their genitals, and threats or completed acts of sexual assault while detained.

“I’ve always said Arabs [female pronouns used] are the biggest sluts out there,” an Israeli soldier says in one video posted to social media and reviewed by the Commission. This video is one of many in which Israeli soldiers record themselves looting Palestinians’ homes and stealing and wearing women’s lingerie. In other videos, not just in Gaza, Israeli settlers record themselves kidnapping Palestinians, making them strip, humiliating them, and, in at least one video, forcing them to eat straw and animal food.

And, as a feature of everyday life since Oct. 7, 2023, the Commission found women and girls have been forced to “[minimize] their need to go to the toilet… by avoiding to eat and drink.” (Sadly, this isn’t difficult due to starvation conditions across Gaza.) They fear infections and diseases from unhygienic conditions, and also for their safety while “having to use the toilet in close quarters with men.” One woman told the Commission, “We cannot afford pads. If we have money, the priority is to bring food for the family to survive rather [than] getting pads for something that is temporary.” The Commission interviewed another woman at Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital who suffered from infections from lack of clean water. These infections only worsened at the hospital, she said, as “there was garbage spread everywhere inside the hospital, as it was not safe to take the garbage outside” because Israeli forces routinely attack hospitals or shoot at anyone who steps outside.

Palestinian “women & girls have died from complications related to pregnancy & childbirth due to the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities… acts which amount to the crime against humanity of extermination.”

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— Kylie Cheung (@kylietcheung.bsky.social) March 13, 2025 at 9:34 AM

Early on, the report says that statements from Israeli government officials, soldiers, and settlers demonstrate a pervasive belief that “Palestinians in Gaza are considered complicit, despite age, gender, or civilian status, and should be exterminated.” The killing has been indiscriminate, with women and children, like men, shot by snipers in churches, or by airstrikes on residential buildings and refugee camps. Sexual and reproductive violence has added a crushing, gendered dimension to the terrors that Palestinian women and girls are experiencing, the Commission found.

“There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination,” Navi Pillay, chair of the Commission, said in a statement about the report. And, as Israel continues to ignore requests for information from the Commission, and has declined to take meaningful steps toward accountability, Pillay said intervention from the International Criminal Court “is essential if the rule of law is to be upheld and victims awarded justice.”