The Human Rights Council, which appoints the experts, faces allegations of bias against Israel.
U.N. experts notorious for their anti-Israel views say that they received reports that Israeli forces carried out crimes against Palestinian women and girls, including murder and rape.
“We are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge, or while fleeing,” the experts said in a statement today, adding that some of the alleged victims were carrying white pieces of cloth. The experts also said that the reports they received indicated that detainees have been denied menstruation pads and food and that Israeli forces have sexually assaulted and raped Palestinian detainees. They said that these acts occurred across Gaza and the West Bank.
In response, Israel’s foreign ministry said that “no complaint has been received by Israeli authorities” but will investigate any concrete claims of abuses. It also noted the controversial positions espoused by the U.N. experts who published the claims, pointing out that one of them “just days ago legitimized the massacre of October 7” and another “publicly doubted the testimonies of Israeli victims of gender-based and sexual violence.”
U.N. human-rights experts, appointed by the Human Rights Council, which faces allegations of bias against Israel, conduct their work independently from the organization’s secretariat and are not paid for it. But, even when purported experts intend to advance the interests of authoritarian governments, their reports nonetheless carry the weight granted by their affiliation with the U.N.
One of the statement’s signatories is Francesca Albanese, the U.N.’s “special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories” — which is a position dedicated to scrutinizing allegations against Israel. Albanese recently landed herself in hot water when she made posts to social media denying that October 7 was the largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century, instead saying that Hamas was motivated by “Israeli oppression.” France, Germany, and the U.S. issued statements condemning Albanese’s post. U.S. ambassador to the Human Rights Council Michèle Taylor wrote that Albanese has a “history of using antisemitic tropes,” referring to her previous writings about America’s “Jewish lobby.”
Albanese later doubled down on her comments about the Hamas attack, pointing to a controversial statement that U.N. secretary-general António Guterres made last year: “There is no justification for the horrific attacks of 7 October. However, the ‘56 years of suffocating occupation’ referred to by the Secretary-General is the very context that fuels the hatred and violence that endangers Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
The U.N. special rapporteur for violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, also signed the latest expert statement. In the days following October 7, Alsalem and Albanese cast doubt on the initial reports about Hamas’s widespread use of sexual violence during the attack — which were later supported by witness testimony and media reporting.
In November, Alsalem attracted criticism for mentioning Hamas’s rape of Israelis while also making unsupported claims about “reports of sexual violence” carried out against Palestinians after October 7. That statement, which had come after advocates complained that she was not speaking out about Hamas’s use of rape, mainly criticized Israel’s campaign in Gaza for “disproportionately” targeting women.
Members of the U.N. working group on discrimination against women and girls also backed the statement released today.
The U.N. statement comes amid other efforts in the U.S. to cast doubt on sexual violence committed during October 7 and to create an equivalence between Hamas’s and Israel’s actions. Last week, Representative Rashida Tlaib abstained from a resolution in the House of Representatives that condemned Hamas’s use of sexual violence, asserting that it “ignores and erases” the use of sexual violence by Israeli forces.