Israeli officials have referred to claims from U.N. rapporteurs and UNRWA as unsubstantiated and said Israel would investigate concrete allegations of abuse.
The State Department denied that one of its officials accused the Israel Defense Forces of sexually abusing Palestinian women, disputing an Israeli general’s characterization of a meeting this past weekend.
Yesterday, Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, told Israel’s 103FM radio station that the State Department official who oversees U.S. policy toward Israel made that claim. “It was a meeting that shook me,” he said, without naming the U.S. official or specifying where the meeting took place.
“This is absolutely disconnected from reality. But without hesitation, she said, ‘The U.N. presented evidence to the Israeli government,’” Avivi told 103FM. He also did not say if the U.S. official specified a specific set of allegations that the U.N. has advanced against Israel.
But during a briefing today, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said he had seen the report about Avivi’s comments and called it “not accurate.”
“My understanding of the meeting is that you had a State Department official who said what we have said consistently, publicly, which is that Israel must thoroughly and transparently investigate credible allegations of wrongdoing and ensure accountability for any abuses and violations,” Miller said.
The discussion about how the State Department handled the recent meeting comes as U.N. entities have responded to revelations about Hamas’s use of rape on October 7 with a campaign asserting that Israeli forces have themselves used sexual violence during the war in Gaza. Miller didn’t deny that a State Department official had raised any of the U.N.’s claims; he just said that an official urged Israel to investigate credible accusations of sexual violence.
If the State Department has implied that the U.N. claims are credible, that’s noteworthy, as it indicates that Washington is siding with controversial officials within the global body.
In February, a group of U.N. human-rights rapporteurs with a history of anti-Israel commentary asserted that they had received reports that the IDF had raped at least two Palestinian detainees. One of the U.N. officials who made that assertion is Francesca Albanese, an Italian academic who drew criticism from the U.S., Germany, and France for denying that the October 7 massacre was an antisemitic act. Another U.N. official who signed the statement, Reem Alsalem, the special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, only criticized Hamas’s use of rape during the terrorist attack while also making unsupported claims in a statement last November that Israel was carrying out sexual assault.
Meanwhile, after Israel publicly released information implicating employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in the October 7 attacks, a report that it compiled alleging that IDF soldiers sexually assaulted Palestinian detainees in Gaza was leaked to media outlets. UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini claimed earlier this month that the document should not have been made public. But the timing of the report’s leak — ahead of a speech he delivered before the U.N. General Assembly this month to urge countries against cutting funding for his agency — suggests that it was part of a PR counteroffensive to punish Israel for revealing UNRWA’s ties to Hamas.
The IDF and the Israeli foreign ministry have each referred to claims from the U.N. rapporteurs and UNRWA as unsubstantiated and said Israel would investigate concrete allegations of abuse.