Obsessively anti-Israel, UNHRC absurdly accuses Israel of fresh “genocide” by obstructing Palestinian births.

By Rolene Marks

I sometimes think that the United Nation exists just to demonize Israel. The UN never pass up an opportunity to indulge their inner Goebbels and engage in their favourite pastime – targeting and demonizing Israel. We have seen this in just about every major division from the General Assembly to the Human Rights Council.  The UN is rotten from the head of the fish – Secretary General Antonio Guterres to the people managing social media who can barely mention any crime committed against Israelis. The US Deputy Ambassador, Robert Wood, who recently retired after nearly 40 years in the Foreign Service, including most recently as deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Biden administration, knows firsthand that Washington’s next envoy to the global body will have to swim upstream to curb Jew-hatred.

“One of the first things that the next permanent representative will need to focus on is ridding that building of antisemitism, because the entire building is hemorrhaging with it,” Wood told the Jewish News Syndicate in an interview.

No agency is more evident of that than the UN Human Rights Council. In June 2007, the UNHRC established Agenda Item VII, enshrining its discrimination against Israel by requiring the Jewish state be singled out at every meeting – the only country-specific permanent item on the Council’s agenda.

 In the wake of the atrocities of 7 October, the UNHRC have yet to condemn the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust. On 27 October 2023, the council passed a resolution:

“Calling for an immediate and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities, the General Assembly today demanded the unhindered provision of essential aid to civilians throughout the Gaza Strip, as the body continued its emergency session on the situation in the Middle East.  The Assembly also failed to unequivocally reject and condemn the terrorist attacks by Hamas that took place in Israel starting on 7 October.” (Source: press.un.org)

According to a press release from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 5 April 2024:

“The resolution adopted today, the UN condemns Israel for the war in Gaza but makes no mention of Hamas or its crimes on October 7th. The resolution equates the hostages/ with detainees suspected of terrorist activity. It also opposes Israel’s right to defend itself. Furthermore, the resolution provides legitimacy for Palestinian ‘resistance’ to the ‘occupation,’ calls for an arms embargo on Israel, and blatantly disregards the supply of weapons to Hamas by Iran and its allies.

Following the adoption of the resolution, Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and International Organizations in Geneva, Ambassador Meirav Eilon Shahar, left the hall in protest.”

A reminder that the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Rights which clearly states “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

Universal – except for the Jewish state. The UNHRC has also systematically ignored the crimes against humanity of sexual violence committed against Israeli women, girls and men on 7 October and thereafter in captivity. Despite taking several months to acknowledge these crimes, Pramila Patten, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, led an official visit to Israel from 29 January to 14 February to gather, analyse and verify reports of sexual violence related to the 7 October attack.

“What I witnessed in Israel were scenes of unspeakable violence perpetrated with shocking brutality,” Ms. Patten recalled. Detailing her methodology, she said that her team met with families of hostages and members of communities displaced from several kibbutzim.  It conducted confidential interviews with 34 individuals, including survivors and witnesses of the 7 October attacks, released hostages, first responders and health and service providers.  It visited four attack sites – as well as the morgue to which the bodies of victims were transferred – and reviewed over 5,000 photographic images and some 50 hours of footage of the attacks. “It was a catalogue of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture and other horrors,” including sexual violence, she stated.  The team also found convincing information that sexual violence had been committed against hostages.

Patten reported her conclusion to the UN Security Council that there were reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence  –  including rape and gang-rape  –  occurred across multiple locations in Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October 2023.

These crimes, committed in the most depraved and sadistic manner have been roundly ignored and even justified by feminist organisations.  I highly recommend everyone reading this very difficult but meticulously researched report on the atrocities of 7 October led by respected historian, Lord Roberts: https://www.7octparliamentarycommission.co.uk/

The UNHRC’s persistent targeting of the world’s only Jewish state for opprobrium has resulted in both the US and Israel withdrawing from it.

Last month (March 2025),  in what can only be described as a modern-day blood libel, the UNHRC released their commission report accusing Israel of carrying out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities during the conflict in Gaza, and used sexual violence as a war strategy.

Some of the ludicrous allegations include:

“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” said the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry.

Those actions, in addition to a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies, amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination, the commission said.

The report also accused Israel’s security forces of using forced public stripping and sexual assault as part of their standard operating procedures to punish Palestinians following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023. Stripping prisoners is not an uncommon practice – especially when these terror organisations employ suicide bombing as a tactic.

Israel rejected the accusations. “The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) has concrete directives … and policies which unequivocally prohibit such misconduct”, the permanent mission to the UN in Geneva responded in a statement, adding that its review processes are in line with international standards.

Hamas spokesperson, Hazem Qassem told the AFP news agency that the report “shows that Israel has committed genocide in the Palestinian Authority territories since the October 7 attack.” He said, “it confirms what happened on the ground: the violation of humanitarian and legal principles.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry condemned the report calling it a modern-day “blood libel.” In its statement, the ministry said, “This is one of the worst cases of blood libel the world has ever seen (and the world has seen many). It blames the victims for the crimes committed against them. Hamas is the organization that committed horrific sexual crimes against Israelis. This is indeed a sick document that only an antisemitic organization like the UN could have produced.”

In a press release on Wednesday, 2 April 2025, Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, issued the following statement:

“Today’s UNHRC report and resolution represent the highest form of victim-blaming and the lowest form of moral clarity. In the harrowing words of Amit Soussana, a released hostage who endured sexual abuse at the hands of barbaric Hamas terrorists, and who just this week was honoured and decorated by the US Administration for her bravery: “In captivity I had no control over my body, no control over my life. I resisted as best as I could.”

While inquiries by prominent institutions such as the UK Houses of Parliament, and even the UN itself, prove unequivocally the systematic and premeditated nature of the sexual violence and crimes committed by Hamas, the UN so called Human Rights Council seeks to accuse Israel of gender-based attacks. Instead of condemning brutal terrorism, it vilifies those defending innocent lives.

The UNHRC has long abandoned moral integrity, but even by its standards, this is a new low – whitewashing Hamas atrocities while ignoring Israeli pain and agony is not ‘justice,’ it’s an insult to truth and decency. It’s an insult to humanity.”

The UNHRC’s bilious and relentless focus on Israel at the expense of other conflicts in the world is proof that the UN body is not only redundant and untrustworthy, but by ignoring sexual crimes against Israelis while perpetuating a blood libel has failed current and future victims of sexual assault. The UNHRC has engaged in grotesque victim blaming and is effectively acting as the diplomatic arm of Hams. This is not a human rights council – it is a sham. Perhaps the time has come for many more countries to follow the US and Israel and exit.

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