Why the UN Secretary-General’s recent decision to blacklist Hamas, and not Israel, as perpetrators of sexual violence flies in the face of the UN’s own evidence.
By The Feminist Solidarity Network For Palestine, Reposted from Mondoweiss, October 06, 2025
On July 15, 2025, UN Secretary-General António Guterres released his yearly report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, adding Hamas to the UN’s “list of parties credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict.”1 The decision to do so came in spite of the fact that neither of the two previous UN reports on which the Secretary-General based his findings had attributed to Hamas a single act of conflict-related sexual violence on October 7, nor found evidence of a plan or orders to commit sexual violence.
The strongest evidence presented in the Secretary General’s report for the claim that Hamas was responsible for sexual violence on October 7 was the alleged presence of several bodies undressed from the waist down with hands tied (a claim we scrutinize below) – evidence the report claims “may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence” (by who is left unaddressed) but admits is circumstantial (para 35). By contrast, the report details no less than “12 incidents of conflict-related sexual violence perpetrated by Israeli armed and security forces … in Naqab/Ketziot and Ofer prisons and Etzion detention centre against seven Palestinian men, including one rape; one attempted rape; three incidents of squeezing or pulling detainees’ genitals; and seven incidents of kicking, or beatings to, genitals,” in addition to “at least two cases of rape and four incidents of violence to the genitals by Israeli armed and security forces against Palestinian male detainees in Naqab/Ketziot and Megiddo prisons and Sde Teiman military base,” all of which were verified by the UN (para 36). These recent incidents join a vast literature documenting sexual violence against Palestinian men, women, and children by Israeli forces over multiple decades: violence the UN itself has concluded is ‘systematic’ and ‘institutionalized’ (see para 153, 193 in this report).
Yet the decision was made to blacklist Hamas, and not Israel, for conflict-related sexual violence. Why?
The flagrant bias apparent in this decision by the Secretary-General is unfortunately only the latest episode in a long history of UN complicity in Israel’s mass rape propaganda (rigorously debunked in publications such as The Intercept, Yes Magazine, Mondoweiss, Grayzone, Middle East Monitor, Electronic Intifada, and The London Times).2 In this article, we map out key moments in this history through an analysis of the two major UN reports on sexual violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). We also review the most in-depth, but lesser-known, UN report into systematic sexual violence by Israeli forces. Drawing on the UN’s own evidence of sexual violence, we explain that the decision to blacklist Hamas and not Israel for conflict-related sexual violence is in step with a longer trajectory of bias, investigate the roots of this bias, and call attention to the well-documented reality of systematic sexual violence by Israel against Palestinians.
We conclude that the UN Secretary-General’s decision to blacklist Hamas, pandering to Israeli propaganda while disregarding the UN’s own evidence of Israel’s systematic use of sexual violence, will go down in history as a stunning example of UN complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
1. The Patten report: Biased from the beginning
On January 20, 2024 as Israel intensified its genocide in Gaza, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs extended an invitation to Pramila Patten, the UN Special Representative to the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, to travel to Israel in order to “witness the extent of the (sexual) atrocities for herself and bring Hamas’ crimes to the attention of the international authorities.” At the time, Israel’s mass rape narrative–a cornerstone of its justification for genocide–was beginning to unravel, with investigative reports revealing lying witnesses, unreliable claims, and a glaring lack of evidence and survivors. Patten, however, took little convincing. After a private screening of Israel’s infamous 43-minute propaganda documentary, she stated, “Only after I saw the video did I understand things that I didn’t understand before in terms of the magnitude of the disaster that happened.”
Bias in favor of the Israeli narrative was evident in Patten’s mission from the start. The stated purpose of the mission, whose complicity and errors we documented at length in an earlier article, was to verify allegations of conflict-related sexual violence committed during the “brutal, Hamas-led terror attacks of 7 October 2023,” with Patten herself declaring that the “main concern” of the mission was “to do everything for the remaining (Israeli) hostages.” Because Patten’s office does not have investigative powers, it relied heavily on secondary information, and the report itself admitted that the mission team had been limited by the fact that the information it relied on was “in a large part sourced from Israeli national institutions” (para 55).3 These included: “the President of Israel and the First Lady, relevant line ministries…the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet), and the Israeli National Police in charge of the investigation on the 7 October attacks (Lahav 433); [and] several working visits to the Shura military base, the morgue to which the bodies of victims were transferred, as well as one visit to the Israeli National Center of Forensic Medicine” (para 33). In a span of two weeks the mission team “conducted 33 meetings with representatives of Israeli national institutions” (para 33) while Patten herself met with some of the key fabricants of Israel’s atrocity propaganda: above she is pictured with Yossi Landau, source of the infamous “pregnant woman with her fetus cut out” and “beheaded babies” lies. This bias in sourcing is significant because the report does not cite any of the evidence it uses.
The report’s conclusion that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred during the attacks of 7 October 2023 in multiple locations, including rape and gang rape” was based on a stunning lack of evidence and a loose handful of alleged incidents. These included the allegation, echoed in para 35 of the Secretary-General’s report and para 12 and 58 of Patten’s original report, that “several fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down were recovered – mostly women – with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head. Although circumstantial, such a pattern of undressing and restraining of victims may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence.”
Such allegations were based largely on reports from “first responders.” However, we know that the principal organization tasked with responding to October 7 from within Israel was ZAKA, the ultra-nationalist organization which, according to spokesperson Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, views itself as “an arm of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” ZAKA members have been amongst the worst fabricators of Israel’s atrocity propaganda. Given Patten’s team had no investigative powers and was on a deadline to complete its mission in two weeks; given that it tried and failed to speak with any survivors of sexual assault or rape on October 7; given that it was heavily guided by the Israeli government; and given that hundreds of media articles up to that point had relied on a narrow, recirculated pool of 12 witness accounts–all of which have been debunked or shown to be unreliable–it is reasonable to conclude that Patten’s team may have relied on many of these same witness accounts.
Among those to have made the claim that naked women were found partially or fully naked with their hands tied (emphasizing how they had been shot in the head) was Shari Mendes. Mendes, “one of the most visible witnesses bolstering Israel’s allegations of systematic rape,” is an architect and a member of the IDF Rabbinical corps who volunteered to prepare corpses for burial at Shura Military Base, where Patten’s team conducted ‘several visits’ (para 3). While Mendes is sometimes presented by the media as a member of the ‘forensics team‘, she was neither responsible for nor qualified to collect forensic evidence or identify the cause of death. Mendes, who was later invited to testify before the UN, has repeatedly changed her story after repeating some of the worst debunked lies about October 7, including claiming in an interview with the Daily Mail that she saw a fetus cut out of its mother’s stomach and beheaded (Israel’s own national insurance institute records confirm that only one baby was killed on October 7: 10 month old Mila Cohen, who press reported was killed by a bullet fired through a door as Palestinian militants attempted to enter her home).4 Five trained forensic pathologists, later revealed to have been working at Shura and tasked specifically with examining bodies for “the possibility of rape,” found, according to Haaretz, that “there were no signs on any of those bodies attesting to sexual relations having taken place or of mutilation of genitalia.”
The only incident of rape recounted in the report that was not already discussed in the media and had not been previously debunked was “the rape of a woman outside of a bomb shelter at the entrance of kibbutz Re’im, which was corroborated by witness testimonies and digital material” (para 61, our emphasis). However, in a glaring contradiction, the report explicitly states that it found zero digital evidence for rape. Despite having experts review “over 5,000 photos, around 50 hours and several audio files of footage of the attacks, provided partly by various state agencies and through an independent online review of various open sources,” Patten’s team were forced to conclude that “in the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified” (para 74, our emphasis).
What is most important to know about Patten’s report, however, given how heavily the Secretary-General relies on its findings in his decision to blacklist Hamas for sexual violence, is what it did not find:
a) No survivors: Despite issuing a call to survivors to come forward, Patten’s team was unable to locate a single survivor of sexual violence on October 7 and did not speak with any survivors (para 48).
b) No pattern: The mission team explicitly did not find a pattern of sexual violence on October 7 or establish prevalence beyond the handful of alleged incidents contained in the report. When 51 minutes into Patten’s March 4, 2024, press conference, Farnaz Fassihi from The New York Times asks, “Would you say that you found a pattern of sexual violence that was a strategy of Hamas, both in the October 7 attacks and in regards to the hostages?”, Patten answers definitively in the negative. Later in the press conference, when she is asked by Haaretz journalist Liza Rozovsky, “Am I correct that you cannot conclude that the sexual violence was of a systematic character?”, Patten reiterates her answer, stating: “No…the distinguishing factor from the exercise that we set out to do, the gathering and verification of information for the purpose of its inclusion in the annual report of the Secretary-General versus an investigation, that’s where you would…go into elements of widespread or systematic. We did not go into that” (minute 57).5 Patten’s report states that it could not “establish the prevalence of sexual violence” (para 86), a point that Patten reiterates in the press conference, stating:
“I do not go into prevalence, I do not have numbers in the report. Because for me one case is more than enough. It’s not about…I didn’t go on a bookkeeping exercise. The first letter that I received from the government of Israel talked about hundreds if not thousands of cases of brutal sexual violence perpetrated against men, women and children. I have not found anything, anything like that.”
It is important to note that while prevalence is not within the scope of the work of the mission, finding patterns is. The report explains “the mandate of the SRSG-SVC encompasses the gathering, analysis, and verification of existing, as well as independently received information on incidents and patterns of conflict-related sexual violence” (para 25, our emphasis). Given that the SG blacklist is supposed to list“parties credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict,” the inability of Patten’s UN team to find any evidence of a pattern of sexual violence makes the SG’s decision to blacklist Hamas especially questionable.
c) No attribution: Patten’s report did not attribute a single act of sexual violence to Hamas or to any other Palestinian resistance group. During the March 4 press conference, Patten explained that:
“Given the multiple actors, it was Hamas, it was Palestinian Islamic Jihad, there were other armed groups, there were civilians, armed and unarmed, I did not go into attribution given the time and given the fact that I was not conducting an investigation.”
This conclusion was also noted in the report itself, which explains that “given the mission was not investigative, it did not gather information and/or draw conclusions on attribution of alleged violations to specific armed groups” (para 78).
The fact that Patten’s team was unable to establish a pattern or prevalence of sexual violence on October 7, failed to locate any survivors or digital evidence of rape, and did not attribute responsibility to Hamas for any single act of sexual violence should lead us to seriously question the decision of the Secretary-General to add Hamas to the “list of parties credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict.” This is especially true as this decision appears to have relied principally on the findings of Patten’s report.
2. What we know about sexual violence against Israeli hostages
The one area in which Patten’s report claims to have “clear and convincing information” (a higher threshold of evidence than “reasonable grounds to believe”) is in regards to hostages, stating that the mission team received “clear and convincing information that some hostages taken to Gaza were subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence during their time in captivity” (para 85). The decision of the Secretary-General to blacklist Hamas leaned heavily on this finding, as well as on a claim in a September 2024 report by the Commission of Inquiry (COI) that the Commission had received “credible information about some hostages being subjected to sexual and gender-based violence” (para 82). However, both for its September 2024 report and in its earlier June 2024 report (which we discuss below), the COI admits that it was unable to interview any hostages directly because of Israel’s refusal to cooperate (see minute 20.45). Indeed, the COI makes explicit in its September 2024 report that it had to rely “on video and audio testimonies of released hostages accessible through open sources” for its report and could not speak with any hostages directly.
Because neither report names its sources or quotes alleged witnesses, it is very difficult to evaluate the veracity of these claims. What is important to note is that neither report claims that sexual violence against hostages was systematic, generalized, or ordered by Hamas (all accusations the UN will later aim at Israeli forces in relation to Palestinian detainees). Instead, we are told that some hostages were likely subjected to sexual violence. To date, the only released hostage who has come forward publicly claiming to have been raped in captivity is Amit Soussana (this is likely the “one released female hostage [who] reported that she had been raped in an apartment” and who is singled out in the September 2024 COI report). In aninterview with The New York Times, Soussana recounts that her captor forced her to engage in “a sexual act” before expressing remorse and begging her not to tell Israel. In a 1300-word response to Soussanna’s story, Hamas stated that “it was essential for the group to investigate Ms. Soussana’s allegations” and that they condemned sexual violence in all forms. Bracketing the question of credibility, it is important to note that Soussana’s story does not lend credence to Israel’s claim that there was a plan or directive on the part of Hamas to use rape as a weapon of war, nor does it constitute a “pattern” that would render Hamas eligible for the UN blacklist. As the COI report itself claims that “some released hostages stated they had not been mistreated” (para 83), it is reasonable to infer that this treatment was not systematic.
Given that the Israeli government has repeatedly claimed on the basis of Soussanna’s story that female hostages in Gaza are being subjected to systematic sexual violence as a means to justify their ongoing genocide, and given that this claim has also been taken up by the families of hostages to demand their return (families Patten met withduring her week-long trip to Israel, vowing to make the purpose of her mission to do “everything for the remaining (Israeli) hostages“) we should be wary of drawing conclusions without evidence.
3. The Second Report: Commission of Inquiry (COI)
While the failures of Patten’s report–developed at the behest of the Israeli government, relying on Israeli government sources and lacking an investigative capacity–were not surprising, many had higher expectations of the UN Commission of Inquiry. Established in 2021 with an ongoing mandate, the COI is to date the only UN body with investigatory powers to examine Israel’s claims that Hamas committed systematic sexual violence on October 7. It is no coincidence, therefore, that at the same time as Patten was meeting with President Herzog and being welcomed onto Israeli military bases, the COI was prohibited from entering Israel and deliberately obstructed from carrying out its investigation. While to many of us this lack of endorsement by the Israeli government was read as a positive sign of the Commission’s independence, it ultimately meant that the Commission was unable to fulfill its mandate and conduct a thorough, independent investigation of Israel’s sexual violence claims. Unable to access the territory on which the alleged crimes took place or speak directly with witnesses, and facing a glaring lack of both survivor accounts and forensic and digital evidence, the Commission had two options. Either it could announce that the Israeli government was refusing to cooperate and that it was therefore prevented from carrying out its investigation. Or, it could forge ahead with an ‘investigation’ based on secondhand witness testimony and first responder accounts, despite a wealth of evidence that such accounts to date had been unreliable and riddled with fabrication. It chose the latter.
The resulting over-reliance on compromised sources hampered the COI from the start. In an earlier article, we deconstructed the impacts of this on their June 2024 report, detailing the COI’s reiteration of debunked claims, its dependence on non-credible secondhand testimony, its obvious factual errors, and its overreliance on and misreading of video and photographic “evidence” published online by unreliable sources, including discredited first responder group ZAKA. In one telling example the COI relied on first responder testimony to claim that “many bodies taken to the Shura camp showed signs indicative of sexual violence” (para 136) – despite the fact that five forensic pathologists, mentioned earlier in this article, were working at Shura and tasked specifically with examining “bodies that arrived completely or partially naked in order to examine the possibility of rape.” They found no signs of either genital mutilation or rape on any of the bodies they examined.
But what is most striking about the COI report is, again, what it did not find:
1. No evidence of rape: The Commission did not find direct evidence of a single rape committed on October 7 (para 138). The only allegation of rape included in the report is the statement of an alleged witness who claims to have seen “the body of a man with […] a gun inserted into his anus” (para 154). This claim is repeated twice in the report and cited as possible evidence of the “war crime of rape and other forms of sexual violence” (para 292), despite the fact that the Commission was “not able to corroborate the information” (para 154). This contravenes the report’s own methodological requirements, which require that uncorroborated information be excluded (para 14). We also found no corroboration of this account elsewhere.
2. No survivors: The Commission was unable to meet “any survivors of sexual violence committed on October 7, despite its attempts to do so” (para 19).
3. No forensic evidence: The Commission noted “the absence of forensic evidence of sexual crimes committed on October 7” (para 18).
4. No evidence of instructions to commit sexual violence and no plan: The investigation was “unable to verify” Israeli claims that instructions had been found on Palestinian fighters ordering them to commit sexual violence (para 139). Despite media reporting to the contrary, the report did not find any evidence of planned or systematic rape that it could attribute to Hamas or any other Palestinian armed group (para 138).
5. No genital mutilation: The COI was also “unable to verify reports of sexualized torture and genital mutilation,” which had circulated widely in the months following October 7 (para 138). Furthermore, the Commission found “some specific allegations to be false, inaccurate or contradictory” (para 138).
6. No attribution of sexual violence to Hamas: In explaining its own inability to engage in attribution when it came to sexual violence, the Commission of Inquiry explained that Pramilla Patten’s team had been unable to engage in ‘specific attribution’ due to its a lack of investigative powers, and urged Israel to grant access to the COI, which it had refused to do (para 140).
Despite this stark absence of evidence, the COI report was heavily framed (both by the COI itself and by the UN media that accompanied its release) as a ‘both sides’ narrative. The desire to equate alleged sexual violence on October 7 with decades of systematic sexual violence by Israeli forces led the COI to twist itself into knots, employing a skewed definition of gender-based violence different from that commonly used in international law in order to sweep up various incidents under its umbrella.6 For example, attacks on female soldiers at Nahal Oz military base (described in the report as “young women” (para 113) who “appear to be frightened” (para 108) were listed in the COI report as examples of GBV – disregarding that they were targeted, along with male soldiers, not because they were women but because they were IDF soldiers. This broad definition allowed the COI to inflate evidence of sexual violence on October 7, with the ultimate aim of presenting a both-sides narrative condemning both Israel and “armed actors” on the Palestinian side.
4. The 2025 COI report on systematic sexual violence by Israeli forces
The international pressure campaign mounted by Israel and the US against the COI, accusing it of antisemitism and demanding its termination, has grown significantlyover the past three years, contributing to losses of funding and staffing cuts that have hampered the work of the Commission.7 While this kind of political pressure may have contributed to the desire of the Commission to appear “impartial” and to present a both-sides narrative in its 2024 report, a deeper current pathologizing the Palestinian resistance appears to have also been at work. The currency of Israel’s mass rape propaganda has long rested on an Islamophobic colonial imaginary which frames Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups as hypersexual brutish ‘terrorists,’ producing a space of exception around these allegations that significantly lowers–if not dissipates–the threshold of proof.
The COI is much more comfortable documenting Palestinian victimhood. In 2025, aware that they were on the cusp of collectively retiring/resigning from their posts, the three members of the Commission released a damning report titled “More than a human can bear”: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since October 2023.8 This report is a horrific litany of sexual brutality by Israeli forces that, finally, takes note of some of the crimes that have been testified to by Palestinian survivors, witnesses, and civil society organizations over the past two years (and for decades before).
In this report, the COI definitively shows that Israel has engaged in widespread, systematic, and institutional sexual violence. Noting that “sexual and gender-based violence is by no means a new element of the Israeli occupation,” the report documents a sharp increase in the use of sexual torture and abuse following October 7 (para 81). This sexual violence was pervasive, occurring throughout Gaza and the West Bank and especially concentrated in situations of custody: “The Commission documented cases of sexual and gender-based violence against male and female detainees in more than 10 military and Israel Prison Service facilities […] Sexual violence was used as a means of punishment and intimidation from the moment of arrest and throughout the detention, including during interrogations and searches” (para 116).9
The following are a brief selection of examples of incidents contained in the report, all of which were corroborated through direct victim and witness statements and verified photos and video footage (para 81).10 Many of these instances of sexual abuse were posted publicly online by the same soldiers who committed them, demonstrating a culture of impunity within Israel that fostered and encouraged such acts.
“The Commission documented cases of rape and sexual assault of male detainees, including the use of an electrical probe to cause burns to the anus, and the insertion of objects, such as fingers, sticks, broomsticks and vegetables, into the anus and rectum…The victim told the Commission: ‘They took me into an interrogation room and suspended me by my arms behind my back. My toes barely touched the floor. A male guard inserted a metal stick in my penis on several occasions, about twenty times in total. I started bleeding. The pain was excruciating…’” (para 119).
The commission documents at least two cases in which Palestinian survivors needed “medical treatment and/or surgery due to injuries caused by rape” (para 120). During one assault at Sde Teiman prison, which fractured several of the victim’s ribs and punctured his lung, “the victim was also stabbed in the rectum with a sharp object. The victim’s rectum was ruptured due to the assault, and he required surgery to the rectum. Following the assault, the victim was required to use a stoma bag due to the gravity of the injuries. A video filming the assailants were taken by a soldier” (para 120).
Such cases of rape were treated with impunity by Israeli forces: “The Commission documented a case where a male detainee was raped repeatedly in an Israeli detention facility. A complaint was filed with the Israeli prosecution but, more than six months after the incident was reported, the Commission has received information that no effective measures were taken by the Israeli authorities to investigate the allegations or prosecute those involved despite the evidence” (para 158).
The commission found that rape, sexual abuse and sexual humiliation were common practice in Israeli prisons: “The Commission received information about detainees being forced to undress and lie on top of each other…One detainee was subjected to an attempted rape with a carrot in the anus in front of the other detainees…In another case, a soldier took off his trousers and pressed his crotch to a detainee’s face, saying: ‘You are my bitch. Suck my dick’” (para 122).
“Male detainees reported that ISF personnel had beaten, kicked, pulled or squeezed their genitals, often while they were naked. The Commission verified four such cases…Another detainee released from Megiddo prison told the Commission: ‘I was kneeling with my head down and my hands tied behind my back. They beat and kicked me everywhere on my body, including on my face and my genitals. I thought I was going to die’” (para 114).
In a video posted online by Israeli soldiers online “three completely naked, barefoot and blindfolded Palestinian men are seen being forced onto a bus by ISF soldiers. An ISF soldier is heard swearing at the detainees in Arabic and Hebrew, and making spitting sounds, saying: ‘brother of a bitch’, ‘son of a whore’, ‘you pig’, ‘your sister’s cunt’ and ‘you pimp’[…] the video was posted with the description: ‘The Nazi pigs of Nukhba are led naked straight to the Shin Bet basements’” (para 100).
Female detainees were also subjected to sexual assault and harassment in Israeli prisons and detention centers. The report documents that this included “kicking the women’s genitals, touching their breasts, attempting to kiss them, and threats of rape. In one case reported to the Commission, a woman was threatened with sexual assault in front of her husband while detained in Hasharon prison. One soldier reportedly unzipped his pants and threatened to make the woman sit on his lap while another soldier commented on her breasts. The woman, who had given birth two months prior to her detention, was reportedly spat in her face by the soldiers and beaten repeatedly until she fainted” (para 124). Sexual abuse including groping and touching by soldiers extended to young girls, including in East Jerusalem and the West Bank (para 112).
Forced nudity, strip searches and doxxing were frequently used as tools of sexual degradation and humiliation by Israeli forces. Documenting extensive photo and video evidence, the commission notes that “Since 7 October 2023, hundreds of Palestinian men and boys have been photographed and filmed in humiliating and degrading circumstances while subjected to acts of a sexual nature” (para 93). In one case, a female Israeli soldier forced two teenage Palestinian boys stripped to their underwear to dance in front of other detainees while she filmed them, laughing (para 96). The Commission concluded on reasonable grounds that “forced public stripping and nudity and other types of abuse by Israeli military personnel were either ordered or condoned” (para 191).
The conclusion of the report is unequivocal. The Commission writes that:
“Sexual violence has been perpetrated (by Israel) throughout the Gaza military operations since 7 October 2023 and in the West Bank: during evacuation processes, prior to or during arrest, in civilian homes, health facilities and shelters and in detention. Sexual acts were carried out by force, including while the victim was subjected to violence, intimidation and other forms of duress, in inherently coercive circumstances” (para 180).
The COI is clear that sexual violence against Palestinians is “systematic and institutionalized” (see para 153, 193), and that the “Israeli Security Forces” (ISF) bear full responsibility. In an effort to demonstrate the complicity of the ISF in such violence the COI documents at length an infamous case of gang rape at Sde Teiman, which left the victim with “life-threatening injuries” (para 154). After video footage of the gang rape was broadcast by Israel’s Channel 12 on August 6, 2024, Israel arrested ten of the soldiers, five of whom were immediately released, and five others who were initially placed under house arrest, with conditions relaxed after a short period. Even this caused mass outrage in Israel, with crowds storming the base where the soldiers were held, demanding their release, and debates on national television over whether it was legitimate to gang-rape Palestinians. When asked during a discussion in the Knesset if it was legitimate to “insert a stick into a person’s rectum”, Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Knesset from the Likud Party, responded: “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do. Everything” (para 156). It is worth noting that this behavior did not begin after October 7 – a report by the National Lawyers Guild from 1977 detailed the “insertion of bottles and sticks into a detainee’s anus or vagina” and “insertion of a wire into the penis” as common forms of torture used by Israeli forces against Palestinian detainees.
Ultimately, the systematic authorization of sexual violence by the Israeli state leads the COI to conclude that Israel cannot be relied upon to produce accountability for its own sexual crimes:
“The Israeli justice system does not meet international standards of justice with respect to its application to Palestinians. At present, it cannot ensure fair trial guarantees as it is inherently discriminatory in its application of the law; domestic legislation continues to be used to persecute Palestinians and exculpate perpetrators who violate the rights of Palestinians. The Israeli justice system should not be relied upon to deal with accountability for Israeli civilian and military personnel in relation to Palestinians” (para 161).
This damning conclusion is ignored by the Secretary-General, who, in spite of the evidence, refuses to blacklist Israel for conflict-related sexual violence and instead calls on Israel to “investigate and prosecute all allegations of sexual violence against Palestinian detainees” (para 37).11 Historically, the myth that Israel was able to investigate and prosecute its own crimes against Palestinians (as a supposedly functioning ‘democracy’) has provided cover for those unwilling to take up the task of holding it accountable, a tradition of complicity the UN Secretary-General willfully continues.
Conclusion: The UN is complicit in genocide
In light of the UN’s own findings, the Secretary-General’s decision to list Hamas and not Israel as “committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict” is patently absurd. In the COI’s 2025 report on Israeli sexual violence, we find exactly what is not present in any published UN report in regards to Hamas: attribution, systematicity, evidence, and intent. Because of this, we can only read the decision of the UN Secretary-General’s office to blacklist Hamas and not Israel as evidence of its institutional complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide. This complicity is not new: the UN contributed significantly to the creation of a Jewish-supremacist apartheid colonial state in Palestine, and admitted Israel as a member state only one year after it seized territory through murder and ethnic cleansing during the Nakba. Despite the existence of good work by individual special rapporteurs, the UN has also historically been structured to grant outsized influence to powerful member states, many of which are actively invested in Israel.
In its decision to blacklist Hamas and not Israel for conflict-related sexual violence, the UN attempts to settle the historical record in Israel’s favor and to set a permanent blight on Hamas and Palestinian resistance more broadly. By criminalizing and pathologizing Palestinian resistance without evidence – while deliberately turning away from the Palestinian men, women, and children who are the victims of Israel’s systematic sexual violence – the UN blacklist contributes to the affective and epistemic grounds for the dehumanization and genocide of Palestinians. We refuse this complicity. We offer our investigation as a crucial correction to this historical record.
The Feminist Solidarity Network for Palestine is an international collective of anti-imperialist, anti-colonial feminist academics, lawyers, and organizers working against zionist settler colonial propaganda and towards a free Palestine.
RELATED:
- Latest Israeli report on Oct 7 sexual violence fails to make a case
- Here’s what Pramila Patten’s UN report on Oct 7 sexual violence actually said
- October 7 Fact Check: Which atrocity claims are factual, which are false
- Hostages, captives, prisoners: Western media still privileges Israeli over Palestinian lives
- Palestinian Boys Allege Sexual Assault, Torture by Israeli Jailers
