In an inversion of the real world, a Geneva-based United Nations committee is accusing Israeli soldiers of routinely committing sexual crimes against Palestinians, raising an outcry in Israel and America. 

Members of the “independent” committee appointed by the UN Human Rights Council issued a report Thursday that accused Israel Defense Force members of committing “sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians.” It said the alleged abuse is part of “genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities.” 

Israelis and others say the allegations are baseless and slanderous, and issued by a group with a long history of bias against the Jewish state and outright antisemitism. “This is another vile and distorted document from the UN, which continues to serve as a propaganda mouthpiece for terrorist organizations,” Israel’s ambassador at Turtle Bay, Danny Danon, said. 

Mr. Danon cited well-documented cases of sexual abuse by Gazans during the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre that launched the Gaza war. Numerous survivors of the attack who participated in the Super Nova music festival spoke of witnessing Hamas terrorists committing group rape and other forms of abuse against Israeli women before murdering the victims. Former hostages in Gaza also reported abuse by their captors. 

“While Israel is fighting against the savages who slaughtered, raped, and murdered thousands of innocent people on October 7, the UN chooses to stand by the murderers again and again and spread despicable blood libels against the only democratic state in the Middle East,” Mr. Danon said. 

The UN commission was established after a 2021 11-day war in Gaza. Its mandate is to “investigate, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law.” While called “independent,” its members have a long track record of bias. 

As the executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, writes on X, the committee’s head, Navi Pillay of South Africa, has long lobbied to sanction what she calls “Apartheid Israel.” One committee member, Miloon Kothari, has issued statements decrying the power of “the Jewish lobby.” Jews, another member, Chris Sidoti, has claimed, “throw around accusations of antisemitism like rice at a wedding.” 

As Ms. Pillay issued the report, she maintained the slander. “There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorize them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination,” she said.  

“The corrupt UN Human Rights Council’s new baseless report is antisemitic and anti-Israel slander,” America’s UN ambassador-nominee, Elise Stefanik, writes on X. It “exposes the disgraceful and obsessive antisemitism of UNHRC and reaffirms why President Trump took the strong, correct, decisive executive action to withdraw from it.”