Israel has dismissed a UN inquiry as biased after it found that Israel committed crimes against humanity, including “extermination,” during its war against Hamas in Gaza,Daily Trust reports.
The report, the first in-depth investigation by UN experts into the Gaza war, also concluded that both Israeli and Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes.
Released on Wednesday, the UN’s Independent Commission of Inquiry stated that Israel “has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity” and other international law violations, noting “a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population in Gaza.”
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Israel’s foreign ministry responded by calling the commission “biased and tainted by a distinct anti-Israeli agenda.” The ministry stated, “The report describes an alternate reality in which decades of terrorist attacks have been erased,” adding that “there are no continuous missile attacks on Israeli citizens and there isn’t a democratic state defending itself against a terrorist assault.”
In its statement released late Wednesday, the ministry also said, “To add insult to injury, the report is full of false accusations and blood libels against IDF (Israeli army) soldiers.”
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack, which led to the deaths of 1,194 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures. Militants also seized 251 hostages, of whom 116 remain in Gaza, although the Israeli army says at least 41 of them are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the Gaza Strip has resulted in more than 37,000 deaths, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.
The Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate alleged international law violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The commission also found that members of Hamas and other armed groups involved in the October 7 attack “deliberately killed, injured, mistreated, took hostages, and committed sexual and gender-based violence.”
Navi Pillay, a former UN rights chief and ex-International Criminal Court judge who chairs the three-person commission, stated, “Hamas and Palestinian armed groups must immediately cease rocket attacks and release all hostages.”
Hamas has not yet commented on the UN report.
