Last month, a report to the UN Human Rights Council confirmed – as Palestinians have long said – that since 7 October Israel has systematically used sexual violence and gender crimes against Palestinian women, men and children.

The study was published in Geneva during a two-day hearing, along with heartbreaking testimonies from survivors and witnesses, representatives of civil society, academics, lawyers and medical experts. In my view, he drew a number of key conclusions that require immediate attention and action at the global level. First, since October 7, gender-based violence in Israeli forces has increased dramatically in scale and intensity, becoming a “systematic” practice. These crimes have become instruments of collective oppression to destroy Palestinian families and communities from within. A tactic taken from other campaigns of ethnic violence and genocide: In places like Bosnia, Rwanda, Nigeria and Iraq, where women’s bodies became battlegrounds.

Secondly, Israel ' s military detention centres have become the epicentre of the most horrendous forms of sexual violence. Beyond the images of naked Palestinian prisoners in Gaza, the report includes testimonies from camps such as Sde Teiman, where prisoners, without legal protection and far from the eyes of the media, have faced rape, sexual humiliation and torture. In some cases, such as that of Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, the prisoners died as a result of the sexual abuse they suffered while in custody, according to the report.

Thirdly, the report demonstrates the proliferation of gender-based violence against Palestinians in the digital arena. Vulnerable groups, especially women and young people, have been subjected to shame, doxing (the act of searching and posting private information or information about a person ' s identity on the Internet, usually for the purpose of causing harm) and exploitation of sexual orientation or private behaviour as tools of coercion and intimidation.

Fourth, the report notes that gender-based violence is not only used by soldiers; Israeli settlers, who often operate under army protection, sexually harass Palestinian women in the West Bank and exploit traditional gender roles within Palestinian society as a method of oppression.

The findings of the report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory are based not only on the accounts of the survivors, but also on the social media posts of Israeli soldiers. Criminals proudly document men's "heroic" acts of revenge: They search the drawers of Palestinian women, photograph them in their underwear, and paint misogynistic paintings inside the occupied houses of Gaza. Although much of this content was later removed from social platforms, it is archived in the UN report for the future.

However, while these videos and images are reprehensible and criminal, they pale in comparison to the extreme sexual violence documented in the report. Forced public nudity and invasive searches, the forcible removal of the hijab from women, the filming of sexual degradation under the threat of further violence, threats of rape and rape as a form of torture: all this is not only an attack on dignity, but also a profound physical and sexual assault.

The report notes that women and men have been targeted for crimes and implicates the Israeli media in their normalization by accommodating commentators and presenters who advocate sexual violence as a legitimate instrument of war. For example, the comments made by Eliyahu Yosian, a member of the Misgav Institute, on channel 14 of the extreme right are noteworthy: "The woman is the enemy, the baby is the enemy and the pregnant woman is the enemy" (after the clip of 14 Channels was published on the Internet, it received more than 1.6 million views).

According to testimonies submitted to the Commission, it is often very difficult for women victims to report abuses. A notable example is an Israeli military checkpoint in Hebron, where a soldier used to be the first Palestinian women to pass through. A student who would have to pass through the checkpoint on the way to school would probably choose to remain silent about these abuses, as reporting them would lead to a suspension of studies.

Attacks on reproductive health facilities in Gaza are another face of Israel’s gender-based war crimes. According to the report, Israeli forces carried out a systematic attack on Gaza ' s maternal health infrastructure, fertility treatment centres and, indeed, any reproductive health organization. The findings also include cases of doctors who shot pregnant and nursing women with snipers and who had to perform caesarean sections without disinfectants or anesthesia.

Based on the findings of the report, the Director of the Commission of Inquiry, Navi Pillayk, stated: “The only possible conclusion is that Israel used sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to instigate fear and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines the right to self-determination.”

A hard awakening

Unlike the parallel UN report published in March 2024 that investigated gender crimes committed against Israeli women by Hamas militants on October 7, the current report has received almost no media attention, neither in Israel nor in the rest of the world.

Neither the dramatic increase in gender crimes against women and girls in wartime nor the systematic use of these methods – and not the mere isolated actions of soldiers – has been enough to call on Israeli or international women’s organizations to oppose, condemn or urgently consider the issue. Even the publication of the report a few days before International Women ' s Day was not enough to encourage webinars, symposiums or conferences in universities around the world, nor to encourage urgent debates on women ' s rights in parliaments.

Here in Israel, the reactions have gone from silence to total denial. "The UN supports the terrorists in Nukhba and Hamas," said Hagit Pe 'er, president of the Na'amat Israeli women's association. "It's a report with a pronounced anti-Semitic stench. It is an attempt to create an alternative and inverted reality in response to the Hamas sexual massacre against women and men in Israel, while international organizations, including women’s organizations around the world, maintain a striking silence. These are organizations that condemn any sexual violence unless the victims are Israeli and Jewish women.” I also
presented the findings of the report to Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari and former Chief Military Prosecutor Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas. This project is responsible for documenting sexual violence in Hamas. They also rejected it as "another step in the campaign to delegitimize Israel."

"Since its inception in 2020, [the UN Committee of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory] has adopted a unilateral and anti-Israeli orientation in most of its activities, which is clearly reflected in this report," Halperin-Kaddari and Zagi-Pinhas said in response to my question.

"How can the claims in this report be compared to the brutal crimes of systematic and deliberate violence perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October: horrific rape, genital mutilation and even sexual violence against bodies? “They continued it. "It is deeply regrettable that, instead of taking steps to include Hamas in the blacklist of organizations that commit sexual violence as a weapon of war, the Commission has chosen a different route."

"As for the allegations themselves," they added, "unlike Hamas, which systematically denies its crimes, if any of these allegations are substantiated, they will have to be properly investigated by the Israeli authorities."

Like many women in Israel, in this war I have had a very strong feminist awakening. Comrade I have lost Palestinian women who did not like to condemn Hamas' violence against Israeli women on 7 October. And I have lost my Jewish friends who considered the women of Gaza to be legitimate targets.

After a painful reflection, I have understood the strength and courage that women must cultivate to denounce any violence against the body of a woman, whether Palestinian or Israeli, as an abominable fact. It should not be necessary to explain that no mother should die – whether her child is red-haired or dark-skinned, with green or brown eyes – and no child should be fed with the insatiable war machinery of men hungry for power and wealth.

Women – young and old, mothers and daughters, feminists and even those who do not consider themselves feminists – must raise their voices and say: it is enough with war. This homeland will not be liberated in our bodies, and it is not worth building any future from the remains of the sinking of our bellies.

(The author of this article is Samah Salaime, originally published in +972 Magazine in English.

It has been translated into Spanish by Paloma Farr for the CTXT media and into Basque by LARA from the latter)