Why the UN blacklisted Israel for conflict-related sexual violence

READ THIS. It’s the section on Israel’s abuse of Palestinian prisoners in the UN Secretary-General’s annual report on conflict-related sexual violence, delivered to the UN Security Council. 77 state and non-state actors are implicated. 

It’s only a glimpse of the horrors perpetrated by Israel, but there’s something undeniably powerful and devastating about the dispassionate listing of incidents of repeated and systemic sexual violence undertaken by Israeli forces, as widely documented and verified, which only makes Israel’s hysterical response all the more risible. 

On X, Israel’s foreign ministry called the decision “yet another example of the UN’s long-standing, institutionalized hostility toward Israel”, while Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, reacted with the meaningless hysterical response of calling it a "blood libel.”

When I first wrote about this yesterday, I provided a link to an important report by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, “‘More than a human can bear’: Israel's systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023”, published in March 2025, which is available here: ohchr.org/sites/default…

I also provided a link to my detailed analysis of Israel’s prisons for Palestinians, “‘More Horrific Than Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo’: The Unsalvageable Depravity of Israel’s Prisons for Palestinians”, published last November, in which I examined sexual violence in the prisons, including the Sde Teiman rape scandal. See the link below.