[News] UN Exposes Systematic Zionist Rape of Palestinians

[Anti-Imperialist News]

english.almayadeen.net
<https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/un-exposes-systematic-zionist-rape-of-palestinians>
UN Exposes Systematic Zionist Rape of Palestinians
Kit Klarenberg
March 22, 2025
------------------------------

The UN Human Rights Commission's report exposes systematic sexual violence
by Israeli forces against Palestinians, describing it as a deliberate
policy aimed at dehumanization and suppression, with widespread impunity
and official endorsement.
[image: 6361089e-b0f3-4c34-8c71-4dda0ac48de8.jpg]

   - The Western media remained deathly silent on this open championing of
   rape as an instrument of terror (Illustrated by Batoul Chamas to *Al
   Mayadeen English*)

On March 13th, the UN Human Rights High Commission published a horrifying
report
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/03/more-human-can-bear-israels-systematic-use-sexual-reproductive-and-other>
exposing in oft-emetic detail how the Zionist entity has employed “sexual,
reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians”
on an industrial scale since the Gaza genocide erupted in October 2023. The
UN concludes these hideous acts are a central component of Israel’s
“broader effort to undermine [Palestinians’] right to self-determination,”
their systematic nature pointing unambiguously to endorsement by Tel Aviv’s
military and political leaders.

The report records, “sexual and gender-based violence is by no means a new
element of the Israeli occupation.” However, in the wake of October 7th,
there has been a “sharp increase in sexual violence against Palestinian
women and men”, both by Zionist Occupation Forces (ZoF) and settlers. The
UN encountered no obstacles collecting voluminous highly incriminating
evidence of this vile abuse. In addition to a welter of victim and witness
testimony, perpetrators often voyeuristically captured themselves and their
confederates openly committing these crimes on camera.

Frequently, these abhorrent images were pridefully posted on the culprits’
personal social media accounts. Such actions amply attest to the culture of
total impunity in which ZOF soldiers literally rape and pillage. “Despite
the abundance of witness and digital evidence of Israeli soldiers
committing crimes in Gaza,” the UN found “there have been no meaningful
efforts by Israel to hold the perpetrators accountable.” Requests submitted
to Tel Aviv for clarity on investigations into sexual violence committed by
Occupation Forces have been ignored:

“The Commission has not seen any evidence that Israeli authorities have
taken any effective measures to prevent or stop acts of sexual violence or
to identify and punish perpetrators.”

By contrast, the UN documented multiple statements by Zionist entity
officials actively supporting ZOF militants accused of sex crimes, and
“legitimizing rape and other forms of sexual violence” against
Palestinians, particularly detainees. That Israel’s rulers advocate
sexually-charged attacks on Palestinians is further reinforced by a
deliberate ZOF strike on a women’s rights centre in Gaza, in mid-November
2023. The UN noted the broadside’s “clear gendered dimension,” with
soldiers daubing deeply offensive, sexist insults directed at Palestinian
women on the building’s inner walls in Hebrew.

Outside, ZOF tanks precisely blitzed the building’s fifth floor, which
provided shelter for women and families. That area was “completely
destroyed”, but the rest of the building “remained intact”. Mercifully, the
site and its surrounding area had been evacuated well in advance of the
attack, meaning no one was harmed. The Commission “did not find any
military justification” for the ZOF’s targeting of the centre. Yet, from
the Zionist entity’s perspective, it undoubtedly served a very specific
military *purpose*.

Collectively, the Commission’s conclusions point ineluctably to the fact
that sexuality and gender are now key, dedicated battlegrounds in Israel’s
unending erasure of the Palestinians, while sexual abuse, rape, and
resultant physical and psychological trauma are entrenched, well-honed
weapons in the Zionist entity’s Mephistophelian military arsenal. Gravely,
given Tel Aviv’s tendency to export
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183pct7> its tools and methods of
repression and mass murder abroad, the implications of this grotesque
evolution in modern warfare could be global.
‘Foreign Devices’

The UN Commission report contains five separate sections on the Zionist
entity’s weaponisation of sexual abuse; “sexual harassment and public
shaming of Palestinian women”; “filming and photographing acts of sexual
violence against men and boys during arrest”; “sexual violence during
ground operations including at checkpoints and evacuations”; “sexual,
reproductive and other gender-based violence in detention”; “sexual and
gender-based violence by settlers and other civilians.” Each is rife with
repulsive descriptions, and stomach-churning attestations.

While ranking circles of hell is a tawdry task, the section detailing
sexual violence directed towards male and female Palestinian detainees is
most vital to examine. The sheer scale of abuses documented, and
consistency of accounts provided by victims imprisoned in over 10 separate
Israeli military detention facilities, means it cannot be plausibly argued
this savagery is aberrational, or attributable to ‘rogue’ ZOF militants or
units. It can only be deliberate, determined policy, signed off and
directed at the highest levels.

>From October 7th 2023 until July 2024, the UN Commission finds at least
14,000 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank - among them hundreds of
women - were incarcerated by the ZOF. Many were not informed of the reasons
for their imprisonment. In case after case, “sexual violence was used as a
means of punishment and intimidation from the moment of arrest and
throughout [their] detention, including during interrogations and searches”:

“Acts of sexual violence…appear to have been motivated by extreme hatred
towards the Palestinian people and a desire to dehumanize and punish
them…Forced nudity, with the aim of degrading and humiliating victims in
front of both soldiers and other detainees, was frequently used…Male
detainees reported ZOF personnel had beaten, kicked, pulled or squeezed
their genitals, often while they were naked…In some cases, objects such as
metal detectors and batons were used to brutalise them while they were
naked.”

The Commission documented widespread 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.” One victim was suspended from
the ceiling so only his toes touched a chair below, and beaten with tools
for hours. During the abuse, a “metal stick” was inserted into his penis
roughly 20 times until he began bleeding, before fainting.

The Commission has determined that detainees were routinely subjected to
sexual abuse and harassment, and that threats of sexual assault and rape
were directed at detainees or their female family members. The Commission
received information about detainees being forced to undress and lie on top
of each other while subjected to verbal abuse and forced to curse their
mothers. They were beaten if they did not comply.

Female detainees were also subjected to sexual harassment, assault, rape,
and threats to their lives. One was told by a ZOF soldier he would kill her
and burn her children, asking: “How do you want us to rape you? One by one
or all together?”. Another was threatened with sexual assault in front of
her husband, before soldiers spat in her face and beat her until she
fainted. Several Palestinian women suffered the heinous indignity of
“foreign devices” being inserted into their vaginas or rectums.

Female detainees moreover endured “repeated, prolonged and invasive strip
searches, both before and after interrogations.” One Palestinian woman was
strip searched in her cell every three hours during her four-day detention,
“even though she was menstruating.” Women were regularly forced to remove
all their clothes, including veils, in front of male and female ZOF
soldiers. Beatings and harassment, while being bombarded with foul insults
and sexual slurs, such as “bitch” and “whore”, were also commonplace.
‘Terrible Injustice’

In July 2024
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240729-10-israeli-soldiers-detained-for-abusing-gazan-detainee-at-sde-teiman-prison/>,
10 ZOF soldiers were arrested after subjecting a male Palestinian detainee
to such vicious sexual violence, he required urgent surgery. The Commission
finds this was by no means an isolated incident since October 7th, but it
remains the only instance to date of a victim’s tormentors facing
repercussions for their unconscionable abuse. Still, the UN refers to this
sordid case as “an illustrative example of the culture of impunity” rampant
within the Zionist entity’s military and security apparatus:

“Five soldiers were released without charge within a few days and five
others were placed under house arrest. In September 2024, a military court
eased the conditions of their house arrest, removing the requirement for
them to be accompanied by a supervisor during their night-time house arrest
and allowing them to submit requests for release during the holidays.”

A since-published indictment
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/5-idf-reservists-indicted-for-severe-abuse-of-palestinian-detainee-at-sde-teiman/>
records how the five accused soldiers burst into the man’s cell at Sde
Teiman detention facility, beat him with batons and tasered him in the
head, before forcibly inserting a baton into his mouth, all while
intimidating him with a dog. He was also stabbed in the rectum with a sharp
object. The attack left the Palestinian with several fractured ribs, a
punctured lung, and other life-threatening injuries.

Unmentioned in the report, the initial arrest of the 10 ZOF soldiers
responsible for this gruesome barbarity elicited outrage among Israeli
citizens, leading to mass protests
<https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2q07kd3ld6o> demanding their release.
Nonetheless, the Commission did record how several high-ranking Zionist
entity officials expressed outrage
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/everything-is-legitimate-israeli-leaders-defend-soldiers-accused-of-rape>
at the soldiers’ arrests. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said they had
suffered “terrible injustice”. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir
stated it was “shameful” that Tel Aviv’s “best heroes” had been subject to
such “vicious persecution.”

The Western media remained deathly silent on this open championing of rape
as an instrument of terror. The UN Commission’s disturbing findings have
likewise fallen on mainstream deaf ears. As ever, news outlets, and the
Zionist entity’s Western puppet masters, are complicit by their silence -
and it is precisely this silence that encourages and safeguards the ZOF’s
culture of impunity. As a result, we can expect the “sharp increase in
sexual violence against Palestinian women and men” to only increase in
future.
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