United Nations Media Release
UN experts* today expressed alarm over credible allegations of egregious human rights violations to which Palestinian women and girls continue to be subjected in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Palestinian women and girls have reportedly been arbitrarily executed in Gaza, often together with family members, including their children, according to information received. “We are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge, or while fleeing. Some of them were reportedly holding white pieces of cloth when they were killed by the Israeli army or affiliated forces,” the experts said.
The experts expressed serious concern about the arbitrary detention of hundreds of Palestinian women and girls, including human rights defenders, journalists and humanitarian workers, in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October. Many have reportedly been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, denied menstruation pads, food and medicine, and severely beaten. On at least one occasion, Palestinian women detained in Gaza were allegedly kept in a cage in the rain and cold, without food.
“We are particularly distressed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have also been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence,” the experts said. They also noted that photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances were also reportedly taken by the Israeli army and uploaded online.
The experts expressed concern that an unknown number of Palestinian women and children, including girls, have reportedly gone missing after contact with the Israeli army in Gaza. “There are disturbing reports of at least one female infant forcibly transferred by the Israeli army into Israel, and of children being separated from their parents, whose whereabouts remain unknown,” they said.
“We remind the Government of Israel of its obligation to uphold the right to life, safety, health, and dignity of Palestinian women and girls and to ensure that no one is subjected to violence, torture, ill-treatment or degrading treatment, including sexual violence,” the experts said.
They called for an independent, impartial, prompt, thorough and effective investigation into the allegations and for Israel to cooperate with such investigations.
“Taken together, these alleged acts may constitute grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and amount to serious crimes under international criminal law that could be prosecuted under the Rome Statute,” the experts said. “Those responsible for these apparent crimes must be held accountable and victims and their families are entitled to full redress and justice,” they added.
* The experts: Reem Alsalem, Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences; Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967; Dorothy Estrada Tanck (Chair), Claudia Flores, Ivana Krstić, Haina Lu, and Laura Nyirinkindi, Working group on discrimination against women and girls.
The experts are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN human rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms. Special Procedures mandate-holders are independent human rights experts appointed by the Human Rights Council to address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent of any government or organisation and serve in their individual capacity.
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‘The most moral army in the world’ is how they described themselves. Depravity: thy name art Israel Defence Force.
Old Bloke,
Israel, through it’s definitions of ‘right of return’ laws under “Aaliyah”, is one of the few modern nation states to actively include both religious and racial discrimination clauses within it’s officially stated immigration policies.
The zionist movement, since the 1880’s has developed with stated plans, strategies, philosophies, to get a slab of “promised land” for a group of “chosen people” as per old scribble, nonexisting lines of descent, family, citizenship, “legal rights”. All this is to come from some god who never existed, has never appeared, with no signature, DNA sample, Photo, PROOF. That led to theft, occupation, murder to defend the grabs, to parasite the old Palestine, to invent a state from May, 1948. Logically everyone in Israel might kill to keep, “defend” the indefensible. After all, all sorts of imperialists did all that and worse. Ask aware indigenous victims around this rotten world. The vicious animals amongst the abrahamic religious superstitious groups are all ready to kill, thieve, occupy, avenge, humiliate, and any action is possible. They all claim supremacy, hate all the others, know they are all wrong because they, ,the maggots are RIGHT. This world is still riddled with uncivilised filth from savages who will do anything if cornered by their own irrational stupidity. Jews, Catholics, Orthodox, Protestant rabble, Islamists, the endless oppressors, the “winners”…
There have been many posts and pics on soc media, an antidote to the cesspit of mainstream media and press.
Watch or read a lot of posts, the brutality and tangibly shock a person like a belt around the ears. Jaw-dropping..
Abuses have been going on for decades in the occupied territories and the West Bank and October 7th was the inevitable outcome.
According to an editorial in The Israel Times, true Anti-Semitism is when you say Jews are the equal of everyone else because being “God’s Chosen People” gives them certain rights and privileges. Their destiny is to serve as an example to lesser peoples and eventually and inevitably rule over them (their words, not mine).
I know it’s a generalisation but it sounds a lot like a “Master Race” cult and that belief is firmly entrenched in their education system although not shared by certain religious factions.
It’s that inherent arrogance that leads the IDF to freely share videos of looting, murder and general atrocities because they know there will be no consequences.
The Right Wing Media is screaming about letting Palestinian refugees into the country but maybe we should also consider what sort of Australian citizens (who are currently serving in the IDF) will be returning to our shores too.
Actually, the last four months, let alone century, has been one big “human rights abuse”.
All Australians must be appalled by the horrifiying story of Hind Rajab exposing the character of those israeli soldiers and defining the inhumane level of the invasion.
Any xstian woman, on reading the story, should be so shocked, as to have no faith in the men who wrote the bible and reject the god of abraham.
Zionism is a murderous cruel cult and Zionist Israel is the proof.
Zionist Israel has no place in a civilised world. Not only have Zionists murdered and tortured unatmed Palestinian civilians bit Zionists stole the Jewish religion and the holocost to hide behind while they created a living hell.
The whole Western world stands condemned for eternity.
Any review of the course of history over 3500 years of those groups in and seeking to have control over the Levant and the Fertile Crescent will clearly reveal ceaseless and ongoing schemes of brutality, murder, theft and oppression leveraged by the utter bs nonsense ascribed to innumerable invisible and inaudible gods by those seeking supremacy. Like all supremacies, reliant on divisive ‘othering’ to suit its purpose, which in fact was and continues to be dominion over strategic commerce and trade – nothing else.
Essentially, these quests for power and dominion, by their lies and deceptions can be seen as nothing but acts of criminality. And that criminality has ever been disguised by the endless greed-based utterances and writs of those bespangled and with funny hats twisting historical cause and myth to to acquisitive and bloody false law. And so those false and immoral laws become common morality.
From the time of Mesopotamia and the pharaohs, but most particularly, from the invention of Rome, and ever onwards, the devise continued and grew through Pauline Rome and the concomitant Mohammedan differentiations, it perhaps peaked, beyond reversal by the 15th century, and embedded the curse of global colonial incursions, dominion and an m.o. of lies on into modernity.
Demonstrably, little was learned through the 19th and 20th centuries during which time it became and industrialized process of obliteration of humanity, it’s constructs, the environment and ecology in pursuit of supremacy. A process that could then affect such devastation in a decade, that before would have taken a century or more. And now which we know could be wrought in a year or two.
Despite an accelerated advance of science and its method, it has little affect on the behavior of our animus. Mechanisms such as the League of Nations, the UN and International Law remain hollowed out and beholden to false law and animus. And of course state’s constitutions, their laws, and corporations and politics remain largely infected by and beholden to the arcane traditions of falsehood, and so seek to infect the populous for their own venal gain.
In my life I have witnessed it again and again, the operation of the death cult. It changes little, just becoming more sophisticated via an entanglement of linguistic trickery and appropriation, shifting cultures into absolutes designed only to justify their own dominion, power and greed.
And today, I look on yet again, as the fester bursts forth from Russia into the Ukraine and North/Central Africa and the middle east, from Israel, from Myanmar, with increasing eruptive emanations from Iran, Modi’s India and the like, all threatening the globe, whilst Europe, America, China and Oz entrapped by their past, stands askance, with their soiled hands plunged deep in their pockets.
Phil Prior’s pithy take on the matter is entirely merited.