Last month, a report for the UN Human Rights Council affirmed — as Palestinians have long asserted — that Israel has systematically employed sexual violence and gender-based crimes against Palestinian women, men, and children since October 7.
The investigation, released alongside harrowing testimonies from survivors and witnesses, civil society representatives, academics, lawyers, and medical experts during a two-day hearing in Geneva, reached several key conclusions that, in my view, demand immediate global attention and action.
First, Israeli forces’ use of gender-based violence has escalated dramatically in both scale and intensity since October 7, becoming “systematic.” These crimes have become a tool of collective oppression to dismantle Palestinian families and communities from within — a tactic borrowed from other campaigns of ethnic violence and genocide in places like Bosnia, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Iraq, where women’s bodies became battlegrounds. …..more
