Human Rights Expert: 'Since day 1, U.N. inquisitors blamed the victims of Hamas'

"Professor Anne Bayefsky, the Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and President of the Human Rights Voices organization, spoke with Arutz Sheva - Israel National News about the report the United Nations published today (Thursday) accusing Israel of genocidal acts and sexual violence in Gaza and said that the report is another example of the antisemitic bias against Israel at the UN.

‘It is important to understand the context of this UN atrocity crime. The inquiry was created by a bunch of thugs and human rights violators on the UN so-called 'human rights' council.

The three people appointed as members of the inquiry had pre-existing profoundly anti-Israel records, which is precisely why they were appointed to what the UN laughably labels an 'independent inquiry.' The head of the inquiry, Navi Pillay, has championed the lie that the Jewish state is a racist state, as proclaimed in the UN 2001 'Durban Declaration,' for decades. One inquiry member has said the 'Jewish lobby' controls social media. Pillay says antisemitism criticism is 'always raised as a diversion.' Since day one, they set out to demonize and delegitimize the state of Israel. They held hearings and meetings and consultations, almost all of which were conducted in secret, and refused to invite NGOs that would have contradicted their pre-determined outcome. They ignored the hundreds of thousands of submissions that would have done the same,’ Prof. Bayefsky began.

She noted, ‘Immediately after October 7th, they hit the ground running - in defense of Palestinian terror. In Pillay’s words, just a few weeks after October 7th: 'This attack is not just something that arose in isolation, but that we must look at the context. We must look at how desperate Palestinians are for some end to the conflict and the oppression...' And again: 'This latest surge of violence does not come out of a vacuum, and we see a direct link to the occupation...' Blaming the victims was what leaped to the twisted minds of the UN inquisitors. Of course, the actual context of the orgy of hate and sexual violence perpetrated against Jews on a scale not seen since the Holocaust, was antisemitism. A fact that Pillay would call a diversion.’

‘To put these terror sympathizers and apologists in their context, Pillay said on October 30, 2023: 'The point I’m making is when you have a whole population oppressed for so long with no remedies, no relief, they are actually forced to resort to armed struggle.' Fueling hate and violence in the name of human rights protection is her game. Except it isn't a game. The inquiry has blood on its hands. This report uses a legal form to mask the reality of antisemitism and the familiar tropes of inverting victim and perpetrator, truth and fiction, right and wrong,’ she said.

According to Prof. Bayefsky, ‘The entire apparatus is a con, hate dressed up as human rights, incitement, and terror dressed up as law.’

‘In June 2024, the inquisitors commented on Hamas's rape and sexual torture of Jewish women and men. And here is what they said: 'The Commission has reviewed testimonies...concerning rape but has not been able to independently verify such allegations...[T]he Commission was also unable to verify reports of sexualized torture and genital mutilation.' We all know that Hamas perverts immediately paraded the incontrovertible evidence of these atrocities online themselves for the world to see. Not until October 2024 did the inquiry finally admit that rape had taken place,’ she said.

She accused the UN inquiry of having a double standard favoring Israel's enemies over the Jewish State. ‘The Inquiry said when it came time to 'verify' the words of Palestinian claimants in the case of sexual violence, they could 'rely on a single primary source' that they deemed 'credible.' Conveniently omitted: Palestinians have been proven to lodge allegations of sexual violence against Israelis that are completely baseless. In March 2024, Al Jazeera broadcast an accusation that IDF soldiers 'raped women, kidnapped women, executed women' at Al Shifa Hospital. Even Al Jazeera was forced to acknowledge that the story was false, and that the woman making the false accusation 'justified her exaggeration and incorrect talk by saying that the goal was to arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood.' Ditto the Inquiry and its attempt to arouse international anti-Israel fervor.’

‘The report says it 'focuses on sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence carried out since 7 October 2023 by the Israeli Security Forces (ISF) and Israeli settlers.’ Gender-based violence against Israeli hostages since 7 October 2023 was not on the agenda. Moreover, the inquiry has never produced a dedicated report that 'focuses on sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence carried out by Palestinians' on or since 7 October 2023,’ she said.

She continued, ‘The report makes the wild claim that Israel is committing 'genocidal acts' on the grounds that 'the Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group.' This unhinged allegation rests on the harm done to Gazan hospitals and health clinics during the war, totally dismissing the massive amounts of evidence of Hamas's use of hospitals for military purposes and of Gazan civilians as human shields.’

‘Last, but not least, comes the antisemitic trope that has become so commonplace in the UN system, analogizing Israelis and the victims of the Nazis to the Nazis. According to Navi Pillay, Chris Sidoti and Miloon Kothari, Israel is guilty of 'extermination.' This is a blood libel that promises to fuel more attempts at extermination - committed by Palestinians against Jews,’ she concluded."