Prof. Bayefsky blasts U.N. report: 'Modern blood libel that endangers Jews worldwide'

A United Nations Commission of Inquiry released a report this week accusing Israel of "genocide" through the alleged targeting of children in Gaza. Professor Anne Bayefsky, President of Human Rights Voices and Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, strongly condemned the report, accusing the Commission of promoting what she described as a dangerous modern-day blood libel against the Jewish state.

Speaking to Arutz Sheva-Israel National News, Prof. Bayefsky said the Commission had "sunk to a new depth of depravity" by publishing a document accusing Israel of systematically targeting and abusing Palestinian children as part of what the UN body describes as an ongoing "genocide."

"No doubt, this latest contemptible UN blood libel will fuel the growing surge of antisemitism and endanger the lives of Jews worldwide," Bayefsky warned.

The Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 and was originally chaired by former UN official Navi Pillay. Its current members are Srinivasan Muralidhar of India, who serves as chair, Chris Sidoti of Australia, and Florence Mumba of Zambia.

According to Bayefsky, the Commission’s objective is not an impartial investigation but seeks "to turn Israel into a global pariah by inverting reality and accusing Israel of the atrocities actually committed by Hamas."

She noted that the Commission’s first-ever report focused on children dedicates only two paragraphs to the suffering of Israeli children at the hands of Arab terrorists, while devoting 366 paragraphs to accusations against Israel.

The report "never mentioned: the sickening murders and mutilation of the bodies of 9-month-old Kfir Bibas and 4-year-old Ariel Bibas," Bayefsky said, adding that the report also ignores "the hundreds of thousands of Israeli children traumatized by October 7th, by the subsequent mass displacement, and by the long absence of parents gone while defending their country against an inhumane foe."

Bayefsky criticized the report for accusing Israel of "abduction" of Arab children, arguing that the Commission creates a false equivalence between Hamas terrorists kidnapping children from their homes and Israeli security forces detaining terror suspects.

"For the COI, there is no moral difference between Hamas kidnapping children from their homes, and IDF soldiers detaining terror suspects," she stated.

She also blasted the Commission for referring to Palestinian terrorists under the age of 18 simply as "children," saying that under the COI’s approach, "a 17-year-old Hamas member engaging in hostilities and lawfully targeted by the IDF is merely considered a 'child.'"

Bayefsky accused the Commission of relying on unverified claims and anonymous sources to promote accusations against Israel while ignoring the realities of combat against terrorist organizations embedded among civilians.

"Invoking an abominable antisemitic screed, the COI paints Israelis as akin to Nazis, guilty of the 'extermination' of children. Scrutiny of the purported evidence is avoided by relying on anonymous sources. Thus, for example, the report quotes an anonymous doctor who came to the slanderous conclusion that the IDF must have intentionally shot 'teenage boys in a game of target practice' - without having observed any actual shooting and who could not possibly have known where IDF forces were aiming. The fact that civilians might be unintentionally harmed during war, especially against a terrorist enemy that hides among the civilian population and uses them as human shields, apparently did not occur to the anonymous doctor or the COI," she said.

She further criticized the process behind the report’s release, claiming that the Commission deliberately avoided scrutiny.

"This 100-page document was produced weeks ago. But when the members of the COI appeared last week at the 'Human Rights' Council to engage in a public 'dialogue,' they deliberately withheld this report," Bayefsky said. "They didn’t publish it until a week later, minutes prior to holding a stage-managed press conference designed to avoid accountability for their wild unverified accusations."

Bayefsky argued that the Commission repeatedly cites statements by Israeli politicians as supposed evidence of Israeli intent, despite the fact that those individuals "neither have command responsibility, nor set IDF policy or targeting decisions."

At the same time, she said, the Commission claims it cannot verify evidence that Hamas operated from schools and hospitals, despite what she described as extensive publicly available evidence. "Such inconvenient information would establish that the deaths and injuries of children were the tragic and unintended consequences of a war targeting genocidal Palestinian terrorists," she said.

Bayefsky also pointed to the Commission’s discussion of the roots of the October 7 massacre, accusing it of effectively blaming Israel for Hamas’ attack by placing it in the context of the establishment of the State of Israel and the 1948 war.

"The COI’s feigned ignorance occurs in the pre-determined context in which it operates: Israelis are oppressors, Palestinians are innocent victims, and at bottom, the Jewish state is illegitimate. Indeed, the COI makes the despicable claim that Israel is ultimately to blame for the October 7 attacks. In its words: "The Commission has noted previously that both the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas and other PAGs [Palestinian armed groups] on Israel and Israel’s subsequent operations in Gaza did not occur in isolation, but rather within the context of a long-standing, decades-old conflict, rooted in the 1947-1948 Nakba when over 700,000 Palestinians were displaced and hundreds of villages destroyed during Israel’s establishment," she said.

She noted that the report calls on Israel to stop fighting in Gaza but contains no recommendations directed at Hamas or other Palestinian terrorist organizations.

Bayefsky also condemned remarks made by COI member Chris Sidoti during the June 23 press conference announcing the report, accusing him of seeking to demonize and delegitimize Israel.

"According to Sidoti, the key institutions of Israeli society, the government, the Knesset, the political parties, and the military are 'an anarchist mob committing acts that defile and violate every basic moral, legal, and Jewish norm.' The only actual anarchist mob here, laying waste to fundamental values, is the UN’s Sidoti and his COI," she charged.

Concluding her remarks, Bayefsky warned that the report echoes some of the darkest accusations historically made against the Jewish people.

"This evil and malicious report mimics the past blood libels over the centuries that have accused Jews of killing non-Jewish children and consuming their blood," she said. "The terrible reality is that in our age these lethal lies are spread globally by the United Nations."