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Israel reacted sharply to the report of a new UN commission of inquiry, which alleged that the Jewish state was engaged in “deliberate targeting of Palestinian children”.
In previous reports by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, it was accused of inciting anti-Semitism and violence.
The latest report released on Wednesday said, “Based on the evidence reviewed, and consistent with its previous reports, the Commission finds on reasonable grounds that Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces continue to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
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A woman kneels at a memorial site in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, southern Israel, as the community commemorates members killed, taken hostage, or captured following a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told Fox News Digital that “This is not an investigative report. This is a political blood libel disguised as a UN document. This commission reaches its conclusions before examining the facts and repeatedly publishes reports that serve only one purpose: to discredit Israel. Hamas’ crimes, the October 7 massacre, the hostage-taking and Hamas’ use of children and civilians as human shields. Instead of addressing the reprehensible use, the Commission has once again chosen to place Israel in the dock.”
Danon said that “Israel will continue to protect its citizens and fight terrorism, no matter how many false reports are published by marginalized actors within UN institutions.”
Representatives of the COI and the Human Rights Council did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment on the concerns addressed about the report.
Asked for comment from UN chief Antonio Guterres on the report, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric told Fox News Digital, “This is not his report on which he can comment.”
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Bloody handprints were seen on a wall inside a house in the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border following a Hamas attack a few days ago. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
Commission Chairman Srinivasan Muralidhar told reporters during a press conference that, “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces.” He said, “Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children are being killed and seriously injured, with Israel continuing to disregard the protections afforded Palestinian children under the ceasefire and international law.”
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Anne Biefsky, president of Human Rights Voice and director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News Digital that the COI’s “sham ‘investigation’ makes a completely unjustified claim of legal authority, while at the same time systematically violating every conceivable legal rule of impartiality, fairness, and due process. Since its creation in 2021, every call for submissions, every consultation, and every hearing held has been taken seriously. The allegations from only one side – the destruction of millions of data, both historical and current – point to the contrary.”
“COI’s first report focused on children…failing to even mention the heartbreaking murders of 9-month-old Kfir Bibas and 4-year-old Ariel Bibas,” he said. She says that “The COI report also ignores the thousands of Israeli children who were traumatized by October 7, by the mass displacement that followed, and by the excruciating longing for an absent parent while defending their country against an inhumane enemy.”
Photos of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz, 84, who was abducted and later killed during a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, are displayed next to candles in the dining room at Kibbutz Nir Oz in Israel on February 25, 2025, the day of Lifshitz’s funeral when their bodies were returned under the armistice agreement. (Aamir Cohen/Reuters)
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Bayefsky complained that although the current COI report “was prepared weeks ago,” COI members “deliberately withheld” the report when it appeared before the Human Rights Council last week. He claimed, “He didn’t publish it until June 23, minutes before holding a platform-driven press conference to avoid accountability for his wild, unverified allegations.”
Another member of the commission told reporters in Geneva that, “Nobody reading today’s report can have any doubt that the actions of the Israeli authorities towards Palestinian children violate every international legal norm and they must be held accountable.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a meeting of the Security Council at the UN Headquarters in New York on April 18, 2024. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
Jonathan Conricus, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, told Fox News Digital that the latest report has “no evidence to support any claims against Israel” and is full of “methodological inconsistencies.”
He said the report “represents an escalation, and it is perhaps the most serious attempt by the UN ecosystem to delegitimize Israel.”
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Salo Aizenberg, director of the media watchdog group HonestReporting, which has researched and refuted many of the claims made by those claiming genocide in Gaza, told Fox News Digital that COI’s “report is built on an imaginary battlefield where Hamas and [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] do not exist, and where hospitals are considered purely civilian spaces despite widespread evidence of their military use and infiltration by Hamas operatives. It then accuses Israel of deliberately targeting children, without presenting a single incident of evidence of intent.”
Conricus said the report “eliminates Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the battlefield to create the false impression that Israel was acting with wanton aggression in a vacuum without the need for an Israeli operation, and this is a recurring theme.” He also said that this report and others “use the statements of medical professionals as evidence, even if it is beyond their medical expertise, particularly when it comes to how the wounds were inflicted.”
