Israel Condemns UN Report Accusing Deliberate Targeting of Palestinian Children as ‘Political Blood Libel

Israel expressed strong disapproval following the release of a fresh report from the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry, which accused the nation of intentionally targeting Palestinian children.

Earlier statements from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which includes East Jerusalem and Israel, have previously faced backlash, being labeled as antisemitic and accused of promoting violence.

In the most recent document published on Wednesday, the Commission, after reviewing evidence and aligning it with previous findings, asserted it had substantial grounds to believe that Israeli authorities and security forces continued committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes within the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Israel’s representative to the United Nations, Danny Danon, conveyed to the press that “this document does not constitute an investigation but rather is a political attack masquerading as a U.N. report. The commission routinely arrives at conclusions without thoroughly examining the evidence, aiming solely to defame Israel. Instead of confronting the atrocities committed by Hamas, including the October 7 massacre and the use of hostages and civilians as human shields, the commission has once more opted to put Israel on trial.”

Danon added that “Israel will continue to defend its citizens and fight terrorism, regardless of how many false reports are published by fringe actors within U.N. institutions.”

Representatives from the COI and Human Rights Council did not respond to News Media’s requests for comment on the concerns addressed about the report.

Asked for a reaction from U.N. chief Antonio Guterres to the report, his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told News Media “it’s not his report to comment on.”

Srinivasan Muralidhar, Chair of the Commission told reporters during a press briefing that, “The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces.” He said “Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”

SIGN UP FOR ANTISEMITISM EXPOSED NEWSLETTER

Anne Bayefsky, President of Human Rights Voices and Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told News Media that the COI’s “sham ‘inquiry’ makes the totally unjustified claim of legal authority, while at the same time systematically violating every conceivable legal rule of fairness, impartiality, and due process. Since its creation in 2021, every call for submissions, every consultation and every hearing held, has been contrived to take seriously the allegations of only one side – trashing literally millions of data points both historical and current to the contrary.”

She said, “the first COI report focused on children…fails to even mention the sickening murders of 9-month-old Kfir Bibas and 4-year-old Ariel Bibas.” She says that “also ignored in the COI report are the hundreds of thousands of Israeli children traumatized by October 7th, by the subsequent mass displacement, and by the excruciating longing for parents absent while defending their country against an inhumane foe.”

Bayefsky complained that though the current COI report “was produced weeks ago,” the COI members “deliberately withheld” the report when appearing before the Human Rights Council last week. “They didn’t publish it until June 23, minutes prior to holding a stage-managed press conference designed to avoid accountability for their wild, unverified accusations,” she claimed.

Another member of the commission told reporters in Geneva that, “There can be no doubt in anyone who reads today’s report that every international legal norm has been violated by the actions of the Israeli authorities towards Palestinian children and they need to be held accountable.”

Jonathan Conricus, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, told News Media that the latest report contains “no evidence to support any of the claims against Israel” and is filled with “inconsistencies in methodology.”

He said the report represents “an escalation, and it marks maybe the most severe attempt by the U.N. ecosystem to delegitimize Israel.”

Salo Aizenberg, director of media watchdog group HonestReporting, who has researched and debunked many of the claims made by those claiming genocide in Gaza, told News Media that the COI’s “report is built on a fictional battlefield where Hamas and [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] do not exist, and where hospitals are treated as purely civilian spaces despite extensive evidence of their military use and infiltration by Hamas operatives. It then accuses Israel of deliberately targeting children without producing a single incident supported by evidence of intent.”

Conricus said the report erases “Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the battlefield to create the false kind of perception that Israel was operating out of wanton aggression in a vacuum without there ever being a need for Israeli operations and this is a reoccurring theme.” He also noted that this report and others “use the statements of medical professionals as evidence, even when it’s way beyond their medical expertise, specifically when it comes to how wounds were inflicted.”