The United Nations' Commission of Inquiry has released a new report accusing Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian children, sparking a heated response from the Israeli government and its supporters.
The report, released on Wednesday, claims that Israeli authorities and security forces have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Israel's Ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, has vehemently denied the allegations, calling the report a "political blood libel" and stating that it is "disguised as a U.N. document." He claims that the commission reaches its conclusions before examining the facts and is driven by a desire to vilify Israel.
Representatives from the Commission and the Human Rights Council did not respond to requests for comment on the concerns raised about the report.
However, Chair of the Commission Srinivasan Muralidhar told reporters that the evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli security forces, even after the October 2025 ceasefire.
President of Human Rights Voices and Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, Anne Bayefsky, has also criticized the report, stating that it is a "sham 'inquiry'" that systematically violates every conceivable legal rule of fairness, impartiality, and due process.
Bayefsky pointed out that the report fails to mention the murders of two Israeli children, 9-month-old Kfir Bibas and 4-year-old Ariel Bibas, and ignores the trauma suffered by hundreds of thousands of Israeli children as a result of the October 7th attack.
Another member of the commission told reporters in Geneva that every international legal norm has been violated by the actions of the Israeli authorities towards Palestinian children and that they need to be held accountable.
Senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Conricus, has also criticized the report, stating that it contains "no evidence to support any of the claims against Israel" and is filled with inconsistencies in methodology.
Director of media watchdog group HonestReporting, Salo Aizenberg, has also questioned the report's findings, stating that it is built on a fictional battlefield where Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad do not exist, and that hospitals are treated as purely civilian spaces despite extensive evidence of their military use and infiltration by Hamas operatives.
