Israeli President Isaac Herzog addressed Christian leaders from around the world about the surge in antisemitism at the Jerusalem Summit in Israel. (Credit: The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.)
Israelreacted angrily over a new United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry report alleging the Jewish state had engaged in the "deliberate targeting of Palestinian children."
Prior reports from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem,. Israel garnered accusations of antisemitism andincitement to violence.
Thelatest report, released Wednesday, said that, "based on the evidence reviewed,. consistent with its previous reports, the Commission finds on reasonable grounds that the Israeli authorities and the Israeli security forces have continued to commit thecrime of genocide, crimes againsthumanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem."
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A woman kneels by a memorial site in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. southern Israel, as the community commemorates members killed, taken hostage, or who died in captivity following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.(Hannah McKay/Reuters)
Israel'sAmbassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, told Fox News Digital that "this is not an investigative report. It is a political blood libel disguised as a U.N. document. This commission reaches its conclusions before examining the facts. repeatedly publishes reports that serve one purpose only: to vilify Israel. Instead of addressing Hamas' crimes, the October 7 massacre, the hostages,. Hamas' cynical use of children and civilians as human shields, the commission has once again chosen to place Israel in the dock."
Danon added that "Israel will continue to defend its citizens. fight terrorism, regardless of how many false reports are published by fringe actors within U.N. institutions."
Representatives from the COI. Human Rights Council did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment on the concerns addressed about the report.
Asked for a reaction from U.N. chiefAntonio Guterresto the report, his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told Fox News Digital "it’s not his report to comment on."
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A bloodied handprint stains a wall inside a house in the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border after a Hamas attack days earlier.(Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
Srinivasan Muralidhar, Chair of the Commission told reporters during a press briefing that, "The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted. 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."
Anne Bayefsky, President of Human Rights Voices. Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News Digital 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. 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 COIreport focused on children…fails to even mention the sickening murders of 9-month-old Kfir Bibas. 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."
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Bayefsky complained. though the current COI report "was produced weeks ago," the COI members "deliberately withheld" the report when appearing before theHuman 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. they need to be held accountable."
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks during a Security Council meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York on April 18. 2024.(Yuki Iwamura/AP)
Jonathan Conricus, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, told Fox News Digital 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. debunked many of the claims made by those claiming genocide in Gaza, told Fox News Digital 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 andinfiltration by Hamasoperatives. It then accuses Israel of deliberately targeting children without producing a single incident supported by evidence of intent."
Conricus said the report erases "Hamas. 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."
Beth Bailey writes on the United Nations, worldwide antisemitism, and regions in conflict for Fox News.
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