UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese made a number of very strong claims about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians – saying ‘genocide has become the ultimate form of torture’ – as she addressed the Human Rights Council’s 61st session in Geneva on Monday.
“The testimonies that I and many others are documented are documenting are not just tragic stories of suffering. They are evidence of atrocity crimes targeting the totality of the Palestinian people across the totality of the occupied Palestinian land through a totality of criminal conduct,” she claimed.
“Hence, I concluded that genocide has become the ultimate form of torture. Continuous generational collective. The way you respond to this abomination will be a test of our collective legal and moral responsibility. International law is unambiguous,” she said.
She quoted from a number of very distressing allegations, although did not specify the exact cases or circumstances: “Quote. One of the soldiers raped me by violently inserting a wooden stick into my anus. After about a minute, he removed it and inserted it again more forcefully while I screamed loudly.”
She also claimed: “Officials caught on camera sodomising a Palestinian detainee with a knife are publicly celebrated.”
Albanese has previously accused Israel of using sexual abuse and torture as a weapon. The Israeli mission to the UN in Geneva has condemned her report for relying on “second-hand single uncorroborated sources”.
Last week, charges against five Israeli soldiers accused of sexually abusing a detainee at Sde Teiman prison in July 2024 – which included CCTV footage – were dropped. The IDF said it was due to “exceptional circumstances that negatively affected the ability to prosecute the case while also preserving the right for a fair trial of the defendants”.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu called the case a ‘blood libel’ and has also described the HRC as “an antisemitic, rotten, terrorist-supporting, and irrelevant body”.
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