Netanyahu slams 'false' UN finding on Gaza 'genocidal acts'

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM - Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday condemned as "false and absurd" a UN investigation that found Israel had committed "genocidal acts" in the Gaza Strip.

"The anti-Israeli circus known as the UN Human Rights Council has long been exposed as an anti-Semitic, corrupt, terror-supporting, and irrelevant body," Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office.

"Instead of focusing on crimes against humanity and the war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organisation in the worst massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the UN once again chooses to attack the state of Israel with false accusations, including absurd claims" of destroying sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities in Gaza, he said.

Earlier on Thursday, the UN Commission of Inquiry said Israel had "intentionally attacked and destroyed" the Palestinian territory's main fertility centre, and had simultaneously imposed a siege and blocked aid including medication for ensuring safe pregnancies, deliveries and neonatal care.

The commission found that Israeli authorities "have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare", it said in a statement.

It said this amounted to "two categories of genocidal acts" during Israel's offensive in Gaza, launched after the attacks by Hamas militants on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The three-person Independent International Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate alleged international law violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories.