A situation never before recorded in the history of Israel, officially put on a “black list” by the UN…
…and, from this moment, an almost unimaginable fact and opening possible as yet unknown diplomatic and legal consequences. Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, has added the Israeli military and security forces to this “blacklist” of countries where wartime sexual violence or abuse of prisoners, in this case Palestinians, takes place.
Antonio Guterres PHOTO EPE-EFE
As a reaction to the publication of the report, Israel froze relations with the UN Secretary General's office, contesting in the most decisive way the reality of what was stated by those from ONBU and accusing that there was an attempt by the world forum to put an equal sign between Israel and Hamas, an organization already on this list.
“Shameful and absurd decision of the UN to include Israeli entities in the annex of the report related to sexual violence during armed conflicts” said Oren Marmorstein, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, adding that it is all just further evidence “what the UN really is: a politicized and corrupt organization that has abandoned its founding principles and whose main mission is to target Israel”.
It is an extremely serious situation that is extremely likely to be extremely, extremely highly politicized and it is extremely possible that it will serve as a very powerful trigger in all the conflicting narratives of the moment in the confrontations in the Middle East but, perhaps most seriously, it will certainly also be used as an argument by terrorist organizations to motivate their members and convince their recruits. In addition, it puts all UN member states in front of a dilemma: under these conditions, will they cooperate with the Israeli entities mentioned in the report and placed on the “blacklist”?
But is the situation really that explosive and serious? Read here https://www.un.org/unispal/document/conflict-related-sexual-violence-report-of-the-secretary-general-s-2026-321/ the report of the UN Secretary General. It is the final position of the UN that few thought would be so harsh, however, repeating the data, arguments and evidence presented in a number of previous documents and you have here https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/05/special-rapporteur-torture-warns-persistent-risks-palestinian-detainees the one signed by Alice Jill Edward Special Rapporteur on the problems of torture, document published on 19 May 2026 by the Geneva office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
But, in essence, no matter how terrible the statements made in the reports now assumed by the United Nations Organization, everything is presumably to remain rainwater because, behold, the accused do not recognize the moral and legal authority of the accusers, even if, technically, they belong to the same organization and, theoretically, should obey the same rules.
A system of international relations definitively compromised in its established form after the Second World War, possibly to be progressively replaced by a new kind of reality where there are no more rules and everything depends on whose word we believe.
If that's what it turns out to be, the prospects are odd, to say the least.
