‘Outrageous’: Israel’s UN envoy says body gave ‘no real basis’ for blacklisting over sexual violence

Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon says he expects UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to officially place Israel on a list of sexual violence in conflict zone offenders today or tomorrow, and claims Jerusalem was never given specific cases to respond to before the decision was made, in remarks to The Times of Israel.

“We told them: if there are specific complaints, send us the cases so we can provide specific responses. But we didn’t receive a single specific case. That’s why his move is political,” says Danon in a phone interview, after announcing this morning that Jerusalem is freezing cooperation with Guterres’ office over the decision.

Guterres warned Israel last year that it was at risk of being included in the report, and listed steps Israel must take to avoid being blacklisted, including issuing directives against sexual violence, creating enforcement and disciplinary systems, investigating credible complaints, and granting the UN free access for monitoring and humanitarian aid.

The UN’s allegations at the time included multiple accounts of rape of Palestinian male detainees, among them a reported assault on a detainee being transferred to Sde Teiman — the temporary holding facility set up after October 7 for captured Hamas members and suspected terrorists.

Danon says Israel did its utmost to comply with those requests. He says he personally met multiple times with Guterres’ representative on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, and her team, and that Israel had arranged for senior officials from the Prison Service, the military and the Justice Ministry to meet with her delegation – but says she made cancellations due to technical complications and later due to the security situation in Israel, though Israel never blocked the visits.

“They never really gave us the basis for [the decision], because they don’t have any real basis to rely on. It could have been media reports or things like that… they never clarified any specific cases to us,” the envoy claims.

The Sde Teiman affair centered on leaked surveillance footage allegedly showing the abuse of a Palestinian detainee by IDF soldiers at the Sde Teiman detention facility.

Several soldiers were arrested after leaked surveillance footage appeared to show a Palestinian detainee being abused by IDF soldiers at Sde Teiman, and after numerous media reports, based on testimony from Israeli officials and Palestinian detainees, detailed severe cases of abuse and even torture at the detention facility.

A January report by Israel’s Public Defender’s Office corroborated these allegations, determining that Palestinian security detainees held in Israeli prisons have suffered from severe and systematic violence from prison guards, deprivation of food and medical neglect, and sanitary conditions that caused and exacerbated outbreaks of disease in the prisons.

The charges against the suspects were eventually dropped after the former military advocate general was revealed to be responsible for leaking the footage.

Danon says Israel shared its full legal and oversight framework with the UN, including regulations, complaint mechanisms, and its practice of filing indictments where warranted, and warns that placement on the list carries an “outrageous” implication.

“Once you’re on that list, you’re essentially painting Israel as systematically using sexual violence as part of the conflict. That’s the gravest accusation… it’s outrageous, after October 7, to put us on the same list as [Hamas] terrorists.”

Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.