UN Commission Equates Israeli Settlers With Hamas Terrorists. Israel Calls It a Pattern of Unchecked Allegations.

The UN Report

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report Wednesday concluding that "Palestinian civilians are victims of all sides," explicitly drawing a line between Israeli forces and settlers on one hand and Hamas-affiliated groups on the other.

The commission, chaired by Srinivasan Muralidhar, wrote that settler violence in the West Bank functions as a "means of implementing Israeli State policy" including what it described as the maintenance of unlawful occupation and the annexation of Palestinian territory. It alleged Israeli authorities have granted "impunity for settler violence for decades."

Muralidhar went further: "While their origins and motivations differ, both operate within environments engineered by Israel." That framing places Hamas and the Israeli government on the same causal plane.

The report is not entirely one-sided. It documented 249 cases of executions and severe physical violence by Hamas-affiliated forces in Gaza during 2024–2025, resulting in at least 108 deaths and 384 injuries. Hamas-affiliated forces were involved in at least 60 incidents, including two public executions of 11 men. The commission called those acts war crimes.

Israel vehemently denies the allegations of settler sexual violence cited in the report and disputes the characterization of state-directed settler policy.

The Problem With the Messenger

Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon made his own case before the Security Council during its monthly meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian file, and he had receipts.

Danon held up a photograph of Mohammed Naser Abu Huwaidi, killed in Gaza in late 2023. UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay publicly condemned his death and identified him as a journalist. Earlier this year, Palestinian Islamic Jihad listed Abu Huwaidi among its own members killed during the war. Danon noted that UNESCO's condemnation was public. Its correction has not appeared.

"A claim is made against Israel. The U.N. repeats it, the world condemns it, then the truth comes out," Danon told the council. "No apology, no correction, no retraction. They move on. Israel will not."

The Committee to Protect Journalists is currently conducting a full review of its own database after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad identified some individuals CPJ had listed as slain journalists as members of their organizations. That review is ongoing.

Danon also named Mohammed Abu Itiwi, killed in an October 2024 Israeli strike. UN Secretary-General António Guterres mourned him as "another one of our UNRWA colleagues." Danon identified Abu Itiwi as a Hamas Nukhba commander involved in the October 7 massacre near Re'im.

Separately, Danon criticized New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for stating in a speech last week that Israel killed Al Jazeera journalist Ahmed Wishah. Israel has released video and photographs it says show Wishah operating as a Hamas sniper. That evidence has not been independently verified by third parties in these accounts, and Wishah's status remains disputed.

The Pattern Danon Describes

"Hamas makes a claim, the NGO ecosystem repeats it, a U.N. report rubber-stamps it, the world's media broadcasts it and Israel is condemned before the facts are even checked," Danon said.

The Abu Huwaidi and Abu Itiwi cases are concrete examples where the sequence he describes appears to have occurred. The CPJ database review suggests the problem is real enough that a major press-freedom organization felt compelled to audit itself.

The harder question is whether those specific cases reflect an institutional bias at the UN or simply the fog of a conflict where ground truth is extraordinarily difficult to establish independently. Gaza has been largely closed to unembedded international journalists, which makes independent verification of both Israeli military claims and Hamas claims genuinely difficult. The UN commission did not address that verification problem directly.

What Comes Next

The CPJ database review has no announced completion date. Until it concludes, the full scope of how many individuals were misidentified as journalists remains unknown. That number matters. If it is a handful of cases out of hundreds, it is a serious but contained error. If it is systemic, it changes how the entire casualty record of the war is read by courts, international bodies, and future historians.