A Predatory State: Israeli Systemic Sexualized and Gendered Violence Against Palestinians by Progressive International and Palestinian Feminist Collective

Given the:

• systemic use of strategies of sexualized violence, including sexual humiliation, sexual torture and rape against women, girls, boys, and men, at times with clear evidence of genocidal intent;
• systemic utilization of sexualized violence since 1948 in different forms and to different degrees of brutality, including with the intention to expel Palestinians from their land;

• systemic weaponization of Palestinian cultural norms against Palestinians in cases of sexualized blackmail, coercion, and extortion;
• systemic gendered violence that facilitates the assault on Palestinian life, bodies, reproductive capacities, homes, rituals, and land;

We find that Israeli sexualized and gendered violence is a colonial mechanism deployed to destroy ommunities in whole or in part. Israel, as a colonializing force, weaponizes sex, gender, and intimacy to achieve military objectives of both physical and psychological devastation, exploiting patriarchal societal norms to intensify the impact of its sexualized and gendered violence on its Palestinian victims and on Palestinian society as a whole.

We therefore conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Israel has engaged in and continues to perpetrate systematic sexualized and gendered vio lence against the Palestinian people, constituting gross violations of but not limited to: International Criminal Law (The Rome Statute including both Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes), International Humanitarian Law (The Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols) and International Human Rights Law (The UN Convention Against Torture). In the context of
the broader genocide waged against the Palestinian people, and given the staggering evidence of genocidal intent that accompanies various testimonies and cases of sexual and gendered violence, we further conclude that Israel is guilty of the Crime of Genocide.