Jerusalem Institute of Justice accuses UN of ‘blatant bias’ in inquiry of Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The Jerusalem Institute of Justice (JIJ), an Israeli legal advocacy group, has accused the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI or UNCOI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel of “blatant bias” against Israel in its reports. 

According to the JIJ report, the very structure of the United Nations' COI is biased. 

The institute based its own report on an examination of nine UNCOI reports issued between its founding by the Geneva Council in 2021 through May 2026. 

It noted that most UN fact-finding missions are “bound by defined timelines and discrete scopes,” whereas the COI has an “indefinite mandate,” with the commission operating “as a standing institution devoted exclusively to the continuous scrutiny of a single U.N. Member State.”

Additionally, the JIJ report argues that the alleged bias is evident in the language used in COI reports, which often identify Israeli individuals and military units by name while using more generic terminology when referring to groups such as Hamas.

In a survey of the COI reports, the JIJ found that the word "Israel" or "Israeli" occurs 1,557 times, while “Hamas” is only mentioned 155 times. The COI often use generic terms such as “armed groups” or “militants,” which avoid explicitly identifying the party responsible for violations of international law. 

The JIJ report placed particular focus on the UNCOI’s June 2024 report on the Gaza War. In that report, it identified the same pattern of specificity when referring to the Israeli side, while the perpetrators of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks were described as Hamas’ “military wing,” “armed groups,” or “civilians.”

This, the report argued, allowed the COI to avoid examining the responsibility of Hamas’ political and military leadership for the attacks with the same degree of specificity it applied to the Israeli government and military in its response.

“Although Hamas and other organizations are identified throughout the corpus, the repeated use of generalized terminology provides comparatively less specificity regarding organizational structure, leadership responsibility, and individual decision-makers,” the JIJ states, regarding the use of collective terminology to refer to Palestinian conduct.

While the June 2024 UNCOI report found that Hamas and other armed groups committed abduction, rape, torture, enforced disappearance, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, it did not “connect those violations to identifiable commanders or political leaders.” 

In contrast, alleged Israeli abuses were attributed to an “intentional policy” and connected to identified officials. 

“By minimizing Hamas’ intentional violations of international law as a matter of strategic advantage, the COI falsely attributes all resulting civilian harm to Israeli intent,” the JIJ states. 

The Jerusalem Institute also found that the claims made by the Israeli government and security establishment are routinely treated with skepticism or considered “insufficiently substantiated,” while statements from Palestinian government agencies, pro-Palestinian NGOs – and even from social media – are taken “at face value.” 

However, the Israeli government refused to cooperate with UNCOI investigations, citing what it described as biased statements by COI commissioners, a concern also noted by the JIJ.

The JIJ’s primary concern is that the UNCOI’s open-ended mandate and the lack of clearly defined evidentiary standards raise questions about the commission’s impartiality.

“Unlike traditional Human Rights Council investigative mechanisms, which are established to investigate defined events and conclude upon completion of their mandate, the Resolution S-30/1 directs the COI to examine ‘root causes,’ ‘patterns,’ ‘systematic discrimination,’ and ‘repression’ on an ongoing basis,” JIJ notes. 

Referring to statements by several COI commissioners that the JIJ argues demonstrate clear anti-Israel bias, the report states that “independence requires investigators to remain free from actual or perceived external influence; impartiality requires investigators to approach their work without preconceived conclusions and to apply the same standards to all parties; and objectivity requires findings and conclusions to be based solely on the available evidence.”  

“The COI and its adjacent U.N. mandates are weaponizing international humanitarian and human rights law to concentrate legal responsibility entirely on Israel,” it added.

In conclusion, the JIJ said the commission endangers its own credibility. 

“By systematically magnifying Israeli responsibility while minimizing the independent agency of Palestinian armed groups, the COI fundamentally compromises its own credibility,” the report states. 

The JIJ called on UN member states to terminate the COI, replacing it with “time-limited, event-specific investigations with periodic review, transparent evidentiary standards, and enforceable impartiality requirements.”