/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/OJSQ7GWB5BC4XBQDMMJFYJF5BU.jpg "The UN obtains “clear and convincing information” of sexual violence against hostages in Gaza |")
The UN team led by the special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, obtained “clear and convincing information” during its 17-day visit to Israel that some hostages in Gaza have suffered various forms of sexual violence. Palestinian militias captured more than 240 people in the Oct. 7 attack and handed over regarding half in a November swap. In its conclusions, presented this Monday in New York, the United Nations mission also claims to have “reason to believe” that during that attack, organized by Hamas and which caused some 1,200 deaths, acts of sexual violence also occurred in al at least three locations around the Strip, “including in the form of rape and gang rape.” Patten’s team has been in contact with “multiple independent sources” in preparing this report. There is also “credible circumstantial information” that points to other forms of sexual violence, such as sexualized torture or genital mutilation. The dissemination of the report has generated a new incident with the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres. Israel accuses him of “trying to silence him” and has recalled its ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, for consultations.
The main scene of the acts of sexual violence was apparently the Nova festival, where hundreds of young people were still dancing when they heard the first rockets and which ended up turning into a massacre: a third of the civilian deaths and dozens of the hostages came from there. The team has reason to believe that “multiple incidents of sexual violence took place on the esplanade where the event was held and in the surrounding area, with victims being subjected to rape or gang rape and then killed, or killed while being raped.”
The report, for example, alludes to descriptions of the discovery of five bodies, especially women, “naked from the waist down (and some completely naked) with their hands tied behind them, and many shot in the head.” It also collects “credible information based on witness testimonies” of a rape of two women by armed men on the same highway where the investigation found “a pattern of naked bodies, completely or from the waist down, in some cases.” tied to trees or poles.” He also notices the rape of a woman next to a shelter in Reim, one of the kibbutz (agricultural community) attacked. He discards, as not very credible, other cases that the media reflected at the time.
Israel has defended for months that on October 7 there were not isolated cases of sexual violence, but rather a pattern that was part of the plans of the Hamas militants. In its document on the attack, the Islamist movement denies having participated in a single case of sexual violence, as it went once morest the precepts of Islam. The UN team does not comment on this in its conclusions. He emphasizes that he cannot determine in a 17-day visit how many cases there have been in total, “nor specifically attribute them.” It’s something, he adds, that will require a full investigation that will likely last years. Systematically, there is always more sexual violence than is known.
Cochav Elkayam-Levy, director of the Civil Commission for crimes committed by Hamas once morest women and children, which documents the cases, and an expert in international law, human rights and feminist theories, pointed out in an interview with this newspaper that it will probably “never be know” what really happened in terms of sexual violence. “What we know is that we have found sexual crimes and abused bodies in different areas, and that we recognize systematic sexual violence. And that the women were attacked as women and in very brutal ways.”
The UN report contains numerous references to the difficulties of its work. The main one, the “limited number and access” to survivors of sexual violence. In fact, Patten’s team was unable to directly interview any of the victims of the October 7 attack, “despite concerted efforts encouraging them to do so.” Patten explained that the small number left alive are receiving “specialized trauma treatment” and cannot speak regarding what happened.
Other challenges have more to do with the chaos that caused the deadliest day in Israel’s 75-year history, in which the security forces took hours to arrive and several days to consider the attacked area safe. The report cites among them “the limited forensic evidence due to the large number of victims and the dispersion of crime scenes in a context of persistent hostilities; the loss of potentially valid evidence due to the intervention of emergency volunteers without adequate preparation; and the prioritization of rescue operations and the recovery, identification and burial of the dead in accordance with religious practices, ahead of the collection of forensic evidence.”
Difficulties
Yael Sherer, who advises authorities on the documentation of sexual crimes on October 7, spoke regarding this context in an interview with this newspaper. Director of the Defense Group for Survivors of Sexual Violence, which she founded in 2019 in Israel, she pointed out the difficulty of obtaining DNA samples or identifying signs of sexual violence when there are “very few” survivors; there were 1,200 bodies in different places where There were battles and some “were completely burned.”
“We were not able to obtain the forensic evidence that we normally would obtain or record the scenarios as we would. It is unrealistic to expect a police photographer to go to a thousand crime scenes and not touch the bodies when there is still fighting and shooting. It was also unclear who was injured, who was kidnapped and who was missing. People were transported to hospitals and no one knew where they came from. And all this during a heat wave, which goes very poorly with the collection of evidence,” he pointed out.
The mission visited the country between January 29 and February 14, at a time of growing hostility in Israel towards the United Nations and UN Women, an entity that has been accused of ignoring sexual violence due to anti-Israeli bias and which has been object of a campaign with the slogan “MeToo unless you’re a Jew” (MeToounless you’re Jewish).
The Israeli authorities have therefore received the report’s conclusions as months-late vindication, although it does not point directly to Hamas or confirm that sexual violence was systematic. “It is of enormous importance,” the president, Isaac Herzog, said in a statement this Tuesday. “It substantiates with moral clarity and integrity the systematic, premeditated and ongoing sexual crimes committed by Hamas terrorists once morest Israeli women.”
The publication of the document has also generated a new incident with the Secretary General of the United Nations. Israel, as reported by its Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, has called its ambassador to the UN for consultations, accusing Guterres of “trying to silence” the “serious UN report on the mass violations committed by Hamas and its allies.” on October 7”; for not convening the UN Security Council to “declare Hamas a terrorist organization and impose sanctions on those who support it.” “The shame of the silence of the UN, which does not hold a single session on the subject, cries out to heaven,” said Katz.
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