In Israel, lawyers and activists denounce the silence of international organizations defending women’s rights on accusations of sex crimes by Hamas. Joe Biden is very clear: the American president called, Tuesday, December 5, to “unambiguously and forcefully condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists”.
“Hamas terrorists made women and girls suffer as much as possible” during the October 7 attacks, the American president said during a meeting to raise funds for his campaign in Boston. He spoke of the “horrible testimonies of the unimaginable cruelty” suffered that day.
“Putting an end to violence against women and sexual assault is one of the battles of my life,” he continued. “We must all – governments, international organizations, civil society and the economic world – unambiguously and forcefully condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists,” he demanded.
“Silence is complicity”
The White House also blamed Hamas for the “collapse” of the agreement reached last week, which provided for a pause in fighting and the release of several hostages, including the remaining young women. “These are civilians, most of them aged 20 to 39, that Hamas refused to release,” thus making an extension of the truce impossible, declared the 81-year-old democratic president.
The reason why “this break collapsed is that they do not want these women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their detention”, for his part affirmed the spokesperson for the Department of State, Matthew Miller, quoted by The Times of Israel.
The statements came a day after a presentation at United Nations headquarters in New York, where nearly 800 people listened to speakers highlight the violence unleashed against Israeli women on October 7 and against Israeli hostages. ‘generally speaking, notes International mail. The meeting was organized by the Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN, aided by Sheryl Sandberg, a former Meta executive who now devotes herself to philanthropic projects.
Quoted by The Guardian, Sheryl Sandberg declared during this meeting that “silence is complicity”, before asking whether the world should believe Hamas, which denies these crimes, or “the women whose bodies tell us how they spent the last minutes of their life”. She also called for a “full and fair investigation” by the UN. In a recorded video, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for her part, denounced those who “claim to defend justice (and) close their minds and hearts to the victims of Hamas.”
In Israel, an investigation launched into possible sex crimes
Although UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres immediately condemned the Hamas massacre, it was not until the end of November that he called for a “vigorous investigation” into the subject of sexual crimes committed by Hamas. For its part, UN Women, REMARK Ha’Aretz, remained silent for eight long weeks, before saying he was “alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence committed during the (October 7) attacks.” For the Israeli daily, “this conviction was not up to par”.
In addition to the murder of 1,200 people, most of them civilians, committed according to Israel during the attacks of October 7, the Israeli police announced on November 14 that they were investigating sexual violence, including rape and mutilation of corpses, suspected of having been committed against women by Hamas fighters.
David Katz, one of the heads of the Lahav 443 criminal police unit, announced that he was “working on several cases” of sexual assault and collecting forensic clues from survivors, CCTV footage and information given during interrogations of Palestinian fighters arrested after the massacre. “This survey […] is the most important in our history,” said Israel’s Chief Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai. This investigation promises to be long and delicate.