The report describes the brutal sexual violence that Hamas fighters likely committed in their October attack. Israel has accused the UN of slowness and procrastination.
UN investigation has found indications that fighters from the terrorist organization Hamas likely raped Israeli civilians during the October 7 attack. In addition, the evidence gathered by the UN shows that Hamas has also used sexual violence against the people it holds hostage in Gaza.
The UN's 24-page report was published on Monday, and the news agency Reuters and Haaretz and The Times of Israel.
Hamas, operating from the Gaza Strip, attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, along with a few other Palestinian organizations. According to Israel, 1,139 people were killed in the Hamas attack, most of them civilians. Hamas also took 250 hostages to Gaza, most of them civilians.
Some of the hostages have died in Gaza, but some have been returned to Israel through a prisoner exchange. Among the hostages and the dead are children, among others.
UN special representative on sexual violence Pramila Patten gathered information about the experiences of Israeli civilians during the beginning of the year. Among other things, Patten met the victims of the Hamas attack, witnesses and representatives of the Israeli armed forces.
He did not meet the victims of sexual violence, because according to Israel, only a few of them survived the attack by Hamas, and they are not yet ready to talk about their experiences. However, Patten and his team went through about 5,000 pictures and about 50 hours of video footage.
Patten and his team gathered information for more than two weeks, The Times of Israel reports. Patten did not visit Gaza.
According to the report presented by Patten, there is “reasonable evidence” to judge that Hamas fighters committed rape and other sexual violence during their October attack. In addition, there is more evidence that Hamas hostages have been victims of sexual violence during their captivity.
According to Patten, it is reasonable to assume that Hamas fighters continue to commit serious sexual violence against hostages in the Gaza Strip. Patten talked about, among other things, the rape, sexual torture and cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment that the hostages are very likely to experience in Gaza.
Rumors and information about Hamas's brutal sexual violence began to circulate immediately after the October attack, and the Israeli authorities have also collected evidence of what happened.
The media have also gone through, among other things, footage of the Hamas attack. At the beginning of December both the American CNN and the British broadcasting company BBC reported, among other things, about eyewitnesses who described the actions of Hamas. One witness told, among other things, about a woman whose genitals had been driven with nails and other objects.
The reservists who participated in identifying the victims also told about the victims' broken pelvises, which denied sexual violence. One reservist told the BBC that sexual violence had been directed at women and girls of all ages.
According to Patten's report, sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred in at least three locations: the Supernova music festival, the Be'er kibbutz, and along Route 232.
One of the most gruesome scenes of the Hamas attack was the Supernova festival, where thousands of young adults had gathered to celebrate “unity and love”, as the festival organizers described it.
The festival turned into a massacre in which 260 people were killed by Hamas fighters. Celebrants were executed and shot indiscriminately.
Patten described the festival attack as a “brutal place of mass murder”. According to Patten, several victims were only partially clothed or completely naked, bound and badly burned.
“In most of these cases, the victim was first raped, then killed. In at least two cases, there are indications of rape of the dead woman's body,” the report says.
The woman visited the Supernova festival area on February 19.
The report after the announcement, Israel's UN ambassador Gilad Erdan accused the UN of slow reaction.
“It took five months for the UN to realize the horrors that happened in the Hamas attack in October,” Erdan said in his announcement, according to Israeli media.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz accused the UN of fudging the issue and wondered why the Secretary-General António Guterres has not convened the Security Council to discuss the report and designate Hamas as a terrorist organization. UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric denied that the UN was fudging the issue and praised Patten's report as comprehensive.
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