UN team finds reasons to support allegations of sexual violence in Hamas attack

JERUSALEM – A United Nations report released Monday found signs of crimes being committed sexual violence in multiple places during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October and said that some hostages held in the Gaza Strip had also been subjected to rape and sexual torture.

From late January to early February, the United Nations sent a team of experts led by Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, to Israel and the West Bank.

In their report, the experts said they found “well-founded reasons” to believe there was sexual violence during the Hamas-led incursion into Israel, including rapes and gang rapes in at least three locations: the site of the Nova music festival and the surrounding area. , as well as Road 232 and Kibbutz Re’im.

“In most of these incidents, victims who had first been raped were then killed, and at least two incidents involved the rape of female corpses,” the report states.

The UN report, which also cites allegations that Palestinians detained by Israel were also sexually abused, was released three months later The New York Times released an extensive report on sexual violence during the Hamas-led attack, including several incidents along Highway 232.

The leaders denied the allegations and the United Nations report, pointing to the variety of fighters involved in the October 7 attack, said its experts failed to determine who was responsible for the sexual assaults.

Relationship

In their report, UN experts cited signs of sexual violence that had not been widely reported before, including the rape of a woman outside an air raid shelter at the entrance to Kibbutz Re’im.

According to the report, this incident was confirmed by testimonies and digital material.

Experts said they also found “a number of victims, mostly women, found completely or partially naked, tied up and killed in multiple locations.”

Although the evidence was circumstantial, they said, the pattern could indicate some form of sexual assault and torture.

As for the hostages captured in Israel and taken to Gaza, the report offers a more conclusive conclusion.

He said he found it “Clear and convincing information” based on first-hand accounts from freed hostages that some women and children were inflicted during their captivity, including rape, sexual torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

He also said there is good reason to believe that such abuses were committed against the hostages They were still detained.

Israel welcomed the report because it recognized “that the crimes were committed simultaneously in different locations and indicate a pattern of rape, torture and sexual abuse,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.

The UN report said its experts were unable to verify reports of sexual violence in Kibbutz Kfar Aza or Kibbutz Be’eri.

But in both places, he said, circumstantial information – “in particular, the recurring pattern of female victims found naked, bound and shot,” in Kfar Aza, for example – indicated that sexual violence, including “potential sexualized torture” , it could have happened. .

However, he said that two specific allegations of sexual assault at Kibbutz Be’eri, widely repeated in the media, were “unfounded”.

Rescuers told the Times they found bodies of women with signs of sexual violence on those two kibbutzim, but the Times, in its report, did not address specific allegations that the UN has called unfounded.

The UN report details the enormous challenges in determining what happened on the day of the attack.

Obstacles

For starters, it was nearly impossible to gain access to the type of forensic evidence often used to establish sexual assault. This is due in part to the large number of casualties and widely dispersed attack sites.

The report also states that first responders, often untrained volunteers, focused more on search and rescue operations and recovering the dead than on collection of evidence.

And many of the bodies were badly burned, compromising any evidence.

Experts said they had appealed to Israeli women who survived the October 7 attacks to come forward, but had not spoken to any directly.

They said a small number of survivors were still undergoing treatment for trauma.

They also noted a deep suspicion among Israelis towards international organizations such as the UN, as well as the fact that the team remained in place for a limited period of two and a half weeks.

“Overall, the mission team is of the view that the true prevalence of sexual violence during the October 7 attacks and their aftermath may take months or years to emerge and may never be fully known,” the report said.

The report said the UN team also heard accounts of sexual violence against Palestinians by security forces and Israeli settlers.

Palestinian officials and civil society representatives, he said, had reported to the UN team “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees, including various forms of sexual violence in the form of invasive searches, threats of rape and prolonged forced nudity.” as well as sexual harassment and threats of rape, during house searches and at checkpoints.”

The UN team called on the Israeli government to grant access to other UN bodies, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, so that they can conduct independent and comprehensive investigations into these allegations.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat said: “Israel rejects the report’s call to investigate Palestinian allegations of “sexual violence by Israeli elements.”

Patten had said his trip was not intended to investigate (other U.N. agencies have this mandate, he said) but to “give a voice” to victims and survivors and find ways to offer them support, including justice and accountability.

According to the report, the UN team included technical experts capable of interpreting forensic evidence, analyzing open source digital information and conducting interviews with victims and witnesses of sexual violence.

Patten said one of the challenges UN experts faced was examining the paucity of reliable information and inaccurate reports from untrained people.

“On the one hand – he said – we have the fog of war which often silences the reasons for sexual violence. But we have also seen in the history of wars cases in which sexual violence can become a weapon.”

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