The decision to do so came in spite of the fact that neither of the two previous UN reports on which the Secretary-General based his findings had attributed to Hamas a single act of conflict-related sexual violence on October 7, or found evidence of a plan or orders to commit sexual violence.
What an incredibly artful construction.
The report says that people who invaded on October 7th committed a whole bunch of instances of rape and sexual violence. The report didn’t try to say that it was “Hamas,” since there were people who joined in the invasion who were not part of Hamas and it was impossible to allocate which person was responsible for which act. Also, “a plan or orders” is a big canard, since part of the laws of war for decades has been that it is your responsibility as a commander to prevent your troops from raping anybody, not just avoid specifically ordering them to do so.
This whole sentence is technically true, but it’s trying to twist around a report that says “a lot of instances of rape happened during the attack” as if it was saying “not a single instance of rape happened during the attack.”
The strongest evidence presented in the Secretary General’s report for the claim that Hamas was responsible for sexual violence on October 7 was the alleged presence of several bodies undressed from the waist down with hands tied (a claim we scrutinize below)
Not true. There were also firsthand accounts. Even that aside, what would your conclusion be if you found that particularly the women in a bunch of civilians that got attacked often were found with their hands tied behind them and naked or naked from the waist down?
By contrast, the report details no less than “12 incidents of conflict-related sexual violence perpetrated by Israeli armed and security forces
Yes. They made sure to emphasize that the Israelis were doing it too, and gathered evidence of their crimes as well. Why does that cancel out all their conclusions about sexual assault of Israelis on and after October 7th?
Man, you don’t need to pretend Hamas’s war crimes don’t exist in order to condemn Israel for their war crimes.
