From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Israel’s FM denounces UN chief for failing to include Hamas on sexual violence blacklist
Foreign Minister Israel Katz accuses UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of standing “shoulder to shoulder with the rapists and murderers of Hamas” for declining to blacklist the terror group, in a report published today, among organizations suspected by the UN of committing acts of sexual violence during conflict.
Guterres, fumes Katz, “refused to acknowledge Hamas’s responsibility for the grave sexual crimes that appear in the Patten report and to declare it a terrorist organization.”
“I am convinced that if the crimes of the Nazi regime came up for discussion during his tenure, he would refuse to condemn them as well if his political interests demanded that,” the minister says in a statement published by the Foreign Ministry. “Guterres has turned the UN into an extremely antisemitic and anti-Israel institution, and his time in office will be remembered as the darkest in the organization’s history.”
The ministry elaborates in the statement that Guterres ignored “the plethora of testimony and evidence that was collected and then included in the report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten.”
Patten, the United Nation’s envoy on sex crimes during conflict, last month presented a report at the UN indicating that rape and gang rape likely occurred during the October 7 Hamas onslaught against southern Israel, that “clear and convincing” evidence shows that hostages were raped while being held in Gaza, and that those currently held captive are still facing such abuse.
While Patten’s report “explicitly recognized the connection between Hamas’s October 7th attack and the horrific acts of sexual violence that were carried out in a systematic and deliberate manner,” the ministry says, “the UN Secretary-General refrained from attributing responsibility to the Hamas terrorist organization. This report constitutes a miserable and tragic testimony to the inadequacy of the functioning of the UN and its leader since October 7th, and it provides encouragement to terrorism and violence.”
Patten delivered remarks to the Security Council today in which she reiterated her findings: “Following the 7th of October attacks by Hamas, other armed groups and armed civilians, I visited Israel at the invitation of the government. My team and I confirmed that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in at least three locations, and that sexual violence has been committed against individuals held as hostages and may be ongoing.”
