The Israeli government insists that Hamas formally sanctioned sexual assault on October 7, 2023. But investigators say the evidence does not stand up to scrutiny. Catherine Philp and Gabrielle Weiniger report on eight months of claim and counter-claim
Talk of rape began circulating almost before the massacres themselves were over. Much of it came from what Patten would later call “non-professionals” who supplied “inaccurate and unreliable forensic interpretations” of what they found, creating an instant but flawed narrative about what had taken place.
Meanwhile, the political establishment has opened a fresh battle with the UN over what the Patten report didn’t say: that sexual violence was beyond reasonable doubt, systematic, widespread and ordered and perpetrated by Hamas. Israeli advocates for the female survivors are now warning that the country’s refusal to co-operate with a full and legal investigation, which the carefully worded report was not, threatens the prospect of ever finding out the full truth about the sexual violence of October 7 and delivering justice for its victims.
It was not a legal investigation, Patten explained, as Israel had not allowed one: that mandate could only be fulfilled by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which Israel has refused to work with since its inception. She hoped that would change.
Patten made it clear there was sufficient evidence of acts of sexual violence to merit full and proper investigation and expressed her shock at the brutality of the violence. The report also confirmed Israeli authorities were unable to provide much of the evidence that political leaders had insisted existed. In all the Hamas video footage Patten’s team had watched and all the photographs they had seen, there were no depictions of rape. We hired a leading Israeli dark-web researcher to look for evidence of those images, including footage deleted from public sources. None could be found.
Antonio Gueterres, the head of the UN certainly doesn’t believe the things you are saying.
Cool! I love the “Never Play Defense” game, and would be happy to bring some other random assertion into the mix to counterbalance your random new assertion. But, I have exhausted the amount of effort I want to expend on this right now. Another day, sure; feel free to reach out any time.
You keep bringing up the same stale points debunked a million times in every thread. Even in the post it’s mentioned the Patten report is not a proper investigation.
You’re the one that doesn’t want to defend the fact that the UN doesn’t acknowledge the Patten report as evidence.
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If you are really hankering that badly to continue the pointless back-and-forth, I should be able to provide you with something, just not right now. I will get back to you though. I have an idea that I think can keep you busy for more or less as much time as you want to spend on it.
We’re in an article that spent money on a dark web expert to dig up any rape evidence and still didn’t find any.
If only those fools from the UN team had spent their money on that, instead of a team of experts in sexual assault who then toured the affected areas and interviewed all those people and reviewed forensic evidence. The answers were on the dark web the whole time. Everyone knows the first thing you learn in Hamas is how to use Tor Browser. Now that you say it that way, it’s completely obvious.
Which forensic rape evidence was found? You’re bringing it up so surely you mean to imply there’s forensic evidence of rape in the UN report?
Why would I need to tell you? You’ve read the report, you said, so you would know what is and isn’t in it.
A sarcastic response occurred to me, so I let it out, but I’m not interested in continuing the lengthy dishonest exchange where you cosplay as someone who’s “winning” (for reasons I still don’t really understand.) The interaction is done from my side.
There’s a new UN report out. Some interesting reading material for you maybe.
But they did find rape evidence… of israel raping Palestinians.