cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16343573
Israel’s leadership is pushing the allegations that Hamas fighters raped Israeli women during the October 7 attacks for its own political objectives while the government’s ongoing refusal to allow the United Nations to conduct a full investigation into the matter threatens to hinder any evidence, advocates have warned.
This is the UN report which found strong evidence that widespread rape occurred during the October 7th attack, as well as debunking one or two particular claims that Israel was putting forth which got published in the news.
This is a press release from the UN about it.
For some reason, the couple of lies Israel told about sexual violence became the entire story, overshadowing the much larger truth about sexual violence by Hamas fighters. Most of the infamous NYT story was true.
Just because Israel is actively engaging in a genocide and are committing atrocities 10 times worse than whatever’s coming back to them doesn’t automatically mean that claims of atrocity by Hamas are automatically false.
Why wouldn’t they just let the UN investigators investigate?
I may think of a probability that they don’t want them to dig something else, but I genuinely can’t understand why throw a wrench into the gears of any international investigation that you don’t expect to turn out opposite of what you say
From the report I linked to:
“The visit which was carried out at the invitation of the Government of Israel”
“In Israel, the mission team conducted a total of 33 meetings with Israeli national institutions, including relevant line ministries such as Foreign Affairs, Welfare and Social Affairs, Health, and Justice, including the State Attorney General’s Office, as well as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet), and the Israeli National Police in charge of the investigation into the 7 October attacks (Lahav 433). The SRSG-SVC also met with the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, and the First Lady. The mission team conducted several visits to the Shura military base, the morgue to which the bodies of victims were transferred, as well as one visit to the Israeli National Center of Forensic Medicine. The mission team reviewed over 5,000 photos and around 50 hours of footage of the attacks, both provided by various state agencies, independent private sources and through an independent online review of various open sources, to identify potential instances and indications of CRSV. Further, the mission team conducted interviews according to UN standards and methodology, with a total of 34 interviewees, including with survivors and witnesses of the 7 October attacks, released hostages, first responders, health and service providers and others.”
“Regarding the occupied Palestinian Territory, the mission team visited Ramallah in the occupied West Bank to engage with the Palestinian Authority, including the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Detainees and Ex-Detainee Affairs, Women’s Affairs, Social Development, and Labor. The mission team also met with the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights, conducted meetings with several civil society representatives and non-governmental organizations. It also interviewed four recently released detainees. The purpose of the visit to the occupied West Bank was to hear the views and concerns of Palestinian counterparts and engage with them on reports of conflict-related sexual violence received by the mandate, allegedly committed by Israeli security forces and settlers.”
Section II(A) goes into a little bit of detail about the back-and-forth that developed. It sounds to me like the government of Israel wanted to be able to just present its story and have the story it presented be written down as the report, and objected to holding an actual investigation, presumably because the government of Israel had been lying about particular instances of sexual violence and wanted to be able to tell whatever story it wanted without anyone subjecting it to any standard of evidence.
I don’t think “Israel lies about things and wants to have total control over the narrative” is some kind of shocking twist at this point. But that doesn’t mean that Israel was successful in stifling the investigation (which was able to uncover particular Israeli lies as well as a whole bunch of real sexual assault).
Thank you for a recap 🙏
Israel lies about things and wants to have total control over the narrative
Yeah, that’s part of modern warfare now, I think that’s part of what some call post-truth era
