This post deals with the accounts of sexual violence in the Hamas-led assault on Southern Israel on October 7, 2023. It thus necessarily includes references to rape, homicide, and crimes of extreme violence.
A United Nations investigative team has now
submitted a
report, finding credible evidence the Hamas fighters committed acts of sexual violence, both during the initial assault on southern Israel on October 7, and also against those they held hostage.
In all the things people can say, and have an obligation to say about this report, a number of things stand out. Start with the obvious: "credible evidence" does not mean certainty. If subsequent investigation should disprove these allegations unfounded, we should all celebrate: any woman not suffering rape, not violated in life or death, is good news. But that is also to say there is no excuse, whatever, for this kind of violence. Nor, now, do we have any excuse for ignoring or dismissing the possibility Hamas fighters, or people associated with them, did commit these atrocities.
We can't justify the violation of Israeli women by Hamas by pointing to claims, also under investigation, that Israeli soldiers have assaulted and violated Palestinians. Nor do we have to justify, or ignore, claims about brutality by Hamas to uphold Palestinian rights. The children of Gaza are innocent, and their suffering is unjust. No actions of Hamas cancel or reduce the rights of Palestinians who had no hand and no say in them.