Yet those atrocities have received little scrutiny
Katherine Rosman and Lisa Lerer in the Times:
The body of one woman had “nails and different objects in her female organs.” In another house, a person’s genitals were so mutilated that “we couldn’t identify if it was a man or a woman.”
Simcha Greinman, a volunteer who helped collect the remains of victims of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel, took long pauses as he spoke those words on Monday at an event at the United Nations.
One can imagine why.
Shari Mendes, a member of an Israeli military reserve unit tasked with preparing the bodies of fallen female soldiers for burial, said her team saw several who were killed on Oct. 7 “who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or were shot in the breast.” Others had mutilated faces, or multiple gunshots to their heads.
Since the Oct. 7 attack, during which more than 1,200 people were killed and some 240 people were kidnapped, Israeli officials have accused the terrorists of also committing widespread sexual violence — rape and sexual mutilation — particularly against women.
Yet those atrocities have received little scrutiny from human rights groups, or the news media, amid the larger war between Israel and Hamas — and until a few days ago, they had not been specifically mentioned or condemned by UN Women, the United Nations’ women’s rights agency, which has regularly spoken out about the plight of Palestinian women and girls.
Does the UN hate Jewish women?
Israelis and many Jews around the world say they feel abandoned by an international social justice community — women’s groups, human rights groups, liberal celebrities, among others — whose causes they have supported in crises around the world.
…
Hamas has denied that its fighters committed sex crimes, which it said would violate Islamic principles.
Oh really. The way it “violates Islamic principles” to stone women to death for being raped? The way it “violates Islamic principles” to force women to wear bags from head to foot with only a thick woven grill to peer through when outside? The way it “violates Islamic principles” to keep gils out of school? No brutality to women violates “Islamic principles”; those principles are all about treating women like rebellious seditious livestock.
But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head.
And the UN has been studiously looking the other way.
The United Nations, and UN Women in particular, have become a primary focus — though hardly the only one — of mounting anger for their silence. Secretary General António Guterres immediately condemned the Hamas massacre, but not until late November did he issue a statement that the related sex crimes specifically must be “vigorously investigated and prosecuted.”
Dr. Cochav Elkayam Levy, an Israeli law professor and founder of a commission on Oct. 7 crimes against women and children, said that on Nov. 1, she sent a letter to UN Women, signed by dozens of scholars, calling for an “urgent and unequivocal condemnation of the massacre committed by Hamas,” including the use of rape as a tool of war. “They didn’t even respond,” she said.
Some women are more equal than others.
The evil is beyond understanding. I’m afraid even to think about it – it must be absolute hell for the surviving relatives, and I cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like for the victims.
And yet we are supposed to believe that both sides are as bad as one another?
The descriptions of the brutality towards these Jewish women and girls makes me realize how much terror that the remaining hostages must live with every day, having witnessed what Hamas did and realizing that this could befall them at any time.
I’ve read some of the eyewitness, first responder, and morgue staff. It left me feeling ill and hollow. I don’t recommend it as an experience unless you’re feeling mentally tough. Some of the imagery has come back to me repeatedly over the last week or so *. If even a part of what has been reported by those witnesses is true (and I have zero reason to disbelieve it), it makes the equivocation, moral blindness, and outright victim blaming inexcusable and worthy of condemnation.
One can condemn crimes by both Hamas and the IDF, just as one can support the security and existence of Israel and the need for a resolution to giving Palestinians a homeland. It doesn’t have to be a zero sum game.
More and more I feel politically homeless. I deeply value the benefits of a liberal democracy and a rules based world order. I also value facts, evidence and reality based decision making, and treating as many people as possible with dignity and respect. All of which seems to be in the process of being abandoned by both the left and the right to the great glee of all those who see opportunity in burning it all down.
* Some of the social media accounts I follow for information and analysis of the Ukraine war are run by people with an interest in Middle East conflicts as well. One of those has said they have seen video and photographic evidence that can be found online. Their advice was not to go looking for it, that it was some of the most graphic and horrific they’d ever seen and impacted them badly.
As for violating Islamic principles, rape is said to violate Christian principles, too, but it has been used as a tool of war (and conversion of lesbians) for a long time. Not to mention the rapes committed by the priests, pastors, rabbis, imams, and others of the women, girls, and boys in their congregations, people who trust them enough for them to get easy access.
Violating Islamic principles isn’t an argument against the actual evidence; it’s avoidance, dismissal, not giving a damn.
You’ve got all the justification you need from the Bible for it (particularly in the parts of it the Christians stole from the current Israelis mythical ancestors), so I don’t doubt it can be found in the Qur’an (though I’ve not cracked open my copy).
But yes the UN does hate Jewish women; there’s far more savage nations amongst its membership than western democracies or China; it’s like the US Senate.
BKiSA, from the things we’ve been seeing lately, it’s obvious that parts of the UN hate women, not just Jewish women. They just hate Jewish women more.
And having read the Bible from cover to cover, I agree with you on that. I also have not read my copy of the Quran – or the Book of Mormon. I may pick up the latter next time I have insomnia; Mark Twain called it chloroform in print.
In fairness the big reason they’re so keen on hating Jews is because the Mohammedans see them as holding their magic rock hostage, the rest is just par for the course.