‘Rape’ by Hamas decried in UN march
UNITED NATIONS—Dozens of Jewish women and their supporters marched in front of UN headquarters in New York on Monday to decry Hamas taking hostage dozens of women and children and to highlight horrific sexual violence which they said was committed by the Palestinian militants during the brutal Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
Chanting “shame on UN,” demonstrators sported banners reading “rape is rape” and “#Me too, unless you’re a Jew” echoing the #MeToo movement which promotes awareness against sexual abuse, sexual harassment and a rape culture.
Speakers attacked the UN for inaction over the abuse and mistreatment of Israeli women.
Last week, UN Women said it was “alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities” during the attacks on southern Israel.
Hamas rejected on Monday accusations of rape and sexual violence by Palestinian militants, dismissing them as “unfounded lies.”
Outside the UN on Monday, demonstrator Hillary Larson said, “I call it the ‘United Nothing’… why do we have to be here to tell the UN to protect people?”
“First they should condemn (Hamas) 100 percent … then demand that Hamas release hostages, innocent people taken from their homes,” the 64-year-old pediatric nurse from New York added.
Visa not renewed
UN representatives have faced criticism from Israeli officials since the start of the conflict, and last week Israel notified it that the humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories would not have her visa renewed.
Protesters among the roughly 150-strong crowd waved Israel’s flag and chanted “release the hostages”.
Hamas militants burst through Gaza’s militarized border into Israel on Oct. 7 and killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while also taking around 240 hostages, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel responded with an air and ground campaign.
The Hamas-controlled health ministry says more than 15,899 people have been killed in Gaza, about 70 percent of them women and children—a death toll that has sparked global alarm and demonstrations.
“We’re here supporting Israeli women who were brutally raped. They deserve the support of other women. Any other attack on women would be treated as a crime,” former lawmaker Carolyn Maloney, who spoke at Monday’s march, told AFP.
A line of 20 women smeared with synthetic blood, some wearing just their underwear, formed a line at the front of the demonstration to draw attention to violence against women by Hamas.
Israeli police say they have been investigating evidence of sexual violence, ranging from alleged gang rape to postmortem mutilation.
Hamas has charged that the allegations of sexual abuse were part of “Zionist campaigns which promote unfounded lies and allegations to demonize the Palestinian resistance.”
‘Shocking testimonies’
The Islamist group dismissed claims by women and advocacy groups as part of “a series” of Israeli “lies” since the start of the war.
Earlier, Hamas denied having tunnels under hospitals. The Israeli military later found what it said were Hamas tunnels under Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical center.
In Israel, senior police officer Shelly Harush told lawmakers last week that investigators had collected “more than 1,500 shocking and difficult testimonies” from witnesses, medics and pathologists.
Harush spoke of “girls stripped bare above the waist and below,” and of a grisly witness account of the gang rape, mutilation and murder of a young woman.
Another witness she cited spoke of wounds to the “genitals, abdomen, legs and buttocks,” with some having their “breasts cut off” or sustaining “gunshot wounds.”
First responders described encountering bodies “with their hands cuffed behind their backs, a woman’s corpse bleeding from the genital area.”
Cochav Elkayam-Levy, head of an inquiry on the Hamas attacks, had said that “the great majority of the victims of rape and other sexual attacks on Oct. 7 were killed and will never be able to testify.” —AFP
