I read through the UN report. I've posted the findings below.
Note: My focus is on reposting the bits that I find are "confirmed" cases of sexual violence on both sides. Whenever it clearly stated it could not confirm something, I didn't include that case. The report also talks a lot about its limitations. I've not posted that. It also talks about kibbutz Be’eri - where it found evidence of Israel messing with the evidence to make it seem like sexual violence occurred there. I've not reproduced that section, either. It's para 62-67 in the report.
October 7th: The October 7 attacks resulted in approximately 1,200 fatalities and thousands of injuries, predominantly among civilians. People were shot, often at close range; burnt alive in their homes as they tried to hide in their safe rooms; gunned down or killed by grenades in bomb shelters where they sought refuge; and hunted down on the Nova music festival site as well as in the fields and roads adjacent to the festival ground. Other violations included sexual violence, abduction of hostages and corpses, the public display of captives, both dead and alive, the mutilation of corpses, including decapitation, and the looting and destruction of civilian property. Hamas and other armed groups abducted 253 individuals from Israel including men, women, and children, dead and alive. As of February 2024, 134 individuals remain in captivity in Gaza. Some hostages are, or are presumed to be dead.
Conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape, in at least three locations. Across the various locations of the 7 October attacks, the mission team found that several fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down were recovered – mostly women – with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head.
Nova Music Festival: At the Nova music festival and its surroundings, multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped. Murdered individuals, mostly women, were found, whose bodies were naked from their waist down – and some totally naked – tied with their hands behind their backs, many of whom were shot in the head. Bodies were also found with extensive burn damage.
Faced with the attacks, Nova music festival goers and other residents fled along various escape routes including Road 232 and the surrounding fields. Along Road 232, numerous bodies with severe injuries such as multiple gunshot wounds and destructive burn damage were found, including in and around damaged or burned vehicles, as well as piled in several bomb shelters. The mission team also found a pattern of bound naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down, in some cases tied to structures including trees and poles, along Road 232.
Kibbutz: Nova music festival goers also attempted to escape to the south and sought shelter in and around kibbutz Re’im where sexual violence occurred. This included the rape of a woman outside of a bomb shelter at the entrance of kibbutz Re’im. Within multiple kibbutz itself, the bodies of numerous women were home, bound and naked, with gunshot wounds to their heads. The recurring pattern of female victims found undressed, bound, and shot indicates that sexual violence, including potential sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, may have occurred.
Hostages: The mission team received clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment occurred against some women and children during their time in captivity and has reasonable grounds to believe that this violence may be ongoing. Based on first-hand accounts of released hostages there are reasonable grounds to believe that female hostages were also subjected to other forms of sexual violence.
West Bank: Conflict-related sexual violence committed by Israeli security forces and settlers. Cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, including various forms of sexual violence towards detainees (39% of whom are held without trial). Increased use of various forms of sexual violence, including invasive body searches, unwanted touching of intimate areas, including genitial areas, forced unveiling of women wearing Hijab; beatings; threats of rape against women and threats of rape against female family members (wives, sisters, daughters) in the case of men; inappropriate strip search and prolonged forced nudity of detainees, including during interrogation and during transfer to other detention facilities. Taking and circulating pictures of women detainees on personal phones of soldiers and investigators and depriving women of menstruation products. Sexual harassment and threats of rape, during house raids – including at night – and at checkpoints. Intimidation, including threats of rape, if conditions of detention were reported or publicly disclosed after liberation.
They did not visit Gaza.
I appreciate your reply!
I totally understand your perspective. I found this report precisely because some pro-Israel accounts/news channels began claiming the UN supported their narrative and I wanted to find out what happened.
So I read the report and my conclusion was that the report was a lot more nuanced than what those people were claiming.
I’m not familiar with Patten (but I will look up her previous work) or how this UN team figures into the broader UN system, but I know the UN in general has been perceived as an “enemy” by Israel.
So, from my perspective, seeing the report talk Palestinians in West Bank, of Israel messing with evidence, of dismissing the Israeli assertion that Hamas instructed its members to commit sexual assault and rape etc. - it was like “There’s this UN report that Israeli supporters are citing, but that report contradicts what they claim in so many parts!”
So I thought the report could be something we could use too. That’s it.
Appreciate your reply. You're right that we can and should use the content of the report to try and fight the sweeping generalizations, total fabrications, and almost universally misleading headlines it's now created. And I don't have any issue with your post.
We can leave it at that, but if you want some context about why this whole thing really irks me with a bit of inside baseball thrown in...
As for Patten I just totally lost any faith in her in that role watching her reactions to the Ukraine thing. For a former successful barrister I don't think she's remotely careful with her language until she's under considerable scrutiny as was the case then. I can't claim to know a lot about her beyond her bio before that, but that saga was embarrassing and even some current and former NGO people I know thought so.
More broadly, it's a problem I have with a lot of these UN Special Representatives for so-and-so in general, when they're not attached to actual investigative or legal units. They're basically just there to do 'advocacy' for issues, which means they're often installed or supported by nations with particular agendas. Now, I've worked with advocacy groups in the past like Amnesty and they have a whole set of its own problems, but at least they are explicitly that - advocacy groups, that are often very transparent about the fact that they're often only collecting reports and news stories about related issues on the ground.
The problem with UN reps doing this kind of advocacy is that they often don't make these kinds of distinctions and practices clear, especially compared to say judicial or criminal investigation units that do have actual powers to a greater degree. Partly because it's a profile game, with more lucrative private and NGO sector gigs and sometimes greater UN roles being helped by visibility. So it can be useful for special representatives to play politics, let their powers or authority seem larger than they are, or just chase media coverage. They often do good work too, but it can get real murky real quick, especially when most people have no idea what UN titles mean or how they work (and I confess to only having a basic understanding compared to people I used to work with who actually dealt with UN committees etc years ago).
Patten's willingness to do that with the 'Russian Viagra' story the other year was a particularly bad example of that as far as I'm concerned. Especially when a simple Google search would have revealed it was a word for word rehash of debunked claims against Libya, originating from the same source - the US. It wasn't until she was tricked into a hostile interview that she began adding caveats and context to the claims, making the excuse that she's (paraphrasing) "just an advocate who sits at a desk in New York and gets told things without a mandate to see what's true".
When news of this report came out before it did, and I started reading the coverage of aforementioned Twitter accounts / Intercept / Electronic Intifada etc, and then recognised her name I absolutely smelt a rat even more strongly.
Personally, the whole thing reeks of a set-up at best and complicit theatre with Israel & the US at worst. I think they (Patten, her office at the UN) knew exactly how little access they'd have, how little Israel would cooperate, and how slanted what they were allowed to see would be.
They also knew where the calls to investigate this were coming from; the same groups who needed a new way to launder this weaponised and industrialised mass rape story that was falling apart.
They allowed these groups and Israeli media to make a big show of their presence there, speaking with them etc, even as said groups actually stonewalled or mislead the UN reps on the evidence.
Furthermore, while the report does acknowledge the lack of evidence for some claims, counter claims, and findings of Israeli abuses too I still have issues with a lot of the language in the report and varies contextual omissions that allow it to more easily be misquoted or represented as has happened all over.
And then of course there's the fact that everyone (in the predominantly Israel-friendly media orgs) seemed to have it or many of thr details well in advance of its release, allowing those media outlets to prime the public for what it would say - even if it didn't - before selectively reporting what it actually did only where it supports the Israeli narrative afterwards.
The whole thing seems like a stitch up that could and should have been avoided not just for my pro-Palestine interests, but credibility of the UN on this subject too. Even if it wasn't deliberate collusion, regardless of actual content of the report, the NYT/US/Israel lobby got exactly what they wanted out of it and that pisses me off no end.
Especially since it's yet another Israeli propaganda tactic we've seen before, encouraging everyone to spend all the oxygen debating and dismantling this and the media the excuse to just run with it, instead of the blatant, more important and widespread issues right in front of our faces - starvation, using aid as bait for massacres, forcing the Gaza population up against the sea and still attacking them, and of course the conferences (coming to US & Canadian cities this month for comrades over there!) selling property in Gaza that Israel had obliterated or seized. It happened with the hospital strike, it happened with the death statistics, it happened with UNRWA, and so on and so on.
Mostly I'm just so very, very tired, but it's not like I can or will ever stop pushing back on this shit.
I really appreciate this reply and the entire conversation we’ve had so far!
I am one of the people who doesn’t know a lot about the differences between various UN orgs etc. and it’s been very informative to learn - for eg how the Special Representatives are/have been used. It will give me a pause next time I come across them, and not confuse them with actual UN bodies with investigative or legislative powers, or act like they are at the same tier as them.
The picture you’ve painted regarding this one is very compelling, too. I mean, they did have me fooled (despite having read the report - where they made it clear they don’t have the mandate to investigate).
I know the UN is not a monolith, but when you use one name to describe the entire org, with all the different bodies in it, it becomes hard to differentiate. And you think “the UN which has recently been good on the Palestine issue (at least optically) has published this report” rather than thinking deeply about the inner struggles within the UN and which side might be pushing for this report to be framed this way, and given access to NYT and others in advance etc.
I guess it’s sad when they use the UN, which at least to me still has some credibility - I believe there are good people there who try to do good, it’s better the UN exists than it doesn’t - to help cover their genocide.
And you’re absolutely right about this taking away oxygen from that far more important issue. Israel is literally committing apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. It is actively building illegal settlements in West Bank and, from what I’ve seen, even reestablishing them in Gaza.
Yeah, I don’t know what else to say.
I wouldn't let it sour you too much on the whole of the UN. I think we all know it's a mixed bag, full of politics, and it's powers are pretty much limited and influenced by the permanent members of the security council. But it's also often better than the alternative (a totally US/NATO led international body) and plenty of people for good work there, including special representatives in various advocacy positions. But they also all come from somewhere and I don't necessarily mean countries; they have their own educations, connections, former careers, biases etc. And I don't think it's bad practice that if you get the vibe that something is fishy, it's worth looking at their resume at least you know? They have been decent on Palestine overall, and punished for it (although nothing like the Palestinians on the ground), but just like that single non-Israeli holdout judge on the ICJ decision whose legal opinion I went through in a megathread a while back, there's still always a lot of weird politicking and behind the scenes stuff. It's just the nature of the thing.