A team of United Nations experts tasked with gathering information on sexual violence linked to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel found “reasonable grounds to believe” that some victims were sexually assaulted, including rape and gang rape, according to a U.N. report released Monday.
“In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed,” a press release announcing the report’s findings said. “The mission team also found a pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations.”
The 23-page report said the team also found “clear and convincing information” that some of the women and children taken back to Gaza that day by Hamas as hostages were subjected to “rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” There were “reasonable grounds to believe,” it said, “that this violence may be ongoing.”
I’d believe it. Doesn’t excuse the 30000+ deaths.
The precisely correct take.
Netanyahu and Hamas are both awful but I really feel for the civilians on both sides that are caught up in this.
Aside from I. Oct 7th itself, are there substantial casualties to Israeli civilians?
We can ignore casualties caused by the IDF, here.
Any innocent life lost or harm caused is a substantial thing.
So that’s a no.
It’s rather disengenous to suggest “both sides” in defense of a genocide.
Was oct 7 a terrorist attack? Absolutely. But you’re acting like this war is an even match. It’s not. It is a genocide.
Sorry but I’m not the one you’ve meant to reply to. I just added a comment and have no such views you present
The situation is definitely asymmetrical and qualifies as a genocide. That’s not even something to be unsure of
No. I meant reply to you. I asked a question (about Israeli citizens outside of Oct 7), you responded with something interpreted as “both sides.”
Of course, all life is important. At the moment, and the past five months, it’s been entirely one-sided.
No. The information I added wasn’t to be interpreted in any such way, it was not charged with “both sides” or even sympathies towards fascist Israel, but thank you for elaborating on your process.
I think his point is that only one side is currently actively being slaughtered. Which makes the sympathy for both sides right now rather pointless.
There’s a lot of history of terrorism from both sides - Netanyahu is clearly more in the wrong here but Hamas are still a bunch of assholes. On both sides civilians are suffering from this war - Palestinians are certainly suffering more, but even Isreali civilians are suffering from family members lost and the ethical turpitude of living in a genocidal state when most of them do not want their state to be enacting a genocide.
I’m not saying that both sides are suffering equally, I’m saying that civilians on both sides are suffering… and their governments have no desire to lessen any of that suffering.
I think it’s insulting to say what the Palestinians are going through is comparable to the Israel population having to feel bad about being the villains.
So outside of Oct 7th itself,
Has there been substantial numbers of Israeli citizens being harmed?
Yes? Or no?
Was Oct 7th a terrorist attack? Does anyone contend otherwise. And yes, I understand how losing loved ones to terrorism is hard.
But I find it patently ridiculous that I’m expected to sympathize with a nominally democratic nation when their leaders go full fascist; when they were elected with the full knowledge that they’re fully fascist.
Sorry. But as a whole, they voted for that.
This is in direct comparison to the fact that the majority of people who are dying in Gaza, weren’t even around to vote the last time there was an election there.
Hamas was too voted into power. Do you believe Palestinians deserve their fate then?
The last election in Palestine was in 2006.
Over half the Palestinians that are alive today were not alive then. Even then; less than half the voters voted for Hamas- they used a plurality system and Hamas had ~40% of the votes.
Further, Hamas was given/allowed funding by Israeli leaders (Netanyahu in particular saw to it) specifically to destabilize any Palestinian state.
So, no. I wouldn’t describe the government in Gaza as “democratic”; when the last election in Israel was about a prior to Oct 7’s attack.
If only there were a magical form of warfare that only killed intended targets with zero collateral damage…
Though those deaths are on booth sides’ hands. Not just IDF.
If you mean the Palestinian deaths, I could’ve bought that argument when they were 2K, 5K maybe 10K. When there was some semblance of proportionality. When we are where we are, when hunger is used as a weapon for so long… I can’t personally. At this point I don’t think anything could wash the Israelis’ hands. What’s worse, the people who remain alive, the images of emaciated kids with missing limbs that will be broadcast worldwide once the media blockade loosens will keep reminding the whole world what went down. Parallels will be drawn to Nazi Germany, because it will look similar, even if the scale and details are different. I don’t think any amount of human shields arguments can recover them from this. Personally I think this shit show is gonna break Israeli society long term.
Oh and the political blowback can’t be contained to the region because there are Palestinian immigrants all over the world and many if not most have lost family and they won’t stay silent, just like Jews didn’t stay silent. You can’t argue them into accepting that loss just like you can’t argue Jews into accepting theirs. Except the numbers are way larger on one side. Expect Palestinian political activism across the West to continue and perhaps intensify as the full scale of death comes to light over the years.