United Nations experts demanded accountability for sexual violence carried out during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Monday, arguing that mounting evidence points to the possibility of crimes against humanity.
Hamas shocked the world on Oct. 7, when the Gaza-based terrorist group infiltrated Israel’s southern communities, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking an estimated 240 hostage. There were reports of sexual violence, torture, and executions, while Israeli leaders have condemned members of the international community for not denouncing those acts forcefully enough.
“These acts constitute gross violations of international law, amounting to war crimes which, given the number of victims and the extensive premeditation and planning of the attacks, may also qualify as crimes against humanity,” the experts said.
The experts were Alice Jill Edwards, special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment and Morris Tidball-Binz, special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions.
“As armed Palestinian groups rampaged through communities in Israel bordering the Gaza strip, thousands of people were subjected to targeted and brutal attacks, the vast majority of whom were civilians,” they said. “The growing body of evidence about reported sexual violence is particularly harrowing.”
Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva welcomed the statement, saying, “The whole international community must fully recognize the brutal and terrorist nature of Hamas, and the responsibility of those who have been shielding them for years, including the Palestinian Authority.”
The United Nations agency handling Palestinian aid, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, has faced scrutiny over its alleged ties to terrorism. A U.N. Watch report found that staffers “immediately celebrated and justified” the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks that began this war.
President Joe Biden’s administration has defended UNRWA’s work.
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“The U.N. relief agency does important work,” National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters last week. “In fact, they’re doing a lot of heavy lifting right now in terms of trying to get food, water, medicine to the people of Gaza all up and down the strip. They’re doing a lot of work, and they’re doing it in harm’s way. You can’t hold them accountable for the depredations of Hamas and the way Hamas uses civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, for command and control or storage of weapons for the holding of hostages.”
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines crime against humanity as any one of the following acts — murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of population, imprisonment, torture, rape, persecution, enforced disappearances, apartheid, or the inhumane acts — as a part of systematic attacks directed against a civilian population.
