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.”

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1813·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        126·
        9 months ago

        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.

        • Grimy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          82·
          9 months ago

          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.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
          912·
          9 months ago

          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.

          • Miaou@jlai.luEnglish
            35·
            9 months ago

            Hamas was too voted into power. Do you believe Palestinians deserve their fate then?

            • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
              42·
              9 months ago

              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.

      • boredtortoise@lemm.eeEnglish
        104·
        9 months ago

        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

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
          611·
          9 months ago

          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.

          • boredtortoise@lemm.eeEnglish
            72·
            9 months ago

            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.

            • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldEnglish
              56·
              9 months ago

              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.

              • boredtortoise@lemm.eeEnglish
                42·
                9 months ago

                Yes. Maybe they just hopped too quickly to conclusions that sympathies were the topic