Israel accused the United Nations on Monday of moving too slowly to respond to accounts that Hamas carried out widespread sexual violence against women in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., said Hamas intentionally used rape and sexual violence as weapons of war in its assault on Israel.
“This was premeditated. This was planned. This was instructed,” Erdan said at a U.N. panel organized by Israel to present what it said was evidence of the alleged crimes.
“Sadly, the very international bodies that are supposedly the defenders of all women showed that when it comes to Israelis, indifference is acceptable,” Erdan said.
Israeli authorities say they have collected extensive testimonies of rape and sex crimes from witnesses and first responders who were present during or after the atrocities took place, including accounts of mutilation and torture. Israeli police also cite images allegedly taken by Hamas militants showing the state of their female victims.
“A survivor from the Nova rave party testified, ‘Everything was an apocalypse of corpses, girls without any clothes on, without tops, without underwear, people cut in half, butchered, some were beheaded,’” Yael Reichert, a chief superintendent with the Israeli national police, said at the U.N. meeting. Reichert is taking part in the Israeli government’s probe into sex crimes carried out in the Oct. 7 attack.
