Hamas-UNRWA sex crimes and International Women’s Day Ruthie Blum
Israelis don’t need further proof of the atrocities committed on Oct. 7 by Hamas, and fellow Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah savages. Testimony from survivors and forensic pathologists abounds.As if eyewitness accounts weren’t sufficient, there are hours of audio and video recordings from cellphone, GoPro and CCTV cameras, much of which was taped and filmed by ecstatic terrorists boasting of their barbaric accomplishments.Sadly, however, aspersions abroad make every new sliver of evidence necessary. Not that the two reports released on Monday are likely to make a dent in massacre denial.Indeed, historical revisionism, of the sort surrounding the Holocaust, is already rampant—a mere five months after the genocidal assault on the Jewish state from the Gaza Strip. Still, both disclosures were particularly worthy of note due to their timing: the approach of International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8. They were also unwittingly connected.The first was the acknowledgment by the United Nations that sex crimes against women and girls were perpetrated on Oct. 7 by Hamas “and other armed groups.” This better-late-than-never realization was reached by a team of “technical experts,” led by Special Representative of the Secretary-General Pramila Patten, following a two-week mission to Israel last month.Their research provided “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations during the 7 October attacks, including rape and gang-rape in at least three locations … In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed, and at least two incidents relate to the rape of women’s corpses.”Patten and her cohorts discovered, as well, a “pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations [which] may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”The team also uncovered “convincing information” about the “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” to which the freed hostages had been subjected by their abductors—including rape and “sexualized torture”—and “reasonable grounds to believe” that all of the above “may be ongoing against those still held in captivity.”
The second substantiation of Oct. 7 sex crimes was conveyed by Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari during his televised briefing on Monday evening. But he wasn’t simply reiterating what he and the rest of the Israeli public have known all along.
No, this time, Hagari confirmed a different aspect of the travesty that has become increasingly clear: that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is in bed with Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza.The IDF spokesman played the contents of a phone call from Oct. 7 in which an UNRWA elementary-school teacher brags about abducting Israeli women. In the exchange with a fellow monster, the teacher/terrorist refers to a girl he had just nabbed as a sabaya—Arabic for “female captive” or “chattel.” It was the word used by ISIS to describe the Yazidi women they enslaved.
In other words, Hamas is ISIS, UNRWA is Hamas, and all three consider the abuse of women to be an entitlement. This has elicited barely a yawn from feminists around the world who are gearing up to mark IWD with great fanfare. (Hence, the hashtag: “#MeToo Unless You’re a Jew.”)
Israeli women on the left have been shocked at the global sisterhood’s lack of outrage with the Islamist rapists. After all, during last year’s mass demonstrations in the streets of Tel Aviv against plans by the newly formed government in Jerusalem to reform the judicial system, women in the United States, Europe and other continents leaped into immediate action.
Naturally, they were happy to join in the chorus of claims that the Jewish state was on the verge of becoming a messianic dictatorship. It was a way of bashing Israel while getting credit for publicly championing its “endangered” democracy.
Suddenly, women all over began emulating their Israeli counterparts by traipsing around during protests in costumes from the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel. The flowing, red garments—a comic cross between nuns’ habits and Islamic burkas—were as ridiculous as the message behind them.For one thing, the elitist ladies wearing them never suffered a day of discrimination in their lives. For another, the judicial reforms, which were buried along with the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre and fallen IDF soldiers, would have enhanced, not harmed, Israeli democracy.In any case, that internal dispute is the last thing on Israeli minds at the moment, with 134 hostages still languishing in the tunnels of Gaza; with women and men in uniform risking their lives every day to rescue them and take out their captors; and with thousands of evacuees from the south and north of the country unable to return home until the threat of mortar-and-missile fire is removed.IWD is an annual farce taken up by the United Nations in 1975 and devoted to progressive causes that do nothing to ameliorate the torment of truly subjugated women. Its theme this year—“Inspire Inclusion”—takes the absurdity to new heights.
There’s little chance that the world body will celebrate IWD by repenting for obfuscating, abetting and making a mockery of the sex crimes committed on and since Oct. 7. Hopefully, Israeli women will treat the date with the disdain it deserves.
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