The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children published its report on Hamas's rapes today (Tuesday), titled 'Silenced No More: The Untold Atrocities of October 7th and Against Hostages in Captivity.'
The 300-page report is based on testimony from over 430 survivors, witnesses, and medical workers who treated victims, and over 1,800 hours worth of video and photographic evidence, much of which was shot by the Hamas terrorists who recorded their crimes.
Professor Anne Bayefsky, President of Human Rights Voices and Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, spoke with Arutz Sheva - Israel National News about the significance of the report given the efforts to downplay or deny Hamas's crimes at the United Nations.
"It is vital to document the hideous Palestinian atrocities committed on October 7th and perpetrated against the hostages for far longer," Professor Bayefsky stated. "As the report reconfirms, horrific sexual violence of men, women, and children committed by Palestinians against Jews - because they are Jews - was not the workings of a few sick minds. It was a central element of the core purpose of Palestinian terrorists to shatter the well-being of Israeli society and harm Jews everywhere."
She commented that "the individuals who actually conducted the painstaking work of reading, listening, collecting, and observing these deeply disturbing facts should be commended for their willingness to undertake such a difficult task."
Addressing the actions of UN officials, she said: "At the same time, the next step needs to take into account not only October 7th denial, but also October 7th inversion. Hard at work through the United Nations and the International Criminal Court are those who invent Israeli criminality to mirror actual Palestinian crimes. Accountability for the liars must accompany accountability for the perverts. When some UN sources could no longer avoid the grotesque evidence of Palestinian sexual violence, they turned around and concocted blood libels against Israelis that have fueled antisemitism in Israel and across the globe."
Prof. Bayefsky also stated that "accountability for the ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, for the UN Commission of Inquiry members like Navi Pillay and Chris Sidoti, for UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, is a necessary corollary of accountability for Palestinian sexual deviants. The latter operated in an international environment where they knew they could count on the former for political and 'legal' cover. The massive UN PR campaign that followed October 7th to redirect attention, change the subject, erect a moral equivalence between Israeli victims and Palestinian perps and deny Israelis the right to self-defense, cannot and must not be ignored by researchers and reporters looking for friends where they don’t exist."
"For instance, 'concerning rape,' the UN Commission of Inquiry concluded: 'the Commission…has not been able to independently verify such allegations' and 'the Commission was also unable to verify reports of sexualized torture and genital mutilation,'" she noted. "These UN 'experts' couldn’t verify October 7th atrocities that Palestinian terrorists themselves deliberately recorded and shared online with the world."
"So we need to remember that occasional, isolated, and reluctant admissions of Palestinian wrongdoing is not a favor, especially from the same UN sources waging a multifaceted war against the Jewish state and the Jewish people," Prof. Bayefsky concluded.