Pro-Israel spin and complicit mainstream media claim UN report upheld Israel’s claims – it didn’t and even the UN’s political collusion collapses under scrutiny

Israel’s supporters, compliant ‘mainstream’ media and a host of professional and unpaid amplifier accounts have spent the past few days trumpeting the supposed ‘confirmation’ by the United Nations of Israel’s claims of rapes, mutilations and sexual violence by Hamas during the 7 October raid.

In reality, while they claimed ‘evidence’ was ‘clear and convincing’ of sexual violence ‘committed against captives’, this evidence appears to be purely the claims of captives, since there was no mention of – and no realistic possibility of collecting – forensic evidence from the period and locations of captivity.

Such claims are, of course, at odds with the testimony of female captives that they were treated well and even ‘like queens’. And Pramila Patten added her finding that even if such violence was occurring, it in fact delegitimises Israel’s use of violence, which is preventing the return of captives.

Patten then claimed there were ‘reasonable grounds’ to think that sexual violence took place at the Nova rave and on the road back toward Gaza – already demonstrably farcical when Israeli helicopter gunships are well known to have been firing constantly and repeatedly at anything that moved. And Patten even linked her claim of reasonableness to the mass killing and burning of bodies – killings and burnings which have been firmly linked to the mass chain-gun and missile ‘friendly fire’ of Israeli helicopters known to have fired indiscriminately at Israeli and Palestinian alike under the ‘Hannibal directive‘.

So extensive was this ‘friendly fire’ that hundreds of Palestinian bodies were originally misidentified by Israel as Israelis, proving that the fire came from Israeli sources. In fact, the Israeli military knew – and has admitted to Israeli media – that it killed an ‘immense’ number of its own people on the day of the raid. Patten either ignored, or was ignorant of, this admission.

With regard to the day of the raid, the UN panel said that of all Israel’s claims, three were positively disproven – and all the rest were unverified, with many based on the ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unreliable’ claims of a group of people who didn’t know what they were talking about. This was not hinted at by the UN panel, but stated flatly and unequivocally – with the two UN women concluding that they had been unable to verify any sexual violence:

And Pramila Patten went on to admit that:

• there was no forensic evidence of rape – or ‘very very little’, with no specification of any evidence that was found
• there was no evidence of ‘systematic’ sexual violence, despite a team of scientists taking part in the UN visit
• she had not tied any sexual violence anywhere to Hamas or any group

Despite this, Israel’s mouthpieces and propagandists have stridently insisted the opposite of the women’s findings, including the political padding and leaving out the inconvenient – but very clearly expressed – reality of what Patten and her colleague said they found, or more accurately did not find.

As with every other claim by Israel so far since its genocide in Gaza began, the claim to have been vindicated by the UN findings falls apart under scrutiny. In contrast, rape, torture and sexual violence toward Palestinian women by Israeli troops and security personnel is credible and widespread.

But even if Israel’s claims didn’t collapse under scrutiny, they would be no excuse for the genocide Israel is committing in Gaza – and Patten and her colleague were absolutely clear about that.

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