Following weeks of silence by women's organizations and international bodies, UN secretary-general says issue needs to be 'vigorously investigated'; Israel's UN envoy: 'When it comes to Israeli women, sexual violence that has been proven and determined by state authorities still needs to be investi...
Following weeks of silence by women's organizations and international bodies, UN secretary-general says issue needs to be 'vigorously investigated'; Israel's UN envoy: 'When it comes to Israeli women, sexual violence that has been proven and determined by state authorities still needs to be investigated'
Against the backdrop of widespread anger in Israel over the silence of women's organizations and international bodies regarding the severe sexual violence used by Hamas terrorists against women in the attack on October 7, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced Thursday that these actions must be thoroughly investigated.
“There are numerous accounts of sexual violence during the abhorrent acts of terror by Hamas on 7 October that must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted,” Guterres wrote on the X platform
The whataboutism is valid, because most of the "anti Hamas" crowd would excuse these acts as self defense if they were done by the other Terrorist organization.
I'm assuming you aren't aware of the UN having investigated Israeli war crimes in 2009 which was highly regarded by the Middle Eastern delegates specifically for its having investigated and reported on the war crimes of both sides of the conflict.
You might also be unaware that the investigation was originally chartered to only look at and investigate Israeli war crimes, the very opposite of what you seem to think is the UN's position in their investigations. As the delegate to the HRC from Lebanon put it (regarding the involvement of the lead investigator who had also been the UN's lead prosecutor of war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rawanda):
He rejected the first mandate of the Human Rights Council for the Fact-Finding Mission because it called for investigation of violations committed only by Israel. He did not accept that assignment until his request to expand the mandate to include all violations of human rights and international humanitarian law which were committed in the context of the military operations conducted in Gaza was granted.
Unless the UN has changed dramatically in the past decade, they'll definitely be investigating Israeli war crimes.
Asking for accountability when war crimes and a genocide is being overlooked isn’t “whataboutism”. Maybe you’d know that if you knew what the term actually meant.
I don't think this is whataboutism, and actually, even if it is, you're using it to deflect a good point. All things that could be considered 'war crimes' should be investigated for all parties.
It's called being fair, and it's a reasonable position.
Most people commenting seem not to know that the UN a little over a decade ago did in fact investigate both sides and reported on war crimes from both Hamas and Israel.
So comments like "when will the UN investigate Israeli war crimes" have an answer of both "in 2009" and "given historical precedent, yeah they likely will investigate both."
In fact, the 2009 investigation was initially only chartered to look at Israeli war crimes before being broadened to look at all crimes from any side of the conflict.
The announcement of investigating sexual violence in a given attack isn't occurring in a bubble, even if users jumping in to represent "their side" aren't aware of the broader context before commenting.
The sexual violence experienced by Palestinian prisoners charged with no crime and held indefinitely in Israeli prisons? The babies who were left to die as the IDF forced doctors to leave?
Well, that's just business as usual. No reason to investigate that. The UN is fucking worthless.