Israel urged the UN Wednesday to act on an independent report accusing Hamas of using sexual violence as a "genocidal" weapon of war during its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The United Nations has long faced Israeli criticism for reacting too slowly to Israeli accusations of rape and sexual violence during the Palestinian Islamist movement's attack that sparked the Gaza war.
"It took far too long for the UN to even acknowledge that such violence took place," Israeli ambassador Daniel Meron told reporters at the UN in Geneva.
"Conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence was used against Israelis ... in a brutal and calculated way, and yet the United Nations has not acted."
Meron spoke with members of the Dinah Project, an independent Israeli group of legal experts who released a report this week saying that "sexual violence was widespread and systematic" on October 7 in at least six locations.
Hamas, it said, "used sexual violence as a tactical weapon, as part of a genocidal scheme and with the goal of terrorising and dehumanising Israeli society."
- 'Silenced' -
Dinah project director Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, speaking to a briefing hosted by the UN correspondents' association ACANU, described the use of sexual violence in conflict as "the perfect crime", since many victims are killed and thereby "silenced".
The group said it had testimony from witnesses, first responders, security forces and mortuary attendants, as well as visual and audio evidence to document at least 15 sexual assault cases on October 7.
Those included "rapes and gang rapes and mutilations of sexual organs and executions after the assault", said project member Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a law professor at Bar-Ilan University who has previously worked as an independent UN rights expert.
Testimonies and photographs indicated a "pattern where bodies, mostly of women, were found naked or half naked in recurring positions, some cuffed to trees or poles with shots into their genitalia," she said.
The militant group has categorically denied allegations of using sexual violence.
- 'Failure' -
Halperin-Kaddari voiced outrage at the relative "silence" of the international community in condemning the alleged assaults, lamenting "a total failure of the international human rights system".
She said the aim was to present the report at UN headquarters in New York and to UN chief Antonio Guterres. Meron said the UN should take up the findings at "the highest level".
Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza, where Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 57,680 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN considers the figures reliable.
Hamas's attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Of the 251 hostages taken by Palestinian militants, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
