Larissa Truchan, a contributor to the article, writes that the United Nations cannot allow governments and media to misinterpret its research in order to justify genocide.
According to contributor Larissa Truchan, the UN cannot allow governments and the media to misinterpret its findings to support genocide. The UN cannot allow governments and the media to misinterpret its findings to support genocide, writes contributor Larissa Truchan.
Larissa Truchan, a contributor to the article, writes that the United Nations cannot allow governments and media to misinterpret its research in order to justify genocide.
Mainstream media jumped to declare that Hamas committed widespread sexual violence on October 7, 2023, following the release of the United Nations Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict’s (SRSG-SVC) mission report on March 4, 2024.. . A deeper look at the report itself, however, reveals that its conclusions have been misconstrued and politicized.. . Prior to the mission, the report notes that the Office of the SRSG-SVC received “no verified information on conflict-related sexual violence” related to the October 7 attacks. Rather, Israel issued an invitation directly to the Office to “hear and see the testimonies and evidence of these heinous acts.”. . This invitation is peculiar, given Israel’s lack of cooperation with requests by the designated U.N. Commission of Inquiry and the U.N. Human Rights Chief to investigate the events of October 7.. . But, with the “full cooperation of the Government of Israel,” the team collected data from “a wide range of national authorities” and “security” actors, including the Israel Defense Forces. The report notes its information was sourced “in a large part” from these national institutions, which is particularly questionable given the systematic human rights abuses and propaganda campaigns committed by Israeli authorities against Palestinians and the ongoing International Court of Justice trial against Israel for the crime of genocide.. . In the more than 5,000 photos and around fifty hours of footage from the attacks that the mission team reviewed, “no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence was found.” Further, “no tangible indications of rape could be identified” in digital analyses of corpses by the mission team.. . Although Israeli authorities argued that photos and videos depicting sexual violence could have been manipulated, restricted, or removed, the team reiterated that any incriminating evidence “would have likely been discovered given the volume of the information posted online and further recirculated, making the removal of all trace of such material unlikely.”. . The report’s primary evidence for Hamas committing sexual attacks centers on “credible sources at the Nova music festival” who allegedly found the bodies of murdered women, naked from the waist down. “Credible information” was also reportedly received regarding the rape of two women “by armed elements” on the main road used to leave the festival.. . The report notes that eyewitnesses developed “an increasingly cautious and circumspect approach regarding past accounts,” particularly when recollecting assertions that had subsequently appeared in the media. This led to the retraction of some previously made statements.. . Most concerning among the data inconsistencies is the fact that during the entire mission, the team “did not meet with any survivor/victim of sexual violence from October 7.”. . The mission report, therefore, notably does not include a single firsthand account of any survivor/victim of the alleged sexual violence that transpired during the attacks, nor has any digital evidence been found to substantiate secondhand claims sourced “in a large part” from Israeli authorities.. . Given the mission’s limitations, the report definitively concludes that “[t]he mission team was unable to establish the prevalence of sexual violence.”. . The report qualifies that the mission “was not intended to be, and is not a substitute for, an investigation by relevant United Nations entities mandated for that purpose.” Further, the report explains that the “reasonable grounds to believe” standard of proof adopted by the team is the lowest U.N. standard in the verification of conflict-related sexual violence, below the standards of “clear and convincing” information and “beyond a reasonable doubt.”. . The international community should believe survivors, both Israeli and Palestinian, who come forward with accounts of sexual violence. But I am hesitant to assign this same credibility to state authorities and biased eyewitnesses often operating in the interest of politically-motivated, and at times even genocidal, agendas.. . U.S. President Joe Biden did exactly this when, during his recent State of the Union address, he stated that Israelis were “slaughtered after enduring sexual violence” on October 7.. . The United Nations must ensure that unverified and potentially biased allegations of sexual violence in U.N. office reports are not weaponized as political tools to justify violence against marginalized groups.. . This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.
