Amnesty has been silent on October 7 sexual assaults, while HRW doesn't quite believe them

It's been over five months since the horrific October 7 attacks. The two leading human rights organizations, In those five months, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have not admitted or condemned any reports of rape or sexual assault. 

Amnesty hasn't said a single word on the topic. 

It wrote about the October 7 attacks on the day itself, condemning both Hamas and Israel equally, and saying that the "root causes" of the "escalation" were all from Israel.

Five days later, it issued its only report on the massacre so far which again mentioned "Israeli war crimes" nearly as prominently as the details of the Hamas attack. 

Almost unbelievably, at the end of that sole report saying Haams committed war crimes,, Amnesty adds an italicized postscript to assure readers - don't worry, we haven't become pro-Israel, and we'll be publishing lots of anti-Israel reports to come:

Amnesty International is an impartial human rights organization and seeks to ensure that all parties to an armed conflict comply with international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Accordingly, in future briefings, Amnesty International will be investigating Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip to determine whether it is complying with the rules of international humanitarian law, including by taking necessary precautions to minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects and refraining from unlawful attacks and from collective punishment of the civilian population, as required under international law. Amnesty International will also continue to monitor the activities of Hamas and Palestinian armed groups. 

I could not find this kind of caveat at the end of any other Amnesty report among thousands on its site.

That was over 150 days ago, and we have not heard a word since then on these further "investigations" they promised in October on Hamas.  Meanwhile, Amnesty has published dozens of press releases condemning Israel. 

Not once has it even hinted that it is researching rapes and sexual assaults by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7.

Human Rights Watch did mention the reports of sexual assault, peripherally, in an interview with an HRW researcher who visited Israel for three weeks following the attacks about gathering evidence. That report says:

There have been harrowing reports of sexual violence and other forms of gender-based violence committed during the attacks. Were you able to verify those?

It’s vitally important to investigate sexual violence, and in doing so, we also need to work carefully to avoid causing further harm. Around the world, Human Rights Watch adopts an approach that centers on the needs and rights of survivors, witnesses, and the families of victims, and attempts as best we can to avoid retraumatization. That’s one of the complexities we deal with in all of our work, and it is especially critical when documenting sexual violence.

We have reviewed statements from people who say they witnessed cases of rape and other forms of gender-based violence. And some first responders we spoke to described seeing women’s bodies in conditions or circumstances that could be consistent with sexual violence.

However, there is a lack of forensic evidence that makes it much harder to know the scale and nature of the abuses. We have not interviewed anyone who is a survivor of sexual violence committed during the attacks on October 7.

We are still monitoring and assessing any information that’s being reported. There may be sexual violence victims who were killed, and, as it is often the case with sexual violence, survivors who may not be ready or may have chosen not to divulge information about their experiences for reasons that could include trauma and stigma. In the past month, news media have published interviews in which several survivors of the attacks described witnessing rape. A careful, independent, survivor-centered, and credible investigation of all reports of sexual violence – and other forms of gender-based and other violence – on October 7 is urgently needed. Sexual and gender-based violence during armed conflict are war crimes.

In short, HRW is discounting all the evidence that exists - including a New York Times report published a month before this interview and tons of evidence from rescue workers and pathologists - and saying that it has not verified the information. 

If you would get all your news from Amnesty and HRW, you would barely know that anything happened on October 7, and at any rate, whatever happened was clearly trivial compared to what Israel did before and afterwards. And you would think that any reports of sexual assault are either lies or unverified rumors. 

---

---

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!