The U.N. team said it also received information from institutional and civil society sources and direct interviews, about "sexual violence against Palestinian men and women in detention settings, during house raids and at checkpoints" after Oct. 7. The detention centers were in Israel.
The U.N. team said it raised the allegations with the Israeli Ministry of Justice and Military Advocate General, which said no complaints of sexual violence against members of the Israeli Defense Forces had been received.
One side is a literal terrorist group and the other is supposed to be the beacon of freedom and western values...
But Israel denies it ever happens and not only doesn't investigate reports, they don't actually record them anywhere.
It's state sponsored and approved.
Which explains why the people who have been their victims for generations sink to the same level as their oppressors.
We know that the initial allegations from NYT were completely false and made up. And that there is zero forensic evidence. This just seems like another PR stunt from israel.
Edit: New breaking points video detailing how broken this report is. A big takeaway is this quote from the UN "investigator"herself:
This is completely, utterly uncontroversial, except by a subset of the extreme far left at war with reality. Let's see where the downvote ratio ends up.
What's controversial is the depiction of Palestinians as rapists and outlining a systemic, racial, or cultural issue of rape within Arab populations, then pointing to the few instances it does occur as proof for a racist point of view.
Both parties are guilty of rape and sexual assault. None of that is okay. However only one is being racially profiled as having an innate proclivity for rape.
It's hard to believe when israel lies about everything constantly. Once people saw how the 40 babies rumor was being spread by israel, it's normal to be critical of information.
I encourage you to look into how an Israeli soldier saying "1 decapitated, 40 burned" got turned into "40 decapitated" by a game of telephone. The Israeli government never claimed that, and clarified when they got asked by journalists.
That's not really the point here. If you haven't noticed, recently a lot of people on Lemmy have been suggesting that the reports of rape on Oct 7th were made up or propaganda.
The UN saying that it likely happened is important to counter that propaganda.
Similar to if reports of shooting civilians by IDF were being denied but then validated by 3rd party investigators, rational people should rightfully want to see that spread to counter misleading propaganda.
So the conclusion is that there are rape happening on both sides in a war. That is somewhat unsurprising considering they hate each other and are distinctly different groups of people. Why is it being tolerated by the organisations involved? Probably they are not prioritizing the issue. Why would they deny that it is happening? Probably for PR reasons. They prefer dealing with it internally, at a later date, when it is convenient.
This is like the third time that we're hearing this bullshit. The NYT article did every possible thing they could to find any "evidence" up to the point that they just started making things up.
From the word "likely" it's clear that there is once again no real evidence, just some IDF mouthpieces that got their stories in order.
Where is the UN report by the way? It is not linked in this article which is very poorly sourced.
DNA evidence, fingerprints, blood, etc are all "credible circumstantial information". It's a common category of evidence, encompassing pretty much everything except direct testimony.
At the Nova music festival and its surroundings, there are reasonable grounds to believe
that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or
gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped. Credible sources described finding 5
murdered individuals, mostly women, whose bodies were naked from their waist down – and
some totally naked – tied with their hands behind their backs, many of whom were shot in the
head. On Road 232, credible information based on witness accounts describe an incident of the
rape of two women by armed elements. Other reported instances of rape could not be verified in
the time allotted. The mission team also found a pattern of bound naked or partially naked bodies
from the waist down, in some cases tied to structures including trees and poles, along Road 232.
In kibbutz Re’im, the mission team further verified an incident of the rape of a woman outside of
a bomb shelter and heard of other allegations of rape that could not yet be verified.