Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at international silence regarding Hamas’s rape and sexual mutilation of the women it killed during its October 7 infiltration into Southern Israel.“Were you quiet because we were talking about Jewish women?” Netanyahu asked during a Hebrew language press conference.
'Where the hell are you?'
In English, he asked the international community, “Where the hell are you?”
“I say to the women’s rights organizations, to the human rights organizations. You have heard of the rape of the Israeli women, horrible atrocities, and sexual mutilations” at Hamas’s hands?
“I expect all civilized leaders, governments, nations to speak up against this atrocity,” Netanyahu said.
He specifically called out the United Nations which condemned the sexual violence only last week after a protracted campaign by Israel and activist groups.
Biden cites survivors, witnesses
US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that Hamas had repeatedly raped women and mutilated their bodies on October 7.
Speaking at a political fundraiser in Boston, Biden said accounts of "unimaginable cruelty" had been shared over the past few weeks.
"Reports of women raped — repeatedly raped — and their bodies being mutilated while still alive, of women's corpses being desecrated, Hamas terrorists inflicting as much pain and suffering on women and girls as possible and then murdering them. It is appalling," Biden said.
The president called on international organizations, civil society and individuals to condemn sexual violence "without exception."