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Despite being the whipping-dog for decades at the UN, the government of Israel is willing to give the organization the opportunity to show that it can, indeed, not dismiss, but rather, treat with respect Jerusalem’s report on the “torture and atrocities” experienced by its hostages at the hands of Hamas. More on the report’s contents can be found here: “Herzog: UN ‘morally obliged’ to help free Hamas hostages,” JNS, December 29, 2024:
The United Nations is “morally obliged” to help secure the release of the 100 hostages being held by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Sunday.
“Torture. Physical and psychological torture. Starvation. Sexual abuse. Beatings. Branding. Just some of the horrific words that jump off the pages of the Ministry of Health’s submission to the U.N. on the horrific ordeal endured by the hostages at the hands of Hamas terrorist murderers and rapists in Gaza,” said Herzog.
The Israeli Health Ministry will submit a report this week detailing the “torture and atrocities experienced by Israeli hostages since Oct. 7, [2023],” including “abhorrent instances of sexual violence,” to Alice Jill Edwards, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the Israeli mission to the world body told JNS on Saturday.
The report will include “many testimonies of the hostages who returned from Hamas captivity” and “descriptions of the horrors Hamas terrorists inflicted on the hostages, including sexual abuse, starvation, neglect and humiliation,” the Israeli delegation said….
Will the UN do anything when it receives the Israeli report on the physical and mental torture, and starvation, of hostages? Will the General Assembly at least denounce Hamas for “these war crimes” and “demand the immediate release of the hostages still held in Gaza”? How can it, when that would only divert attention from what Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, and so many others in the glass tower on the East River know are the only crimes that count: the ones that Israel is accused (without the slightest supporting evidence) of committing without letup — the “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” of the innocent people of Gaza.