President Yitzhak Herzog and his wife Michal met today (Monday) with Parmila Patten, the UN Under-Secretary-General and the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Sexual Violence in Conflicts.
Patten is visiting Israel these days, with the aim of becoming more familiar with the incidents of sexual and gender-based violence that was carried out in a systematic and extensive manner by the terrorist organization Hamas on October 7.
Teams of experts from the fields of medicine and law arrived together.
The President's wife and the UN envoy later met with a group of leading women from civil society and academia dealing with the fight against gender-based violence and women's rights. Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, also participated in the meeting.
The meeting of the President's wife with the UN delegation, photo: Amos Ben Gershom, Deputy Prime Minister
"Ready to listen to your stories"
The president of the country said at the meeting: "The scenes we saw on October 7 continue to resonate strongly.
It is necessary to investigate and tell about them, and above all it is necessary to take care of the victims.
We thank you for the expression of solidarity and the fact that you came to find out and learn."
Patten said: "After what happened on October 7, I couldn't sit in my office in New York and watch from the sidelines.
Therefore, I was actively and regularly engaged in this task and I am happy to be here to express my solidarity with the Israeli government, the people of Israel, the survivors, the families of the victims, and the families of the abductees."
It should be remembered that in Israel there was severe criticism of the various UN institutions that did not respond for a long time to the horrific sexual violence that women and girls suffered on October 7. Ironically, the first UN report that dealt with gender violence during the Iron Swords War , accused Israel without any basis of committing sexual crimes against Palestinian women in Gaza.
"I have one important message: sexual violence is one of the most heinous crimes and has devastating consequences that reverberate across generations. Sexual violence used as a tactic of terror, as a tactic of war, is designed to destabilize, instill fear, humiliate and dehumanize not only the victims, but also of the families, society and the nation as a whole."
The site of the party in Ra'i after October 7, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Despite the abundance of testimony from Israeli men and women about the actions of Hamas on October 7, Patten spoke about the need to break the silence surrounding these actions.
"I have a message for the survivors, witnesses and families of the victims, please break the silence because your silence will be the license for those criminals to continue committing these heinous crimes," she said, "I'm here for a week, I'm ready to meet you in a safe environment that will allow us to listen to your stories, the world needs to know What really happened. The stigma and shame is on the perpetrators and the victims should join us and divert the shame from the perpetrators."
Patten concluded her words with a promise: "We really want to ensure that you will have justice at the end of the day, and that we will put an end to this despicable act."
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