Biden calls on world to condemn Hamas sexual violence, blames terror group for collapse of cease-fire
Fox News
President Biden said Tuesday that Hamas had repeatedly raped women and mutilated their bodies during the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, citing accounts from survivors and witnesses to the attacks.
While at a political fundraiser in Boston, the president called on the world to condemn the “unimaginable cruelty” of Hamas’ sexual violence “without exception.”
“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, according to Reuters.
Israeli police are investigating possible sexual crimes by some of the few hundred Hamas members that they arrested after the Oct. 7 attack. Israel’s justice ministry said “victims were tortured, physically abused, raped, burned alive and dismembered.”
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In a statement on its Telegram channel, Hamas said it denounced Biden’s “attempt to falsely accuse” its fighters of committing sexual violence and rape on Oct. 7.
The Palestinian terror group accused Biden and Israel of covering up war crimes in Gaza and spreading misinformation to sway public opinion.
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Israel put on an event at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Monday to expose the sexual violence against women that took place during the Oct. 7 attack. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres last week called for investigations into reports of rape and sexual assaults committed by Hamas after weeks of silence on the issue — which Israel harshly condemned.
Israeli officers on Monday shared their experiences in recovering women’s bodies after the massacre on Oct. 7, showing girls with broken pelvises; women and girls without clothing and covered in blood; women and girls’ bodies with shooting wounds targeted at sexual organs; breast amputations; naked women and girls’ in showers with their hands tied behind their backs; additional amputation of genitalia and more.
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“As a global community we must respond to weaponized sexual violence, wherever it happens, with absolute condemnation. There can be no justification and no excuses. Rape as a weapon of war is a crime against humanity,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a pre-recorded video played at Israel’s event.
More than 700 ambassadors and diplomats, representatives of UN agencies, Jewish organizations, and civil society organizations attended the event Monday.
On Tuesday, Biden also blamed Hamas for breaking a cease-fire agreement with Israel, telling donors the terrorist group’s “refusal to release the remaining young women is what broke this deal.”
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman and Reuters contributed to this report.