Challenges Emerge to Allegations by the Press and UN of Widespread Rape in Israeli Prisons

Are Israeli soldiers and prison guards the world’s worst rapists? So alleges a recent newspaper column and a report released by the UN. Now the New York Times’s top editor is distancing his newsroom from a dog-rape tale, while an Israeli ambassador says a damning UN report on sexual abuse is animated by the world body chief.During a Security Council debate on Wednesday, the Israeli ambassador to Turtle Bay, Danny Danon, called on the UN special representative on sexual violence, Pramilla Patten, to resign. He demanded the representative release all communication with the secretary general, indicating it would show that Antonio Guterres pushed his representative to include Israel in a notorious UN blacklist. The UN report in question accuses Israel for the first time of using sexual violence in conflict. The 77 unsavory countries and groups that have been listed in the annual report include Hamas, the Taliban, and Russia, which have been part of the blacklist in the past. Prior to this year’s report Ms. Patten refrained from adding Israel to the notorious rape list.“Guterres hasn’t visited Israel once since October 7,” Mr. Danon tells the Sun. “Yet he issues endless one-sided reports and statements in an attempt to equate us with Hamas. We have no expectations he would be fair, but we expected better from Patten.”The ambassador says that Mr. Guterres leaned on Ms. Patten to change the report’s conclusions, even though it relied on scant evidence and even though Ms. Patten admitted to reporters that she never verified any of the allegations personally. Mr. Danon, in his public admonition during the security council debate, called on Ms. Patten to “prove that there was no political pressure” on her to include Israel, for the first time, in the UN blacklist. Ms. Patten told the council, as she previously admitted to reporters, that it was not her role to personally verify allegations in the report.After the UN issued its sexual violence in conflict report on March 29, the New York Times published an opinion piece by columnist Nicholas Kristof, alleging widespread sexual violence against Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons. The column made waves. Mr. Kristof’s claim that Israeli wardens are training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners was widely ridiculed. Mr. Kristof’s column “wasn’t edited by the newsroom,” the Times executive editor, Joe Kahn, is now telling media reporters, the Free Beacon reported on Wednesday. The newsroom “probably wouldn’t have” published Mr. Kristof’s piece, Mr. Kahn says. “No, we wouldn’t have done that exact piece,” he says, while adding that he fully trusts the judgement of the newspaper’s opinion editors. Kristof’s column relied on mostly unidentified sources and some that were later exposed as Hamas supporters. Similarly, the UN report includes only 14 accounts of sexual abuse against Palestinians. Allegations against other countries and groups in the blacklist are better sourced and are more common than the ones against Israel.“We were told that a pattern needs to be established” to be included in the blacklist, Mr. Danon told the Sun.Ms. Patten countered that the report is apolitical and is meant to be preventative. Sexual violence, she told the Security Council, continues in Israeli detention facilities, at checkpoints, and during military operations, while victims are being pressured not to file complaints.A diplomat familiar with negotiations that led to the report’s publication says that Ms. Patten assured the Israelis that they had “nothing to worry about.” The source said that things changed once Ms. Patten arrived at Mr. Guterres’s office on the UN building’s 38th floor, where a determination was made to include Israel in the blacklist. “Show this council how the decision was really made,” Mr. Danon told Ms. Patten during the council debate. “You tried to stain Israel, but the stain is not on Israel. It is on this report. It is the process. Ms. Patten, the stain is on you.”The report is issued in the Secretary General’s name and Mr. Guterres “stands by it,” his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told the Sun. Ms. Patten’s title, he noted, is “special representative of the Secretary General for sexual violence in conflict. This is her job. The Secretary General fully supports her in her effort to prepare the Secretary General’s report.”

Challenges Emerge to Allegations by the Press and UN of Widespread Rape in Israeli Prisons

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