'End your silence, declare Hamas a terror organization,' FM Israel Katz urges UNSC

Designate Hamas as a terror organization and do more to pressure it to release the remaining 134 hostages, Foreign Minister Israel Katz told the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) during its Monday debate on the sexual violence committed by Palestinians during the October 7 attack against the Jewish state.

“For too long the UN has been silent on Hamas actions,” Katz said.

During the five months that have passed since the attack, the “UN never condemned nor disapproved these Hamas brutal crimes,” he said. Nor in that time has the UN recognized Hamas as a terror organization, he added.

“Hamas crimes are even worse than the terror actions carried out by al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other terror organizations that were sanctioned by the UN,” he explained.

“Many countries have declared Hamas as a terror organization including the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Paraguay, New Zealand, the UK, the EU, and others,” but the UN has not taken similar steps.

“Hamas must be declared as a terrorist organization and face the heaviest sanctions possible,” he said.

He described how Hamas had crossed an international border to attack “peaceful Israeli innocent people in their homes and beds in the kibbutzim, villages, and cities.”

This included “young people, boys, and girls who arrived from all over the world to participate in the Nova music festival.”

While they were celebrating, he said, they were “attacked from all sides and brutally abused and massacred.”

Although these were “crimes against humanity,” the UN has not considered this attack an “act of war.”

The UNSC debate, held at the request of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, was intended to focus on the report authored by Pramila Patten, the UN special representative of the secretary-general on Sexual Violence in Conflict. It found “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas and affiliated terror groups had committed acts of sexual violence against its victims during its invasion of Israel on October 7.

It marked the first time the UNSC has debated sexual violence related to October 7.

Patten's briefing

Patten briefed the UNSC on her findings, explaining that “nothing can justify the deliberate violence perpetrated by Hamas and other armed groups on the 7th of October against Israel.”

But, she said, she believed Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas was an unjustified act of “collective punishment” against the Palestinian people in Gaza, which has “left tens of thousands of Palestinians killed and injured,” and “entire communities facing inhumane conditions, including famine and disease.”

Patten said she was horrified by the injustice faced by the women and children “killed in Gaza by countless bombs, gunfire. And I am also outraged by the level of deaths and pain of entire families, often generations wiped out.”

“With every bomb that drops the world becomes more unjust, and the road to peace more clouded,” she said.

Although the Hamas-led invasion of Israel on October 7 and its accompanying sexual violence occurred in the initial phases of a regional peace process, Patten said, that the “end goal of my mandate is not a war without rape, but a world without war.”

Israeli and Palestinian civilians and their families “cannot be abandoned by the international community. Survivors of sexual violence must be protected and supported. We cannot fail them. The people of this region need to see a peaceful future at last on the political horizon,” she said.

Katz arrived at the UN with a delegation that included relatives of the hostages.

At least 75 people gathered in front of the United Nations in solidarity with the delegation of hostage family members arriving for the Security Council meeting.

Security Council meeting reactions

Supporters held Israeli flags as well as flags from the 20 countries that hostages are from to show it’s not just an Israeli problem, leader of the New York Hostage and Missing Family Forum Shany Granot-Lubaton said.

“Everyone is coming today to fight for the lives of their loved ones. They came today because there is an emergency meeting. I want them to see us and know we are here holding the signs of their loved ones,” Granot-Lubaton said.

Yarden Gonen, sister of hostage Romi Gonen, spoke to The Post after the Security Council meeting. 

The meeting was painful hearing the comparison of the sexual violence committed by Hamas and the conditions of suffering in the Gaza Strip. 

“I’m not minimizing that, but you can’t compare them both. It’s not comparable, you can’t put them in the same sentence,” Gonen said. “We’re talking about sexual violence, crimes. Not about the starvation.”

Gonen said she wanted other countries to say more about that condemning Hamas and calling Hamas a terror organization, though she said most did condemn Hamas and call for the release of the hostages. 

Elan Tiv, daughter of returned hostage Aviva Siegel, said she felt used by Pramila Patten and her report documenting Hamas’ conflict related sexual violence. 

“I am really disappointed by the report. I feel like Patten came to Israel and heard all the things about the seventh of October and she took it and just compare it to the lies that she heard on the Palestinian side,” Tiv told The Post. 

Tiv accused Patten of publishing unchecked facts. There were written things that are not facts. And that were not checked.

“And it's disappointing for me to come here all the way to the UN, to a place that to me, is supposed to look at the future and to create a better world for our kids,” Tiv said. “And going back home really, my hope has really gone down in this visit.”

Patten had a big opportunity during the emergency meeting and Tiv said she was sorry to hear how she used it. 

However, Tiv acknowledged not every hostage family member feels the same way and some feel thankful for Patten. 

But Tiv told The Post she was with her mother while giving Patten her testimony. 

“She gave her testimony to [Patten] a few weeks after she came back from captivity. She was so weak and still she felt the urge to do it,” Tiv said. “I feel like it's not fair to listen to broken women, and then to compare it to all kinds of unchecked things that you heard on the other side.”

Shai Wenkurt, father of 22-year-old hostage Omer, described the meeting with Patten as emotional. 

Patten met with the hostage’s families for more than 45 minutes, and Wenkurt said she shared a lot of evidence, mostly from the area around the Nova music festival where Omer was taken hostage. 

The evidence of the brutally violent sexual assault is terrifying, Wenkurt said.