“If it happened in Israel, and we weren’t prepared for it, it can happen to other countries too,” Yifat Bitton told JNS.
(Jan. 24, 2025 / JNS) In November, the month before she released a report about the sexual violence that Hamas committed on Oct. 7, 2023, Yifat Bitton, an Israeli law professor, told JNS that the report would focus on “what people missed,” rather than the “hardcore evidence” the police would find.
JNS spoke with Bitton again on Jan. 19 about the report’s takeaways and what response it has drawn.
Bitton told JNS that diplomats and senior officials at the United Nations received her Jan. 16 presentation of the report well, despite the global body’s silence about the sorts of sexual crimes that Hamas committed on Oct. 7 detailed by her work.