Over the weekend, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the evidence he has seen of the sexual violence Hamas committed against Israelis during their October 7 attack is “beyond anything that I have seen.”
Blinken made his comments during a Sunday interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper when asked why the United Nations and the international community had been so hesitant to condemn Hamas’ sexual violence.
“I can’t think of a real reason,” Tapper said. “Well, let me just put it this way. I have heard anti-Semitism hypothesized as a reason why the U.N. and the international community might be so slow to acknowledge this. What do you think?”
Blinken said that he did not know why “countries, leaders, international organizations were so slow to focus on this, to bring it to people’s attention. I’m glad it’s finally happened.”
“The atrocities that we saw on October 7 are almost beyond human description or beyond our capacity to digest,” he continued. “And we have talked about them before. But the sexual violence that we saw on October 7 is beyond anything that I have seen either.”
“And, look, I don’t have a good answer to that question,” he added. “I think it’s a question that these organizations, these countries need to ask themselves.”
