August 28, 2025, New York, NY – The American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) welcomes the decision of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to place Hamas on the UN’s annual ‘List of Parties Credibly Suspected of Committing or Being Responsible for Patterns of Rape or Other Forms of Sexual Violence in Conflict.’ The designation appears in the 2025 Annual Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence.
At the same time, the AJCongress rejects any equivalence between Hamas’s organized atrocities and isolated cases of possible abuse involving terrorist detainees. Israel investigates and prosecutes misconduct, and equating a democracy’s self-defense with a terrorist group’s crimes sets a dangerous precedent that undermines regional counterterror efforts.
We are pleased to see the UN report cite extensive documentation, including A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond, a study published by the Dinah Project, an independent Israeli initiative led by former senior legal, judicial, and prosecutorial officials. That report’s central finding is that sexual violence—including rape, gang rape, genital mutilation, forced nudity, and other forms of abuse—was not incidental but widespread, systematic, and deployed as a deliberate weapon of war during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, unprovoked assault on Israeli communities.
“The UN’s formal blacklisting of Hamas leaves no room for equivocation,” said Daniel Rosen, President of the American Jewish Congress. “Member states of the UN should now directly condemn Hamas for using the cause of Palestinian statehood as a cover for organized and intentional sexual violations of women during the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, which also included the murder by Hamas of Israeli Muslims and Israeli Druze and Arabs.”
The American Jewish Congress is urging member states of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to take the lead in ostracizing and isolating Hamas across the Middle East, using the legal and political tools now placed in their hands by the UN’s designation. Moreover, we call on Palestinian leaders and society to stop equivocating about Hamas’s atrocities in light of the UN findings, and to join the advocacy for Hamas to:
- Immediately release all remaining hostages.
- Disarm and relinquish Hamas’ military capabilities.
- Dismantle the radicalization networks and ideological indoctrination that enabled such depravity on October 7; acts that have caused immense suffering for Israeli civilians and Palestinians in Gaza alike.
UN Warning to Israel and AJCongress Response
The 2025 report also placed Israel on formal notice that its military and security forces could be added to the same blacklist in the next review cycle. The UN cited allegations of sexual violence in detention settings, including prolonged forced nudity and degrading treatment.
The American Jewish Congress takes these allegations seriously, but notes:
- Israel maintains active mechanisms for investigating and prosecuting misconduct. There is no equivalence between Hamas’s deliberate atrocities and isolated cases of possible abuse involving detainees connected to terrorism.
“Allegations must be addressed on their merits and Israel has a legal system to address such accusations,” Rosen added. “But any suggestion of moral equivalence between the systematic atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 and the actions of a democratic state defending itself against those very atrocities is deeply flawed.”
(Photo Credit: “Secretariat Building at United Nations Headquarters” by United Nations Photo, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
