Only being here I see magnitude of Hamas' massacre, says UN envoy while visiting devastated Israeli community

Women's rights activist Pramila Patten, the under-secretary-general of the UN and special envoy for Sexual Violence in Conflicts visited Israel this week and expressed her shock after learning firsthand the details of Hamas' attack on Oct. 7, including the massacre of some 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilian women, children and elderly.

"The world outside cannot understand the magnitude of the event," Patten said. "I myself also internalized the magnitude of the event just by being here myself," she added.

The senior UN official revealed that she was unable to sleep after watching the difficult 47-minute video of the unprecedented Hamas atrocities against civilians in southern Israel.

"Only after I saw the video did I understand things that I didn't understand before in terms of the magnitude of the disaster that happened," Patten shared.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem invited Patten to Israel to learn more about the horrific events of Oct. 7 by visiting the sites in person and speaking with survivors and witnesses. Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan stressed the significance of her visit.

"Patten's visit was especially important to us so that there would be international recognition of the suffering and the horrendous sexual crimes committed against Israeli women and girls on October 7 by the monsters of Hamas," the Israeli UN ambassador stated.

"It is equally important for the world to understand who we are fighting against. The disregard and indifference demonstrated by the UN and its women's organization is a disgrace that cannot be allowed to continue."

The United Nations has displayed an entrenched institutionalized bias against Israel. However, Patten appeared to be arriving with an open mind.

“I’m here for a week, I’m prepared to meet you in a safe and enabling environment and to listen to your stories, the world needs to know what really happened on October 7,” Patten said at the start of her week-long visit to Israel.

“Please come forward, please break your silence because your silence will be the license of those perpetrators,” the UN official urged.

The Oct. 7 massacre was the most destructive day in the history of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Despite the magnitude of Hamas' crimes, the reactions from many international human rights organizations have been weak and disappointing.

In December, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned international human rights organizations for their silence amid the unprecedented Hamas crimes against Israeli women and children.

“I didn’t hear the human rights organizations, or the women’s organizations, or the women’s organizations of the UN… and I ask them: Where are you? Were you quiet because we were talking about Jewish women? I want to say this in a language that everybody understands,” Netanyahu stated.

For the past few months, Israel Police investigators have been busy building criminal cases against the Hamas terrorists and operatives who participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. Israel expects an eventual trial to be the most important legal proceeding in its modern history, since the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in the early 1960s.

Former Deputy of the Israeli Attorney General Roi Scheindorf emphasized that Israel has never before faced crimes of such magnitude as it did on Oct. 7, the day many Israelis refer to as the 'Black Shabbat.'

“This will be one of the most important trials to take place in Israel,” he added.