|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
In the wake of Hamas’ barbaric rampage through the civilian communities of southern Israel on Oct. 7, the Jerusalem Institute of Justice (JIJ) led a coalition of 50 organizations in issuing a joint letter this week imploring the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to verify the status of the more than 150 Israeli hostages taken into captivity in the Gaza Strip.
Read the letter, signed by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), here.
Specifically, the letter calls on the ICRC to take the following steps:
• Locate and establish communication with the Israelis held hostage in the Gaza Strip.
• Call for Hamas to cease its heinous acts of raping and sexually abusing Israelis.
• Condemn the use of human shields as military targets, including hospitals and schools, and the horrifying practice of exhibiting and mutilating dead bodies.
• Facilitate the immediate return of the Israeli hostages.
In addition to the letter, JIJ is also requesting an urgent meeting with the Jerusalem staff of the ICRC and plans to bring some of the families of the Israeli hostages to that meeting to make personal the urgency of the appeal.
“Hamas has openly advertised its penchant for torturing, raping, denying medical treatment, degrading, humiliating, and threatening to execute these hostages,” JIJ Director of International Law & Public Diplomacy Uri Morad. “The International Red Cross must act urgently to locate and establish communication with the kidnapped Israelis if it has any hope of fulfilling its mission and bringing an end to this war.”
JIJ CEO Flavia Sevald said, “This past week constitutes the worst time in Jewish history since the Holocaust, a time when the International Red Cross was, by its own admission, ‘impotent’ in the face of Nazi persecution and genocide. In today’s war, the perpetrators may have changed, but their agenda is the same. The International Red Cross has a double duty to get it right this time.”
For more information on the JIJ, please visit: jij.org
