Foreign Minister Israel Katz accused United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of standing “shoulder to shoulder with the rapists and murderers of Hamas” for declining to include the terror group in a report published Tuesday on organizations suspected by the UN of committing acts of sexual violence during conflict.

The document, titled “Conflict-related sexual violence,” and published as a “Report of the Secretary-General,” noted there is evidence that sex crimes were committed during the Palestinian terror group Hamas’s devastating October 7 attack on Israel, but did not specifically attribute responsibility to Hamas.

The ministry elaborated in the statement that Guterres ignored “the plethora of testimony and evidence that was collected and then included in the report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten.” Patten’s report after her visit to Israel found that rape likely occurred during the Hamas attacks, and said there was convincing evidence hostages were facing sexual abuse in Gaza. In his report, Guterres referenced Patten’s assessment, but noted that it, “not being investigative in nature and given its limited duration, did not draw conclusions on attribution to specific armed groups or determine prevalence of incidents of conflict-related sexual violence during and after the attacks of 7 October. Such a determination would require a fully-fledged investigation.”

Guterres, fumed Katz, refused to acknowledge Hamas’s responsibility for the grave sexual crimes that appear in the Patten report and to declare it a terrorist organization.