Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 13 mins.)
Almost immediately after the Al Aqsa Flood breach of the Israeli military wall and subsequent raid, the Israeli state’s stories of alleged atrocities by Hamas1 were being widely repeated in the western mass media.
The accounts, always levelled at Hamas, included burning alive and mutilation of adults, rape, beheading of babies and even ripping of a baby from the womb of a pregnant woman, most of the allegations quickly proven untrue.
The rape story however continues to run. So far there has been not one piece of forensic evidence, not one certifiable victim and not only have the journalistic standards been flawed but the backgrounds of the original reporters are deeply suspect.
“Beheaded babies”
Since according to Israeli statistics one baby alone died during the Al Aqsa Flood operation and was neither headless nor premature, all the allegations about atrocities towards babies or pregnant women have been disproven and the “witnesses” discredited.
The latter were reported in the media as serving Israeli military and some civilians but were quoted at length and no attempt was made to question the accused, Hamas, nor to interrogate the logic (which we’ll come to later). President Biden quoted the “beheaded babies” as fact.2
“Mutilation” allegation
Despite the frequent allegations of mutilations of bodies of babies and women no forensic examples have been provided by the Israeli authorities, who had full access to all sites of the Al Aqsa Flood raid within hours of the operation.
“Burning people alive” allegation
There is certainly much evidence of the immolation of buildings and cars (the latter with occupants) – but by whom? There is no evidence that the Palestinian military possess flamethrowers or carried any inflammable devices. In the course of a battle of course some buildings can catch fire.
But deliberately burning people alive when the objective is to take live prisoners? Certainly not logical. However, we have known almost since the date of the operation that Israeli fighters were firing Hellfire missiles at cars on the ground without being able to identify their occupants.3
There is also eyewitness testimony from an Israeli survivor that an Israeli tank fired a shell into a house in which Palestinian fighters were holding Israeli prisoners known to her, killing everyone including a child.
First “Mass rapes” allegation
In an article titled “Scream without words” on 28th December, this allegation was published in the New York Times, a US periodical that considers itself ‘a newspaper of record’, i.e one with high standards of checking and the reports of which therefore can be relied upon.
Though Pulitzer-Prizewinner Jeffrey Gettleman was the article’s main author, Anat Shwartz and Adam Sella were researchers on this story with Shwartz in the lead.
The two-month investigation produced no forensic evidence and no named alleged victims except one, Gal Abdush. According to Gal’s sister the allegation of rape was concealed from the family by the NYT; she does not believe her sister was raped and they know of no forensic tests performed.
… at 7:00 a.m., Nagi Abdush called his brother Nissim to say Gal was shot and dying. The Times never explains how Gal could be captured, raped, fatally shot, and burned to death in nine minutes while Nagi messaged his family and never mentioned any physical contact with Hamas forces.4
The team claimed interviewing “150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors … identified at least seven locations” where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated. Yet not a single named individual (other than Gal).
During this period, the team published an article rehashing Israeli propaganda claims of Palestinian atrocities but containing false assertions. Under pressure the NYT had to publish a correction on December 8th stating that the Israeli police had no forensic or autopsy evidence for the claims.
Among the few “witnesses” identified by Shwartz are an Israeli Army paramedic, a special forces soldier and members of the ZAKA group. The latter claims to be a philanthropic organisation but is mired in claims of inventing horror stories,5 with some of its leaders on trial for sexual abuse.
The military paramedic changed the location of victims of rape from one kibbutz to another and, though his story coincides perfectly with that of the special forces soldier, it is flatly contradicted by family and kibbutz members regarding rape and the location and status of the bodies.6
The person who filmed the original video of Gal Abdush’s body, Eden Wesley says that at first she did not understand the importance of the image but that Shwartz and Sella kept pressurising her for the footage and telling her it would be valuable ‘hasbara’ (Israeli State propaganda) material.7
It emerged after the article’s publication that Schwarz had previously “liked” a number of rabid anti-Palestinian posts on Twitter/X, including one with the false story of “beheaded babies” and another about the need to equate Hamas with ISIS in the narrative for propaganda purposes.
Sella is Shwartz’s nephew and neither he nor his aunt had a history of covering stories of this size or of working with or for the NYT and it is curious how in November 2024 Schwartz came to be an investigative reporter for the prestigious newspaper on alleged atrocities by the Al Aqsa Flood.
Though the NYT has yet to admit the story is basically faulty it has criticised Shwartz for ‘liking’ zionist posts and is carrying out an investigation, declaring such to be violating its standards.
It may be that in time the NYT will sacrifice the reporters to save its reputation. But the newspaper needs to answer why it employed them in the first place and ran a story of such serious allegations (and consequences) under Gettleman without a shred of actual evidence.
Debunked – but the allegations run on
The latest version of these allegations is by UN Envoy Pramila Patten who, once again, admits to being able to name no victims and to having no forensic evidence. But even so she is able to suggest that female Israeli prisoners may be experiencing “ongoing” sexual assault in captivity!8
The report of her delegation, which had not been sent in an investigative capacity, claimed finding in various locations, “that several fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down were recovered – mostly women – with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head”.
Although of course captives would have their hands tied, I don’t recall this detail of partial nakedness and shooting of Israeli captives being reported before and its emergence five months after the military operation must give rise to extreme suspicion.
Control of the investigation, control of the discourse
As with a number of other war propaganda allegations in various parts of the world, the Israeli State insisted it will not permit any independent international agency investigation and also declined to carry out its own investigations “until after the war” (while forensic evidence is compromised).
That does not prevent the western mass media from giving credence to Israeli State stories.
LOGIC?
Let’s set aside all horror or distaste for a moment and apply some logic to the situation. The short-term objectives of the Palestinian military raid were to
- Coordinate rocket bombardment of Israeli settlements with six simultaneous infantry assaults
- Knock out local Israeli Wall automatic guns and military communications
- Get through or over the Israeli Wall
- Overcome the Israeli garrison at the Wall
- Take Israelis prisoners to exchange for the release of Palestinians prisoners of the Israeli state
It is worth noting that the Palestinian operation achieved all of its short-term objectives, No. 5 only partially since we now know that many Palestinian fighters were killed by Israeli fire along with their captives.
In addition to the short-term we can assume longer-term objectives
- strike back at the oppressor
- destroy the occupier’s sense of invulnerability
- keep the Israeli prisoners taken safe
- negotiate for the exchange of prisoners and
- probably to force the rulers of Israel to negotiate with the elected representatives of the Palestinians.9
How logical would carrying out atrocities be with regard to any of those objectives, bearing in mind that the Palestinian resistance wants its justifications acknowledged and supported domestically and internationally? And to be able to negotiate with the Israeli State’s leaders?
Would the short-term mission directives be compatible with “mass rape”? The mission directive is to knock out communications, kill any resistance necessary, grab prisoners and – get out quickly! Speed was essential for the success of the operation and the survival of its personnel.
To knock aside any evaluation on the basis of logic we are encouraged to regard the Palestinians as irrational, violent and sub-human – in fact the very kind of propaganda used for centuries by the British-based colonisers against the Irish, both in text and cartoons.10
The joint Palestinian limited military operation was represented in the media as “a rampage” “slaughtering”, “massacring” while a number of Israeli politicians described Palestinians as “animals”, openly calling for genocide.
WAR PROPAGANDA
Propaganda has always been a part of preparing the combatants and their society for war and, once war begins, sustaining it. The English-based invaders racialised the Irish as uncouth, barbarians, dishonest (but then had to pass laws to prevent the integration of their own colonists!).11
In the 1800s the Irish were described for British society as lazy, violent, drunkard, dirty and treacherous while a number of cartoons depicted them as brutish and ape-like, drawing on literature from Shakespeare, Mary Anne Shelley and evolutionary theory for its caricatures.
Much more recently, the leaders of the USA and of the UK, in order to justify their invasion of Iraq, falsified the reports of their intelligence agencies to accuse Saddam Hussein of being somehow responsible for the Twin Towers atrocity and of having weapons of mass destruction.12
ACTUAL RAPE & SEXUAL ASSAULT
Sexual assault and rape of Palestinian female prisoners
A UN body of seven sexual violence experts reported on 19th February that there is credible evidence of Palestinian females being shot and female prisoners being subjected to sexual assault, humiliation and even rape by Israeli military officers.13
To contrast this situation with that of alleged victims of “mass rapes” of Israeli women by Al Aqsa Flood on October 7th, with no actual victims yet produced, at least two female Palestinian prisoners have alleged being raped and others of sexual assault and humiliation.
Furthermore, the taking of Palestinian prisoners and their detention is no hurried military operation with severe time constraints, unlike that of the Al Aqsa Flood operation.
Thirdly, while any Israeli victim of rape cannot ordinarily expect retribution for testifying to such an experience but rather the opposite, Palestinians in Israeli jail and ex-prisoners anywhere in Palestine are always vulnerable to Israeli retribution and eight have died in jail since October 8th.
Another difference is that while Palestinians have to think about how their actions will be perceived not only internally but also externally, this is not the case with the Israeli State and its armed forces, who boast about their human rights violations in official videos and on soldiers’ social media.
Victims of rape and sexual assault by Palestinians in Palestinian society
There are sadly bound to be such victims but we know nothing about them because of the siege and genocidal war conditions to which Palestinian society is subjected. Such a situation conditions complicity in silence due to feelings of solidarity and fear of seeming to help the enemy.
We know this from our own history in Ireland in the Republican movement during the 30 Years War in the occupied Six Counties, some accusations of sexual abuse within Republican families only emerging to the public eye only after the end of the War.
Victims of rape and sexual assault by Israelis in Israeli society
However, there are substantial statistics on complaints of rape and sexual assault in Israeli society, which are according to one source, 40% higher there than the average in OECD countries. Furthermore they have been on the increase (which may mean greater occurrence or of reporting).
In 2013, 40,000 calls were received by the Israeli rape crisis centres, a rise of 12% from previously but only 15% were reported to the police. Even more disturbingly, 31% of callers reporting assault were under the age of 12 and 33% of callers reporting assault were between 13-18 years of age.14
The Association of Rape Crises Centres in Israeli reports that one in three women in Israel is sexually assaulted during her lifetime, with one in seven raped during her lifetime.15
Gang rapes seem to be on the increase and the risk of punishment for rapists and sexual assaulters seems statistically low as a study found that 90% of cases are closed without charges.16
Some of the allegations of sexual assault and rape of Israeli personnel within the Israeli military
In 2013 there were 561 reports of sexual assault in the IDF that were of military circumstances, with 396 reports not of military circumstances. 91% of reports were of assault against women, 49% were of physical assault but in 61% of cases a complaint was not submitted.17
There have been two notorious cases of alleged gang rapes by Israeli men but in Cyprus, a common holiday destination for Israelis.18 One, of a woman in 2019 was dismissed due to police incompetence and the other, of a UK woman, is currently being tried. 19
In Conclusion
During the many hours of Israeli military missing after the Wall breaches, other Palestinians entered and could possibly have robbed, assaulted, raped or killed a small number of Israelis. However forensic, victim or credible witness evidence of rape remains absent to date.
The mass rape allegations against the Palestinian resistance in the course of their Al Aqsa Flood operation originate in Israeli propaganda, are not credible logically, have provided neither victims nor forensic evidence and the track record of the “investigators” is tainted by zionist sympathies.
Despite debunking by statistics and investigation, the “mass rapes” and other allegations such as the numbers killed by the Palestinian resistance continue to be repeated in the western mass media or to be allowed to resurface after the allegations and/or the sources have been discredited.
Sadly even liberal anti-Zionist reporters appear at times to allow themselves to believe the propaganda while at the same time criticising the Israeli State’s actions or their extent.20
The original source is Israeli war propaganda and those who ignore that fact and the number of investigation results refuting the allegations but rather give them some kind of credence and currency in reporting are deeply complicit in the ongoing zionist genocide of the Palestinian people.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1In order to deny that the target of operations by the Israeli State is the Palestinian people, the propaganda always talks about “Hamas” alone. It is rarely admitted but well-known by the authorities that the Al Aqsa Flood operation was a joint one including not only the military wings of Hamas but also of Islamic Jihad, the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Resistance Committees and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
2https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/10/18/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-october-7th-terrorist-attacks-and-the-resilience-of-the-state-of-israel-and-its-people-tel-aviv-israel/ Some of his own staff however soon sounded a note of caution, saying he had not seen the evidence of “beheaded babies” himself and was quoting Israeli sources.
3Merely that they were heading for Gaza, so driven by Palestinian fighters – but with or without Israeli prisoners? The pilots had no way of knowing and some reported firing, reloading and firing again. https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-admits-burning-hundreds-people-7-october
4https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2024/03/05/israel-hamas-oct7-report-gaza
5https://www.timesofisrael.com/zaka-exploited-hamass-october-7-attack-to-campaign-for-donations-report/
6https://theintercept.com/2024/03/04/nyt-october-7-sexual-violence-kibbutz-beeri/
7https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfE3vasBQyE&t=41s
8The U.N. envoy focusing on sexual violence in conflict says there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape, “sexualized torture,” and other cruel and inhuman treatment of women during its surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
There are also “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing,” said Pramila Patten, who visited Israel and the West Bank from Jan. 29 to Feb. 14 with a nine-member team. (Washington Post – see Sources). Contrast this claim with the accounts of female prisoners of the Palestinian resistance released to date.
9The elected representation of the Palestinian people since the 2006 elections has been Hamas (no 5-yearly elections have been held since by the PA which is under Fatah control). The Fatah political structure in power in Gaza refused to respect the electorate’s decision and in 2007 Hamas was obliged to remove them by force (which they decided not to do in the West Bank). The Israeli ruling class likewise refused to accept the decision of the Palestinian electorate and besieged Gaza. The rulers of the western states followed suit in not recognising Hamas either, though UN aid organisations and NGOs had to deal with Hamas in Gaza.
10“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could’ve risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime,” said the President of the Israel State, Herzog.
11For example, the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1666 by the British-Norman rulers of England were series of 35 Acts aimed at preventing the British-Norman settlers (also described as Norman-Irish) from continuing to be “the degenerate English” who had “become more Irish than the Irish themselves” by adopting traditional Irish customs, culture, language and even law.
12The ironical truth is that while the UK and the USA are some of the few powers that do indeed posses weapons of mass destruction, Iraq had none; also the Twin Towers atrocity had been carried out by Al Qaeda, an Islamicist organisation originating in jihadists supported and supplied by the USA in order to overthrow the Russian-supported Afghanistan regime of 1979-1988. Furthermore Al Qaeda was a known opponent of the Saddam Hussein regime.
13Though reported in some western mass media, neither as often nor nowhere nearly as much as the Israeli story of “mass rapes by Hamas”.
14https://www.1202.org.il/en/union/info/statistics/arcci-statistics
15https://www.1202.org.il/en/union/info/statistics/general-statistics
16https://www.timesofisrael.cobm/9-out-of-10-rape-cases-in-israel-closed-without-charges-study/
17https://www.1202.org.il/en/union/info/statistics/arcci-statistics
18Second in popularity as a holiday destination only to British tourists.
19https://www.timesofisrael.com/5-israelis-charged-over-cyprus-gang-rape-of-british-woman/
20“The shocking ways in which Hamas butchered Israeli civilians, including small children, and then celebrated the slaughter reminded me of reporting the Rwandan genocide three decades ago …” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/16/the-language-being-used-to-describe-palestinians-is-genocidal
SOURCES
Israelis killed by their own military on October 7th: https://www.tbsnews.net/features/panorama/what-really-happened-7-october-753058
Rape and sexual assault in Israeli society:
https://www.1202.org.il/en/union/info/statistics/arcci-statistics
https://www.timesofisrael.com/9-out-of-10-rape-cases-in-israel-closed-without-charges-study
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/gang-rapes-in-israel-a-spike-in-cases-or-business-as-usual-662060
https://www.972mag.com/why-are-so-many-women-subjected-to-sexual-harassment-in-israel
Problems with citing ZAKA as sources for sexual violence – or anything: https://theintercept.com/2024/02/27/zaka-october-7-israel-hamas-new-york-times/https://
BBC drops some of the atrocity claims: https://asawinstanley.substack.com/p/bbc-distances-itself-from-7-october
Yes Magazine critically examines claims of Israeli organisation against sexual violence: https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2024/03/05/israel-hamas-oct7-report-gaza
Ongoing Electronic Intifada investigation debunking of rape allegation against Palestinian fighters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfE3vasBQyE&t=41s
Discussion of report from the Intercept quoting residents of the Kibbutz Be’eri: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-kibbutz-near-gaza-says-allegations-of-sexual-abuse-on-oct-7-not-true-report/3156033
Latest rape allegations against the Palestinian resistance: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2024/03/04/israel-hamas-war-latest-03-04-2024/933648ec-da18-11ee-b5e9-ad4573c62315_story.html
Allegations of sexual assault and rape by Israeli military against Palestinian prisoners: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/israelopt-un-experts-appalled-reported-human-rights-violations-against
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