Can No One Tell Me the Name of an Israeli Woman Who Was Raped by Hamas on 10/7?
Whenever I ask to know the name of a woman who was raped by Hamas, I get dismissed, insulted, and/or blocked.
So many people are buying the propaganda about Hamas “weaponising rape” and “systematically using sexual violence” without any actual proof.
And yet when asked to justify their outrage, they run away or hide, or deflect. This has happened to me on Medium twice already in the past days. The “blocked error” above is from a writer named Kaylin Hamilton. When I asked her to name me an Israeli woman who was raped on 10/7, she called me a “vile rape denier” and blocked me.
Taminad Crittenden is another person I have asked for a name. He has refused to give me one. He only provides links to articles which — he claims — provide evidence of rape.
NONE OF THEM DO.
When I point out that the articles don’t actually reference evidence or proof, and neither do they give any specifics about alleged victims, he calls me an “evil liar”. When I ask him for the name of an alleged victim — just one — he does not respond. To his credit, however, he has not yet blocked me.
I have asked many Zionist hasbarists to provide me the name of a woman who was raped by Hamas on 10/7. I have been asking this question of dozens of people for weeks now.
NO ONE HAS RESPONDED WITH A NAME.
Did rape happen? Possibly.
As I explained to Kaylin (just before she blocked me), I am not denying that rape occurred. In fact, I think that the research is undeniable that rape happens in war and indeed in any situation where men have power and especially where they have weapons.
What I am denying is that Hamas had issued orders to its fighters to use rape as a weapon of war and terror, and to “systematically” use rape as a tactic to inflict pain and terror on the Israeli population. This idea has been promulgated by Western media like the BBC:
“Hamas had a premeditated plan to use sexual violence as a weapon of war, an Israeli women’s rights campaigner and lawyer has said.
“Israeli police say they have so far gathered more than 1,500 testimonies from witnesses and medics. Hamas has denied the group carried out sexual violence during the 7 October attacks”.
Articles like the above are filled with gruesome tales of people claiming to have seen the most horrific acts of gang rape.
And yet, as the Israeli paper of record Haaretz points out:
“At Shura Base, to which most of the bodies were taken for purposes of identification, there were five forensic pathologists at work. In that capacity, they also examined bodies that arrived completely or partially naked in order to examine the possibility of rape. According to a source knowledgeable about the details, there were no signs on any of those bodies attesting to sexual relations having taken place or of mutilation of genitalia.”
Moreover:
“On the night between October 7 and October 8, six police forensic investigation teams — 12 police officers, all told — worked at the site of the party…These teams did not document a single case of sexual assault or cases of genital mutilation.”
No proof despite an official effort to find evidence
When hasbarists are asked to produce evidence of rape, or first person accounts, they often reply that the victims were “too embarrassed” or “too traumatised” to come forth, or the victims wanted to hide their identities for their own protection.
Well, those obstacles were overcome by the Israeli authorities, who were desperate to find proof of Hamas rape.
As Haaretz has reported, Israeli police sent a court order to not just general hospitals but also psychiatric clinics, directing them to “provide information on the victims of sexual offences committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7.”
As the Gupta article notes, this directive was “a tacit admission that police lack survivor testimony”. The court order also refuted the above-mentioned claims that alleged survivors were not being identified to protect them.
DESPITE THE DIRECTIVE, THE POLICE CAME UP EMPTY-HANDED.
In January, another Haaretz article (available only in the Hebrew version of the newspaper’s website) casts even more doubt on the stories:
“The police are having difficulty locating victims of sexual assault or witnesses to acts from the Hamas attack, and are unable to connect the existing evidence with the victims described in it. Now, three months after the massacre, the organisation decided to turn to the public to encourage those who have information on the matter to come and testify.”
This complete lack of proof shows that all those claims about “police collecting eyewitness testimonies”, which were all over the news in the weeks following October 7, were all just so much hasbara (Israeli propaganda) — salacious stories meant to shock and disgust, and deflect from the horror that Israel was inflicting on the Palestinians.
Claims made by “dubious” witnesses
Although the police could not collect any ACTUAL witness testimonies, that did not stop a veritable squadron of hasbarists from going to the media with the most outlandishly sickening, horrifying “eyewitness” stories.
However, as noted in YES! Magazine‘s investigative article, twelve individuals account for the vast majority of rape and sexual violence claims in hundreds of articles.
These so-called “eyewitnesses” are all dubious, however, and most are Israeli officials or known fabricators and hasbarists who have already been caught lying about other matters.
As YES! Magazine’s Arun Gupta recounts:
“All but one of the 12 sources are connected to the Israeli military and police, such as the Home Front Command. Five of the sources are Zaka volunteers who told stories that smack of fabrications. Five other sources claimed they saw corpses that bore signs of rape or sexual violence. Not one of these sources was professionally trained to make such assessments, and nearly all fabricated stories, as described below.”
Gupta continues:
“The government of Israel’s entire case for mass rape is built on two allegations: a source known as “Witness S.,” or Sapir, put forward by the police, and an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) special forces soldier, Raz Cohen. The soldier has changed his story numerous times, making it suspect, while Sapir’s account is so fantastical as to defy belief”
In fact, Raz Cohen, a former IDF officer, has been a key witness associated with the events since the early days after October 7th, offering several versions of his testimony that appear inconsistent.
“In an initial statement on October 9th, Cohen made no mention of attacks of a sexual nature before altering his testimony the following day. During an interview with another media outlet, he vaguely hinted at the possibility of such attacks without asserting that he had personally witnessed them. Notably, a testimony provided to the Canadian network “CBC” on October 10th made no reference to the attacks detailed in The New York Times’ recent investigation.”
As for Sapir, her account of October 7 is simply beyond the realm of plausibility. Her various testimonies have been roundly debunked as being so wildly fantastical as to be simply not believable.
One journalist who viewed part of the video said Sapir claimed “some terrorists were carrying heads in their hands [beheaded] as trophies, saying there wasn’t a thing [they] didn’t do to the heads,” implying that Hamas fighters were having sex with severed heads.
The carnage of October 7 has been widely reported by such outlets as CNN, BBC, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Yorker, ABC News, and NBC News. These media organisations have documented in great detail the massacre at the Nova music festival, where over 300 people died.
These detailed reports all described a horrific scene of mass slaughter, but not one of them mentioned torture, sexual violence, or rape. Moreover, according to YES!, Israeli police themselves have not substantiated Sapir or Cohen’s stories — despite possessing “over 60,000 ‘visual documents’ including videos from GoPro cameras worn by attackers, CCTV footage and images from drones”.
Why the rape stories are so important to Israel
Investigative journalists like Gupta and The GrayZone’s Max Blumenthal have done exhaustive debunkings of the various stories of rape and torture and other atrocities attributed to Hamas. They have exposed the blatant false accounts given to media by various Israeli government officials and related organisations in the days following the October 7 attack.
But this then begs the question: why was the Israeli government so hell-bent on portraying Hamas as rapists. torturers and the most vile “evildoers” imaginable?
Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted at the true reason for this tsunami of hasbara when he publicly and officially thanked the members of Zaka for their work around October 7.
The prime minister said the work of giving testimony helps fight the war being waged in public opinion, telling them they “have an important role in influencing public opinion, which also influences leaders.”
And there we have it. The campaign of horror stories retold by Zaka leaders, such as Yossi Landau, the Southern Commander of Zaka, are part of an orchestrated campaign of misinformation, hasbara, designed to influence public opinion worldwide and garner support for Israel’s genocidal response.
Spokespeople like Landau were out in front of cameras every day, relating the most horrific stories, none of which were ever verified. Indeed, it is doubtful whether media figures like Landau ever gave sworn testimony or depositions to the police.
In other words, the mass rape stories are supposed to portray Hamas as so evil that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is justified.
“You are also doing this sacred work and when you talk among yourselves and to the outside world, you must speak out,” Netanyahu told the Zaka team. “I want to tell you I am very impressed and full of appreciation. I thank you on behalf of all citizens of Israel.”
Indeed, the hasbarists pushing these false stories of rape are all contributing to the “war effort” by helping to justify the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.
Meanwhile, I continue to wait for someone to provide me a name.
#End.
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Never ask a man
his salary
A woman
her age
And Israel
…
for evidence
Similarly not even one of the Israeli hostages released has said they were sexually abused either. While on the other hand, there have been credible reports of the Israelis torturung and abusing Palestinian hostages:
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/10/whistleblowers-further-expose-israels-torture-of-detainees/
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd/index.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/13/after-the-unrwa-report-more-accounts-of-israels-torture-in-gaza
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/04/middleeast/un-israel-confessions-allegations-intl/index.html
And yet the white colonial nations alliance has their mainstream media continue with the constant and totally unfounded lies about this.