[News] NY Times "investigation" of mass rape by Hamas falls apart

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-ny-times-investigation-mass-rape-hamas-falls-apart>
Watch: NY Times "investigation" of mass rape by Hamas falls apart

Ali Abunimah <https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah> Media
Watch <https://electronicintifada.net/blog/media-watch> 9 January 2024
------------------------------

Facing growing international isolation and an imminent
<https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/genocide-in-gaza> prosecution for
genocide
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/south-africa-invokes-genocide-convention-world-court>
at the International Court of Justice, Israel is doubling down on one of
its most lurid propaganda narratives: The claim that Hamas fighters
systematically raped Israeli women, girls and even some men on 7 October
2023.

The latest installment of this tale came in the form of a 28 December *New
York Times* “investigation” led by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jeffrey
Gettleman.

It is dramatically headlined “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized
Sexual Violence on Oct. 7
<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html>
.”

The *Times* asserts that it conducted a two-month investigation
“establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but
part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence.” But under scrutiny the
article spectacularly fails to live up to that bold claim.

The article is an emotionally manipulative fraud aimed at justifying or
distracting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

That’s why I considered it essential to debunk it – which I did in
conversation with my colleague Nora Barrows-Friedman on The Electronic
Intifada’s livestream on 3 January.

We previously debunked Israel’s claims of mass rape in a segment on 4
December <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMqRK5LpGy4>, but returned to the
topic following the sensationalist and false reporting by *The New York
Times*.

You can watch the latest segment in the video above.
Lies and manipulation

Central to the *Times’* story is its claim that an Israeli woman called Gal
Abdush was a victim of rape before she was killed on 7 October.

The newspaper claims that Abdush “has become a symbol of the horrors
visited upon Israeli women and girls” on 7 October.

But Abdush’s family have repudiated this
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/family-of-key-case-in-new-york-times-october-7-sexual-violence-report-renounces-story-says-reporters-manipulated-them/>
claim, saying that there is no evidence she was raped.

They say they were manipulated by *The New York Times* and had no idea the
newspaper was going to use their loved one to further the rape narrative
despite the lack of any evidence that it occurred.

The distortions and manipulations in this article are now reportedly
causing “growing concern
<https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1743783991734395305>” even within the
newsroom of *The New York Times*, a private newspaper that has
long-functioned as a semi-official mouthpiece for the US government and
intelligence agencies, most notoriously its laundering of their lies
<https://fair.org/home/20-years-later-nyt-still-cant-face-its-iraq-war-shame/>
about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction.
Dismantling atrocity propaganda

The key points we covered in our latest segment on this story also include:

   -

   *The New York Times* identifies four eyewitnesses for alleged incidents
   of rape and murder – a woman identified only as Sapir, and three men: Yura
   Karol, Raz Cohen and Shoam Gueta. Each of these eyewitnesses, whose
   accounts are not new, lacks credibility. This is either because their
   stories are inherently unlikely or impossible, there is total lack of
   corroboration, including bodies and other physical and forensic evidence,
   or because the supposed witnesses have changed their stories over time.
   -

   The *Times* “investigation,” like previous similar stories by *The
   Washington Post*, CNN, *Haaretz*, *The Times of Israel* and others, does
   not confirm the existence of victims or physical or forensic evidence.
   Rather, it provides a litany of excuses for why there is no forensic
   evidence or crime scene photos – even though there was ample opportunity
   for authorities to collect them.
   -

   Another main *Times’* source is ZAKA, which the newspaper misleadingly
   describes as a nonprofit “emergency response team.” In fact, this extreme
   Jewish religious group and its leaders have been caught fabricating
   atrocity propaganda
   <https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/zaka-is-not-a-trustworthy-source-for-allegations-of-sexual-violence-on-october-7/>
   about 7 October, including the debunked tales of beheaded babies, children
   tied together and shot and burned, and of a pregnant woman whose fetus was
   torn out of her belly.

ZAKA was, moreover, founded by a man accused of serial rapes over decades
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-06-29/ty-article/.premium/zaka-founder-meshi-zahav-implicated-in-decades-of-sexual-abuse-has-died/00000181-addd-d46e-add3-bdfda1470000>
– a man the organization’s leaders continued to defend up to his death in
2021, despite evidence he used the organization’s money and resources to
commit his crimes, including against children.

   -

   Despite Israel saying there are tens of thousands of videos filmed on 7
   October, authorities have not claimed that a single one of them shows a
   rape or a sexual assault taking place – a glaring absence, given that
   Israel asserts that rape was used on a wide scale as a weapon of war.
   -

   One of the *Times’* main sources is the Israeli military, currently
   engaged in genocide in Gaza, and notoriously unreliable as a source on
   anything.
   -

   Israel has refused to cooperate with any international investigation of
   its claims, to be conducted using established methodologies for documenting
   claims of rape during armed conflict.
   -

   Israel’s mass rape claims fit into a longstanding colonial tradition of
   atrocity propaganda demonizing colonized indigenous or enslaved men as
   inherently brutish, violent and lustful, especially towards white or
   settler women.

Story falls apart

Since our livestream, even more information has come out exposing the
extent of the fraud being perpetrated by the *Times* under the cover of its
prestige as the world’s “newspaper of record.”

This includes the key admission by Israeli police that they have been
unable to locate any survivors of the alleged mass rape campaign.

And, as the Israeli newspaper *Haaretz* reported on 4 January
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-04/ty-article/.premium/israeli-police-ask-victims-and-witnesses-to-testify-about-hamas-sexual-violence/0000018c-d580-d751-ad8d-ffa4acf40000>,
in “the few cases where police have already amassed testimony about the
sexual assaults Hamas committed during its massacre in southern Israel,
they haven’t yet been able to identify the specific victims of the acts to
which witnesses have testified.”

And here’s some additional sources and observations about some of the
themes, inconsistencies and so-called witnesses we discussed in the
program:
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