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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-ny-times-investigation-mass-rape-hamas-falls-apart">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Watch: NY Times "investigation" of mass rape by Hamas falls apart</h1>
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<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali Abunimah</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-blog"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blog/media-watch">Media Watch</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">9 January 2024</span></span> </p>
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Facing growing international isolation and an <a href="https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/genocide-in-gaza">imminent</a> prosecution for <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/south-africa-invokes-genocide-convention-world-court">genocide</a>
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.
<p>The latest installment of this tale came in the form of a 28 December <em>New York Times</em> “investigation” led by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jeffrey Gettleman.</p>
<p>It is dramatically headlined “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html">‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7</a>.”</p>
<p>The <em>Times</em> 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.</p>
<p>The article is an emotionally manipulative fraud aimed at justifying or distracting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>We previously <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMqRK5LpGy4">debunked Israel’s claims of mass rape in a segment on 4 December</a>, but returned to the topic following the sensationalist and false reporting by <em>The New York Times</em>.</p>
<p>You can watch the latest segment in the video above.</p>
<h2>Lies and manipulation</h2>
<p>Central to the <em>Times’</em> story is its claim that an Israeli woman called Gal Abdush was a victim of rape before she was killed on 7 October.</p>
<p>The newspaper claims that Abdush “has become a symbol of the horrors visited upon Israeli women and girls” on 7 October.</p>
<p>But Abdush’s <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/family-of-key-case-in-new-york-times-october-7-sexual-violence-report-renounces-story-says-reporters-manipulated-them/">family have repudiated this</a> claim, saying that there is no evidence she was raped.</p>
<p>They say they were manipulated by <em>The New York Times</em> 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.</p>
<p>The distortions and manipulations in this article are now reportedly causing “<a href="https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1743783991734395305">growing concern</a>” even within the newsroom of <em>The New York Times</em>,
a private newspaper that has long-functioned as a semi-official
mouthpiece for the US government and intelligence agencies, most
notoriously its <a href="https://fair.org/home/20-years-later-nyt-still-cant-face-its-iraq-war-shame/">laundering of their lies</a> about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction.
</p>
<h2>Dismantling atrocity propaganda</h2>
<p>The key points we covered in our latest segment on this story also include:</p>
<ul><li><p><em>The New York Times</em> 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.</p></li><li><p>The <em>Times</em> “investigation,” like previous similar stories by <em>The Washington Post</em>, CNN, <em>Haaretz</em>, <em>The Times of Israel</em>
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.</p></li><li><p>Another main <em>Times’</em> 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 <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/zaka-is-not-a-trustworthy-source-for-allegations-of-sexual-violence-on-october-7/">fabricating atrocity propaganda</a>
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.</p></li></ul>
<p>ZAKA was, moreover, founded by a man <a href="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">accused of serial rapes over decades</a>
– 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.</p>
<ul><li><p>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.</p></li><li><p>One of the <em>Times’</em> main sources is the Israeli military,
currently engaged in genocide in Gaza, and notoriously unreliable as a
source on anything.</p></li><li><p>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.</p></li><li><p>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.</p></li></ul>
<h2>Story falls apart</h2>
<p>Since our livestream, even more information has come out exposing the extent of the fraud being perpetrated by the <em>Times</em> under the cover of its prestige as the world’s “newspaper of record.”</p>
<p>This includes the key admission by Israeli police that they have been
unable to locate any survivors of the alleged mass rape campaign.</p>
<p>And, as the Israeli newspaper <a href="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"><em>Haaretz</em> reported on 4 January</a>,
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.”</p>
<p>And here’s some additional sources and observations about some of the
themes, inconsistencies and so-called witnesses we discussed in the
program:
</p>
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