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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/ny-times-found-no-7-october-rape-victims-reporter-admits">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">NY Times found no 7 October rape victims, reporter admits</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">1 March 2024</span></span> </p>
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The scandal is growing around <em>The New York Times’</em> fraudulent
“investigation” of mass rapes supposedly committed by Hamas fighters on 7
October – claims made by the newspaper that The Electronic Intifada <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-ny-times-investigation-mass-rape-hamas-falls-apart">thoroughly debunked</a> in early January.
<p>On this week’s Electronic Intifada livestream we looked at some of
the latest developments – in particular the revelation that Anat
Schwartz, one of the two Israeli propagandists who assisted lead <em>New York Times</em> reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, apparently endorsed extreme anti-Palestinian views.</p>
<p>You can watch that segment above.
</p>
The third writer, Adam Sella, turns out to be a fresh graduate with
little journalistic experience, and is the nephew of Schwartz’s partner,
heightening concerns about nepotism and conflict of interest at the
so-called newspaper of record.
<p>Schwartz herself has never been a reporter, but advertises herself as a filmmaker.</p>
<p>As we explain, Schwartz and Sella convinced one woman to hand over a
video that they believed would boost the evidence-free claims of rape by
telling her it would help Israeli propaganda – or <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hasbara">hasbara</a>.</p>
<p>“At first I didn’t consider it meaningful, I didn’t understand how
important it was, but they didn’t give up. They called me again and
again and explained how important this is to Israeli hasbara,” the woman
<a href="https://www.ynet.co.il/laisha/article/h1gzxtbtp">told</a> Israeli news outlet <em>Ynet</em>.
</p>
<h2>Revelations keep coming</h2>
<p>Since Wednesday’s livestream, more explosive revelations have come out about the scandal around the now notorious <em>New York Times</em> article published in late December with the provocative title “<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>On Wednesday, <em>The Intercept</em> <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schwartz-october-7/">reported</a> on an interview Schwartz gave in Hebrew to a podcast produced by Israel’s Channel 12.</p>
<p>Schwartz admitted in the 3 January podcast that “I have no
qualifications” to conduct such a sensitive and complex journalistic
assignment.</p>
<p>Also in that interview, “Schwartz details her extensive efforts to
get confirmation from Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centers, trauma
recovery facilities and sex assault hotlines in Israel, as well as her
inability to get a single confirmation from any of them,” <em>The Intercept</em> reports.</p>
<p>Schwartz contacted 11 specialized facilities at Israeli hospitals
that treat potential survivors of rape and sexual assault, but to no
avail.</p>
<p>“First thing I called them all, and they told me, ‘No, no complaint
of sexual assault was received,’” she said in the Channel 12 podcast. “I
had a lot of interviews which didn’t lead anywhere. Like, I would go to
all kinds of psychiatric hospitals, sit in front of the staff, all of
them are fully committed to the mission and no one had met a victim of
sexual assault.”</p>
<p>She then followed up with the head of the sexual assault hotline in
southern Israel, only to be told that there had been no reports of
sexual violence related to the 7 October events.</p>
<h2>Times defends fraudulent reporting</h2>
<p>This total failure to find a single victim ought to have alerted the <em>Times</em> that the only story here was of a massive hoax intended to incite genocidal hatred and violence against Palestinians.</p>
<p>But even to this day, the newspaper is defending its fraudulent reporting.</p>
<p>Schwartz “was told there had been no complaints made of sexual
assaults,” a *Times** spokesperson told *The Intercept**. “This however
was just the very first step of her research. She then describes the
unfolding of evidence, testimonies and eventual evidence that there may
have been systematic use of sexual assault.”</p>
<p>This spin cannot conceal that, in fact, Gettleman, Schwartz and Sella
never positively identified a single specific victim of rape, living or
dead. Nor do any of their four “eyewitnesses” of alleged mass rape
incidents <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-ny-times-investigation-mass-rape-hamas-falls-apart">have any credibility</a>.</p>
<p>The best they could do was imply that an Israeli woman who was killed that day, Gal Abdush, had been raped.</p>
<p>But that innuendo has been <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/">rejected</a> by members of Abdush’s family who say they have never been shown any evidence that she was raped.</p>
<p>They also accused the <em>Times</em> of manipulating and deceiving them into taking part in the Gettleman-led story.
</p>
At an event at Columbia University last month, Gettleman too backed away from his own reporting, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/columbia-students-confront-hillary-clinton-her-war-crimes">claiming</a>
that it wasn’t his job to produce “evidence,” but that he was merely
sharing “information” and working to “give people a voice.”
<p>As <em>The Intercept</em> notes, the statement from the <em>Times</em>
in effect “walked back the blockbuster article’s framing that evidence
shows Hamas had weaponized sexual violence to a softer claim that ‘there
may have been systematic use of sexual assault.’”</p>
<p>But rather than re-examining its reporting honestly and transparently, the <em>Times</em> has <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/new-york-times-israel-gaza-leak">launched an internal witch hunt</a> to root out staffers who have <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/ny-times-tries-cover-its-7-october-mass-rapes-fraud">leaked their concerns</a> about the fraudulent reporting of the Gettleman team.</p>
<p>And clearly the newspaper is rattled. <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/1/nyt_anat_schwartz">Speaking on <em>Democracy Now</em></a> Thursday, <em>The Intercept’s</em> Jeremy Scahill revealed that instead of correcting its own egregious errors and deceptions, the <em>Times</em> demanded a “correction” from <em>The Intercept</em>.</p>
<p>The <em>Times’</em> demand was based on the ludicrous grounds that
Sella could not be called Schwartz’s “nephew” because he is actually the
nephew not of Schwartz but of her partner.
</p>
Schwartz also broke her silence Wednesday, <a href="https://twitter.com/Anatschwartz/status/1763148587444076821">thanking</a> the <em>Times</em>
for standing by her fraudulent reporting. She also lied that she had
only “liked” one anti-Palestinian tweet and that it was “inadvertent.”
<h2>The role of independent media</h2>
<p>While <em>The Intercept</em> has done some important reporting, adding to the pressure on <em>The New York Times</em>, it comes late to this story.</p>
<p>Weeks after <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-debunking-israels-mass-rape-propaganda">The Electronic Intifada</a>, <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/despite-lack-of-evidence-allegations-of-hamas-mass-rape-are-fueling-israeli-genocide-in-gaza/"><em>Mondoweiss</em></a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPMf3CIa_BA"><em>The Grayzone</em></a> and the popular Twitter account <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40zei_squirrel%20mass%20rapes&src=typed_query&f=live">@zei_squirrel</a> had debunked the “mass rape” claims, <em>The Intercept</em> was still credulously promoting them.</p>
<p>“One thing is true: Hamas and other Palestinian militants committed
unspeakable sexual violence against Israeli civilians on October 7,” <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/12/24/feminism-sexual-violence-hamas-israel/">begins a 24 December article</a> in <em>The Intercept</em> by Judith Levine.</p>
<p>“Yes, some individuals and extreme-left organizations have denied
these atrocities or upheld them as justified resistance,” Levine claims,
an appalling smear <em>The Intercept</em> should retract.</p>
<p>What we did and will continue to do is report based on facts.</p>
<p>Will <em>The Intercept</em> show the level of accountability it now rightly demands of <em>The Times</em> for spreading Israel’s deadly lies?</p><br>
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