The Israeli government insists that Hamas formally sanctioned sexual assault on October 7, 2023. But investigators say the evidence does not stand up to scrutiny. Catherine Philp and Gabrielle Weiniger report on eight months of claim and counter-claim
Talk of rape began circulating almost before the massacres themselves were over. Much of it came from what Patten would later call “non-professionals” who supplied “inaccurate and unreliable forensic interpretations” of what they found, creating an instant but flawed narrative about what had taken place.
Meanwhile, the political establishment has opened a fresh battle with the UN over what the Patten report didn’t say: that sexual violence was beyond reasonable doubt, systematic, widespread and ordered and perpetrated by Hamas. Israeli advocates for the female survivors are now warning that the country’s refusal to co-operate with a full and legal investigation, which the carefully worded report was not, threatens the prospect of ever finding out the full truth about the sexual violence of October 7 and delivering justice for its victims.
It was not a legal investigation, Patten explained, as Israel had not allowed one: that mandate could only be fulfilled by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which Israel has refused to work with since its inception. She hoped that would change.
Patten made it clear there was sufficient evidence of acts of sexual violence to merit full and proper investigation and expressed her shock at the brutality of the violence. The report also confirmed Israeli authorities were unable to provide much of the evidence that political leaders had insisted existed. In all the Hamas video footage Patten’s team had watched and all the photographs they had seen, there were no depictions of rape. We hired a leading Israeli dark-web researcher to look for evidence of those images, including footage deleted from public sources. None could be found.
Israel has been anally raping Palestinians with electric rods and electrocuting them to death.
Hey this comment is getting reported for misinformation. Can you link please provide a source for this information?
A leaked draft of the UNRWA report detailed an interview that gave a similar account. It cited a 41-year-old detainee who said that interrogators “made me sit on something like a hot metal stick and it felt like fire,” and also said that another detainee “died after they put the electric stick up” his anus.
I hope you ban the people reporting misinformation for false reports.
To any zionist who’s found their way into this comments section. Do you think that Israeli soldiers and leadership should be judged for the sexual assault of Palestinians with the same severity as Hamas members who committed, allowed or promoted sexual violence against their captured prisoners? Who should conduct the appropriate investigation and trial?
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There are no evidences for it, so until there are, it didn’t happen
Reddit was in a frenzy over the claim on October 7 itself. The major basis behind it was a video of an Israeli prisoner with what appeared to be blood on the back of her pants. The major worldnews sub banned anyone who questioned the claim. Weeks later it turned out that the blood on her bottom was because she had cut her ankle and was sitting or kneeling in the back of the truck and got it on her pants, not that she had been raped like many assumed.
FWIW, The Times is a center-right publication that’s somewhat more factually accurate in their reporting than the New York Times is. So it’s kind of a big deal for them to admit that there just isn’t any evidence other than extremely suspicious claims about any widespread, systematic sexual violence.
The overwhelming majority of all armies of all time have weaponized rape. As I understand it Israel is doing the same damned thing. There are no good guys in this fucking war, only monsters and victims.
Israel is doing it. Hamas is not doing it.
No, they are just causing genital mutilation and genital wounds consistent with rape but since we have no video proof, you can’t say they used rape in a systematic way. They have sexually abused victim or caused immense damage to their genitals, that is confirmed by the very report that also denies systemic rape.
they are just causing genital mutilation and genital wounds consistent with rape
Having your pelsvis broken because a grenade exploded is not what most people associate with rape. Except ZAKA of course. I take it you are citing their expert analysis? Let’s see what the article has to say about it
Talk of rape began circulating almost before the massacres themselves were over. Much of it came from what Patten would later call “non-professionals” who supplied “inaccurate and unreliable forensic interpretations” of what they found, creating an instant but flawed narrative about what had taken place.
Among the first responders on October 7 was Zaka, an ultra-orthodox volunteer force. Zaka members are not trained in forensics, nor were they directed to do any more than retrieve remains from what was still an active battle zone. The decision to send them in has come under heavy assault in the Israeli media, including from military officers who believe if they had been deployed, forensics might have been preserved.
Orit Sulitzeanu, the executive director of ARCCI, notes the volunteers’ lack of familiarity with the women’s bodies they were finding and their tendency to focus on injuries they believed pointed to sexual violence, such as smashed pelvises and gunshot wounds to sex organs, ignoring other injuries that muddied the picture.
“They are all religious guys; most of them are ultra-religious. They never saw a woman except their wife,” Sulitzeanu says. “So to see all these bodies, how did they deal with that?”
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Pramila Patten, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict stated that:
“It was a catalogue of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture and other horrors,” including sexual violence.
It was not a legal investigation, Patten explained, as Israel had not allowed one:
Not sure why you keep citing a report that has no legal base. The only thing Patten concludes is that there is grounds to do a real investigation.
Who keeps blocking the real UN rape investigations again? Oh right, israel
