Gilead Ini is a Senior Research Analyst at CAMERA, the foremost media watchdog organization focused on coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, where a version of this article first appeared.
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Rape Deniers: Evidence of Hamas Sexual Assault Ignored Despite Proof (Part One)
The personal belongings of festival-goers are seen at the site of an attack on the Nova Festival by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Where there are anti-Jewish atrocities, there are deniers. And on Oct 7, there were atrocities, including countless acts of murder and mutilation, as well as brutal acts of sexual violence by the Palestinian attackers.
An Israeli who was abducted by Hamas shared that her guard violently beat her and sexually assaulted her at gunpoint. A United Nations mission “verified an incident of the rape of a woman outside of a bomb shelter” at a kibbutz, citing “digital material” and witness testimonies. The BBC reported on multiple photographs that “show the bodies of women naked from the waist down, or with their underwear ripped to one side, legs splayed, with signs of trauma to their genitals and legs.” The New York Times saw a photograph of a woman’s corpse with “dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.” A video viewed by the same paper appears to show two women “shot directly in their vaginas.” NPR viewed photos of “several suspected victims of sexual violence.”
Ten medics and soldiers reported finding the bodies of 24 undressed women in six kibbutz homes, according to The New York Times, some mutilated or tied up. Four EMTs told the newspaper paper that they found “bodies of dead women with their legs spread and underwear missing — some with their hands tied by rope and zipties.”
The UN mission viewed evidence showing that “at least ten distinct corpses displayed indications of bound wrists and/or tied legs.” Yinon Rivlin, a survivor of the music festival, said he found the body of a young woman, “no pants or underwear, legs spread apart,” with a violent wound on her genitalia. Jamal Waraki, a volunteer medic, described seeing a woman with her hands tied behind her back, half naked and bent over. Rami Shmuel, a rescue worker, reported finding the bodies of women stripped of their clothes, legs splayed.
Noam Mark, a security team member at Kibbutz Re’im, testified to discovering in a kibbutz residence the bodies of two or three women, naked and with clear signs of sexual violence — a neighbor reported hearing screaming and crying from that same residence. One survivor of the music festival, Ron Feger, told the Associated Press he overheard a woman screaming that she was being raped, followed by a gunshot, then silence. Another, Gad Liberson, told Israeli journalists that he overheard the screams and cries of women he believed were being raped, which also ended with gunshots.
Volunteer morgue worker Shari Mendes reported processing multiple bodies with signs of sexual violence and bleeding from the pelvic areas. Another morgue worker, Maayan, saw at least 10 bodies with signs of brutal sexual violence. Avigail, another soldier serving at a makeshift morgue, described “more than enough” bodies that appeared to have been raped.
Former hostage Chen Goldstein-Almog said she spoke to three victims of sexual assault while in Hamas captivity. Her daughter and fellow captive Agam corroborated that account. Aviva Siegel, another former hostage, shared that a girl that was held with her was sexually assaulted.
Volunteer therapist Bar Yuval-Shani said she heard several witness accounts of rape from festival survivors. Two therapists told The New York Times of working with a woman who was gang raped. A doctor who treated some of the released hostages told the AP that at least 10 of the freed hostages were sexually assaulted or abused. USA Today reported that two doctors who treated released hostages said they spoke of “violent sexual assaults in captivity.”
A survivor of the music festival massacre named Sapir saw the brutal rape and mutilation of several woman, she testified to the police. Raz Cohen, another survivor, also described witnessing a sadistic rape and murder.
The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel added that “information about sexual assaults on surviving young women, originally not disclosed, has reached the rape crisis centers.” Physicians for Human Rights Israel expressed a belief that there was widespread sexual and gender-based crimes.
The UN mission that verified rape at a kibbutz also concluded that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery, including rape and gang rape”; noted a “pattern of undressing, restraining and shooting of victims” that suggests sexual violence; and referred to “clear and convincing” information that hostages have been subject to “various forms of conflict-related violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” violence they believe may be ongoing.
These are but some of the atrocities. Cue the deniers.
In this three part series, CAMERA will expose some of these deniers, and offer irrefutable proof of the sexual abuse of Israeli women by the Palestinian attackers both during and after the October 7 atrocities.
Among those seeking to discredit the idea of widespread sexual violence are the usual suspects — the Hamas apologists and conspiracists that inhabit the gutters of the Internet. And among their arguments are the usual tactics — falsehoods, omissions, distortions, and table pounding. It’s just another day in the cellar.
But such noise can carry up the walls, and in this case, make their way to the mainstream. What began as a campaign of mud-slinging by fringe activists like Max Blumenthal, Ali Abunimah, and Mondoweiss was amplified by The Intercept, an anti-establishment publication that exists a half-step closer to the mainstream, and from there it spread — outward to the mobs, but also upward to institutions like NPR, CNN, and The New York Times, which deferentially reported their skepticism.
Zooming Out
Before looking at specific examples of disinformation by the “critics,” as the Times and NPR calls them, we should address a few broader points.
Despite evidence of rape, those defending Hamas from charges of sexual violence point to a lack of forensic evidence — the kind that might be revealed at the denouement of a television crime show. Indeed, Israel’s frontier with Gaza on and after Oct. 7 was less untouched crime scene and more a battlefield and disaster zone.
But this is neither exonerating nor unusual. “There is very much what’s known as the CSI effect, where there is a perception that without forensic evidence or DNA, then you don’t have a case,” an expert on sexual violence in conflict zones told NPR. “And that’s just patently not true.”
In this case, the full CSI treatment was impracticable. “As is common in war, collection of physical evidence was hindered by ongoing combat and a large, chaotic crime scene,” NPR reported.
With limited resources and such a large-scale attack, compromises were necessary, journalist Carrie Keller-Lynn explained. “Instead of going through CSI, which would make it possible to produce evidence of crimes, the bodies are being processed through the disaster victim identification (DVI) track, as is common for mass casualty events,” she reported. Or as the UN mission put it, there was a “prioritization of rescue operations and the recovery, identification, and burial of the deceased in accordance with religious practices, over the collection of forensic evidence.” (The mission noted additional factors, too, that hindered the collection of forensic examination. See paragraph 46 of its report.)
The deniers had also pointed to lack of testimony by victims — a puzzling defense in the context of this story, where survivors describe women raped then murdered; where recovery workers noted naked and bound corpses; and where released hostages say those still in captivity had said they were sexually assaulted. Which category of those victims, exactly, would the deniers expect to have heard from? (When a hostage did eventually speak out about being sexually assaulted, the self-appointed investigators were not particularly interested, or worse, dismissed her account.)
None of this means that every piece of testimony is beyond reproach. Just as the record of 9/11 was contaminated by multiple false accounts and fake survivors, likewise after 10/7 false accounts were reported by pretenders, and some unfounded atrocity charges were shared, believed, and repeated. The “critics” did not miss the opportunity to capitalize on these inaccurate accounts in order to push the idea, through innuendo or explicit denial, that every witness of rape and every first responder account of sexually abused bodies are fake.
The Critics
NPR’s story about “critics” of a New York Times piece on sexual violence repeatedly cites The Intercept.
And across The Intercept’s incessant efforts to discredit those shining a light on Palestinian sexual violence, its reporters cite Mondoweiss, Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada, and Max Blumenthal of Grayzone.
It is an echo chamber of Hamas apologia — invariably, one story links to identical accusations by the others, which link back to similar pieces by the rest. The common theme, other than denial, is the extremism of its participants.
Consider, most relevantly, their response to the Oct. 7 massacre:
A writer for the Intercept, at least, grants that the attack was “horrifying” — though this was in a post whose argument was that we shouldn’t view it as horrifying.
Others are less subtle. Denier Ali Abunimah, for example, was self-evidently delighted by the attack and slaughter of civilians. He not only defended the attack, calling it “just”; not only insisted we shouldn’t feel bad about it; but also viciously attacked those — including critics of Israel — who would dare share any sympathy for the victims of the mass slaughter of Jews.
Mondoweiss summarized the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust with an announcement that “Gazans have broken out of their open air prison imposed by Israel and launched an elaborate surprise attack on their occupier,” while pooh-poohing the idea that Hamas had started a war. As the extent of the atrocities became apparent, Mondoweiss’s defenses of the assault grew more emphatic. On Oct. 9, it published a piece insisting we “must shout our support for the resistance from our rooftops.”
Max Blumenthal minimized Hamas’ slaughter as ”guerrilla bands bursting out of a besieged ghetto with homemade weapons.” In response to an X/Twitter post noting that at its attack on a music festival Hamas “began shooting those in attendance,” Blumenthal mocked the victims and justified their slaughter.
Part Two of this article will appear tomorrow.
The post Rape Deniers: Evidence of Hamas Sexual Assault Ignored Despite Proof (Part One) first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote
Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’
Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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