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Rape Deniers: Evidence of Hamas Sexual Assault Ignored Despite Proof (Part Two)
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
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.
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.
Part One of this story laid out the facts about Hamas’ sexual violence, proof it happened, and some information about the critics who are disputing these facts. Part Two follows below.
Denial
As with the broader Hamas apologia, the forms of denial of sexual violence range from heavy-handed to more refined. Mondoweiss, for example, contends that the most well-known testimonies are “nothing more than a repetition of fake news and government propaganda.” Another writer who is a college professor describes a compendium of sexual assault charges as “a manipulative betrayal of actual victims” (emphasis added). Arun Gupta in Yes! magazine insists that “alternative explanations applies [sic] to nearly every sexual violence claim in the media.”
Others cast doubt with a bit more subtlety, arguing there is no evidence of “mass” or “systematic” rape while ignoring or dismissing all evidence of rape. Perhaps the most “generous” — and rarest — subcategory accepts that rape “may have occurred” but brushes it off as par for the course: “The question has never been whether individual acts of sexual assault may have occurred on October 7. Rape is not uncommon in war,” shrugs The Intercept. (Their point of contention, they continue, is whether there was a “pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.”)
Which brings us to some of the specific arguments by the deniers.
Argument: Rape Crisis Centers Didn’t Confirm Rapes. (They did.)
The Intercept, in its attempt to both discredit a New York Times article on sexual violence and suggest an absence of evidence of sexual violence, cite silence from Israeli rape crisis centers. Co-authors Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, and Daniel Boguslaw point to an interview with one of the New York Times reporters, Anat Schwartz, that was recorded after the publication of her piece. They write:
In the podcast 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. [emphasis added]
The Intercept authors never revisit this, leaving readers to believe the relevant professionals are unaware of any sexual assaults.
But just a week before the Intercept piece was published, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel released a report concluding that “Hamas’s attack on October 7 included brutal sexual assaults.” The report assessed open-source information as well as “information that arrived at the ARCCI from professionals and confidential calls.” It was very much a “confirmation” from rape crisis centers.
The Intercept piece, which speaks only of silence by those centers, does not mention the existence of the report.
If there’s doubt that the omission might be calculated, we should consider how the authors also cover up Schwartz’s reference to learning of a sexual assault survivor at the start of her investigation. They write:
After seeing [media] interviews [with a unit 669 paramedic who shared unfounded accounts], Schwartz started calling people at Kibbutz Be’eri and other kibbutzim that were targeted on October 7 in an effort to track down the story. “Nothing. There was nothing,” she said. “No one saw or heard anything.” She then reached the unit 669 paramedic who relayed to Schwartz the same story he had told other media outlets…
If readers were to cross-check with the podcast itself, though, they would notice a glaring elision from this summary. (Or more likely, they wouldn’t notice — the interview is in Hebrew, leaving most Intercept readers unable to check for themselves.) Just after Schwartz’s reference to calling people at kibbutzim and just before her description of reaching out to the paramedic, she tells the interviewer:
Then there started to be some drips [of information], and suddenly a psychologist who worked, volunteered, with survivors of the Nova [music festival]– so she says, “Actually a woman wrote on our site that she endured sexual assault. But I’m not qualified at all to care for victims of sexual assault, so I passed her to a colleague.” [emphasis added]
It would have been impossible for The Intercept, which says it fully translated the interview, to miss Schwartz’s comment. The relevant section lasts just over a minute. Schwartz speaks of the kibbutzim for six seconds; then about the assault victim for thirty seconds; and finally then about the paramedic for roughly 20 seconds.
Claim: There is no “testimony.” (There is.)
A November headline on Haaretz reads, “The Scope of Hamas’ Campaign of Rape Against Israeli Women Is Revealed, Testimony After Testimony.”
According to Ali Abunimah and Electronic Intifada, the article itself disproves the headline, as it notes that a newly formed Israeli commission has “thus far … not taken testimony directly.” This, Abunimah insists, is a “giveaway” of foul play.
Anyone bothering to read the piece would learn that the headline is unremarkable and appropriate. The story speaks of “testimony collected by the police,” testimony “from volunteers at the forensic medicine institute,” and “testimony from Hamas terrorists.”
Argument: Shari Mendes Didn’t Mention Rape Before November. (She did.)
Shari Mendes, who worked at a makeshift morgue used to process and identify bodies from Hamas’ massacre, described evidence of sexual assault: corpses of many young women bloodied “particularly round their underwear,” others shot in the breasts, some with broken pelvises.
So Mondoweiss works to discredit her. First, the publication charges that, in her Nov. 18 interview with CNN, she appeared under a pseudonym. (She appeared under the name Shari.)
The larger attempt to discredit her focuses on a supposed inconsistency in Shari’s CNN interview: “In [a] written report in Ynet, published on October 31, 2023, she did not mention any claims of sexual violence.”
In other words, Mondoweiss casts her CNN testimony about rape as a new embellishment, because 18 days earlier she said nothing of the sort.
The “written report” cited by Mondoweiss is a news story that cites five workers at the morgue. Here, from that Hebrew article, is the entirely of the section that quotes Mendes:
“In my civilian life, I’m actually an architect,” [Shari] says, “but on October 7, the world changed, and from my routine life we went over to rooms for identification and purification of the bodies, some of which were in terrible condition, and yet, I cleaned them all with love, dedication and respect.”
As time passed, she tries to come to her senses, and it is not easy for her. “We are still shocked by the amount of evil we saw in the bodies and the condition of some of them. We still have nightmares from the smell. It will take some time before we manage to forget it.”
She says that until this interview she did not allow herself to cry. “I’m afraid that if I cry, I’ll fall apart. I’m a woman who runs away from crying and holds a passion. I also don’t let myself feel. What I want most is for every mother to know with what love and tenderness we purified her daughter,” she says.
Then she bursts into tears.
This is meant to be proof that Mendes’ dishonestly lied to CNN.
At any rate, contrary to Mondoweiss’ insinuation, Mendes did discuss evidence sexual violence before her CNN appearance, and even before the publication of the cited Ynet article.
On Oct. 20, she was quoted in the Daily Mail referring to “evidence of mass rape so brutal that they broke their victims’ pelvis — women, grandmothers, children.” In a video posted on Oct. 24, she notes that those at the morgue saw “genitals cut off” and stated that “woman have been raped.” Ynet itself had previously quoted a video clip in which Mendes says that morgue workers have “seen women who had been raped.” She is similarly quoted in an Oct. 30 piece on a Fox News.
Mondoweiss’ argument, then, relies not only on weak argumentation, but also egregious cherry picking.
And Rami Shmuel …
Mondoweiss pulls a similar stunt with another of CNN’s interviewees, a recovery volunteer named Rami Shmuel. Shmuel told CNN that “There is not a doubt about what our girls went through with terrorists. We found naked women stripped out without any clothes, their legs were spread out.”
Mondoweiss counters:
CNN fails to mention the fact that Rami Shmuel was not present at the festival location during the attack. According to Shmuel’s Facebook post, published on the afternoon of October 7, he was “safe” in a villa in Netivot settlement.
Shmuel claims the next day that he joined efforts to search for bodies and survivors in the area in a personal, unofficial capacity. What Shmuel told his followers on the evening of October 8 did not have any hint of sexual violence: “An hour ago, I left the area, and the scenes are very, very difficult and (…) A war zone in every sense of the word. Hundreds of abandoned bullet-riddled cars, fires still burning in some open areas.” (ellipsis in original)
No hint, they say.
The fact that Shmuel was not at the festival is irrelevant — a red herring with no value beyond throwing off readers. His discussion on CNN is about recovery efforts after the massacre.
More strikingly, although Mondoweiss holds up the Oct. 8 Facebook post as if it is the extent of Shmuel’s testimony, it only represents a sliver of the picture. Shmuel was in the field for 10 days, during which his posts went well beyond references to abandoned cars.
On Oct. 9, he wrote that with every hour that passes and every bit of territory wrested from Hamas, “the magnitude of the disaster, the cruelty of the human animals, and the severe horrors are revealed.” Like in his Oct. 8 post, he shares no specifics about the human impact. Are we meant to conclude from this that he saw no victims?
On Oct. 10, he described a “difficult night” during which the “reality of the great horrors and the disaster” hit him and, for a brief moment, he “cried like a child broken to pieces.” And later that day: “The sights and stories I was exposed to in the last days are something I will never forget until the day I die.”
On Oct. 11, he wrote of “another day of being exposed to horrors” that aren’t shared in the media. It is the front line of hell, he says.
On Oct. 17, he wrote: “Come see how cruelly everyone was murdered here. There is almost no corpse that hasn’t been abused.”
For Mondoweiss to point to Shmuel’s Oct. 8 post as evidence he did not see atrocities — bodies, burned bodies, naked and splayed bodies, or anything else — is plainly dishonest.
Part Three of this series will appear tomorrow.
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.
The post Rape Deniers: Evidence of Hamas Sexual Assault Ignored Despite Proof (Part Two) first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Orthodox Rabbinical Conference Slams German University for Canceling Lecture by Israeli Historian Benny Morris
Israeli historian Benny Morris in 2024. Photo: Screenshot
The Orthodox Rabbinical Conference of Germany, an influential association of orthodox rabbis, lambasted the University of Leipzig for canceling a lecture by Israeli historian Benny Morris following anti-Israel student protests described by the school as “understandable, but frightening in nature.”
The Cologne-based group said on Wednesday that it was “shameful to see how quickly an academic institution in Germany is now caving in to aggressive anti-Israeli and antisemitic activism,” German media reported. Instead, the association continued, it is necessary to “resolutely defend the freedom of teaching and science.”
According to the rabbinical conference, young people must be taught to engage with each other at educational institutions rather than shut out opposing views in order to fulfill the post-Nazi promise of “never again.” However, it continued, submitting to aggressive activists rather than protecting constitutional rights is an “alarming signal” and a threat to a free, democratic society.
Morris, one of Israel’s leading public intellectuals, was scheduled to deliver a lecture about extremism and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, in which the Jewish state secured its independence, at the university on Thursday as part of a lecture series on antisemitism.
However, the school released a statement this past Friday announcing that it had canceled the planned event, citing protests over the lecture and what it described as security concerns.
“Our invitation to Prof. Morris was motivated by the desire to talk about his earlier work, which has had a profound impact on historical research, the university said in its statement. “Unfortunately, Prof. Morris has recently expressed views in interviews and discussions that can be read as offensive and even racist. This has led to understandable, but frightening in nature, protests from individual student groups.”
The University of Leipzig did not elaborate on any specific comments by Morris, whose works include the seminal study The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, first published in 1988, and made a point of noting it did not endorse the historian’s views.
“In principle, inviting speakers to the university does not necessarily mean that we agree with their views, and we firmly distance ourselves from Prof. Morris’ controversial statements,” the school said. “The purpose of the event with him was to engage critically, not to endorse his theses or later statements. In our opinion, science thrives through the exchange of diverse ideas, including those that are challenging or uncomfortable. We trust that our students are able to engage constructively and critically with the guest speaker.”
Various groups including Students for Palestine Leipzig had called for the lecture to be canceled, arguing Morris — who has expressed political opinions associated with both the left and the right — held “deeply racist” views against Palestinians.
“Together with security concerns, the above points mean that Prof. Benny Morris’ lecture will not take place,” the university stated.
Morris, 75, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the decision to cancel the lecture was “disgraceful, especially since it resulted from fear of potential violence by students. It is sheer cowardice and appeasement.”
Despite canceling Morris’ lecture, the University of Leipzig expressed concern about the increased efforts to boycott and marginalize Israeli scholars because they are from the world’s lone Jewish state.
“Regardless of this case, we want to express our concern that a double standard is being established that is being applied to Israeli scholars, who are increasingly marginalized and excluded from events under the pretext of political differences of opinion, while other voices are given unhindered access to the university,” the university said. “This applies, for example, in Leipzig to events by colleagues who are close to the BDS movement, which is classified as a suspected extremist case in Germany. We are far from establishing a culture of cancellations, but the possibility should remain open to be able to discuss difficult and critical voices from both sides in a tough manner.”
The Algemeiner has reported extensively on wide-ranging efforts across academia to exclude Israeli scholars and institutions in accordance with the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.
The post Orthodox Rabbinical Conference Slams German University for Canceling Lecture by Israeli Historian Benny Morris first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Australia Backs UN Resolution Calling for Israel to Pull Out From Gaza, West Bank in Major Policy Shift
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong during Question Time in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Nov. 28, 2024. Photo: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas via Reuters Connect
Australia on Tuesday voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution calling on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, breaking a two-decade pattern of opposing such a measure.
The resolution passed by a vote of 157-8 vote, with Israel and the United States voting no and seven abstentions.
In the measure, the General Assembly called for a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “based on the pre-1967 borders,” as well as a peace conference in New York next year, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, to advance diplomatic efforts in making the two-state solution a reality.
The resolution characterized Israel as an “occupying power,” demanding the Jewish state end its presence in Gaza, the West Bank, and eastern Jerusalem — areas described as “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” It also called on the UN to recognize the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination and the right to their independent state.”
Australia has not voted for such a measure at the UN since 2001. However, Australia’s Ambassador to the UN James Larsen and a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong both said in statements that Tuesday’s vote was meant to work toward peace in the Middle East and a two-state solution. Wong previously called on Israel to “exercise restraint” on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Australian Opposition Leader Peter Dutton blasted the government’s decision to support the UN resolution, accusing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of “selling out” the Jewish community and “abandoning Israel” for electoral purposes.
“The best we can do for peace in the Middle East is defeat Hamas and Hezbollah and make sure their proxy in Iran does not strike with nuclear weapons, or through the Houthis, or others they are finding because innocent women and children are losing their lives,” he told reporters in Sydney.
The vote came amid already flaring tensions between Israel and Australia.
On Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar summoned Australia’s Ambassador to Israel, Ralph King, for an official reprimand following Canberra’s decision not to grant Israel’s former Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, a visa to enter the country last month.
Saar charged that the decision to prohibit Shaked from visiting Australia was based on “baseless blood libels spread by the pro-Palestinian lobby.”
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke explained that his decision to refuse Shaked’s visa application was rooted in concerns that she would “seriously undermine social cohesion” by speaking about the war in the Middle East, noting her past comments about Palestinians.
Meanwhile, antisemitism in Australia has surged following Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
Antisemitism in Australia quadrupled to record levels over the past year, with Australian Jews experiencing more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, according to a new report published by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), an organization that advocates upholding the civil rights of the country’s some 120,000 Jewish citizens. In many cases, antisemitic incidents were fueled by anti-Israel animus.
Daniel Aghion, president of ECAJ, lambasted Australia’s latest UN vote in comments reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.
“This is a shameless pursuit of a domestic political agenda that puts [the ruling Labor Party’s] aspirations in vulnerable seats ahead of historic and principled support for a democratic ally,” he said, referring to Australia’s upcoming elections this spring. “For some time now, this government has been chipping away at bipartisan support for Israel and a negotiated end to the conflict. After this latest significant shift, there is very little left.”
David Taragin is a writer based in New York.
The post Australia Backs UN Resolution Calling for Israel to Pull Out From Gaza, West Bank in Major Policy Shift first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Deplorable Blood Libel’: Amnesty International Under Fire for Accusing Israel of Genocide in Gaza
Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in this handout picture released on March 5, 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS
Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza during its war against the Hamas terrorist group, in a report published Thursday that Jerusalem denounced as an “antisemitic blood libel” based on lies.
The report, which was almost 300 pages, claimed Israel aimed to systematically destroy Palestinian communities in Gaza by launching lethal strikes, dismantling infrastructure, and obstructing humanitarian aid, including food and medicine. The allegations framed Israel’s military campaign as unjustifiable, even in light of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and more than 250 others were taken hostage into Gaza last year.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” Amnesty International chief Agnès Callamard said in the report.
Israel responded by saying the report was “entirely false.”
“The deplorable and fanatical organization Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Amnesty Israel, the organization’s local chapter, distanced itself from the report, stating that while the devastation in Gaza had reached “catastrophic proportions,” it did not meet the legal definition of genocide.
Members of the branch criticized the global office for reaching what they described as a “predetermined conclusion.”
Amnesty International’s report outlined numerous recommendations urging the international community to exert intense pressure on Israel — including the immediate halt of all military aid to the country — but failed to make any mention of pressuring Hamas to release the hostages.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry has said that 44,000 Palestinians have been killed. These figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The Israel Defense Forces estimates that approximately 19,000 Hamas operatives have been killed, suggesting a combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio that is far lower than in other recent conflicts, such as those in Afghanistan and against Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria.
Watchdog group NGO Monitor accused Amnesty International of publishing the report as part of a bid to strengthen the lawfare efforts led by South Africa and its allies before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as well as the “pathological propaganda of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and other political actors.”
“Amnesty’s report and recommendations … are not a credible, unbiased, carefully considered analysis of the complex circumstances inherent in the Gaza conflict,” the group said.
Other critics of the report argued Amnesty’s bar for declaring genocide was misguided, noting widely recognized historical examples of genocide such as the Holocaust for comparison.
There are six million reasons why @amnesty is wrong, and a million of them were children.
— Mark Goldfeder (@MarkGoldfeder) December 5, 2024
NGO Monitor’s legal adviser, Anne Herzberg, accused Amnesty of fabricating a definition of genocide tailored exclusively to Israel.
“It’s not surprising that Amnesty invented a definition for genocide because they did the exact same thing when it came to apartheid,” Herzberg told The Algemeiner.
The report’s dishonesty was particularly egregious, she said, because it failed to disclose this redefinition until page 101 — a point most readers are unlikely to reach.
“They know almost no one is going to get that far into the report to notice that they say that,” Herzberg said, adding that the main purpose of the report isn’t accuracy but propaganda.
She alleged that Amnesty International had predetermined its conclusion months before, with some members of its Israel branch confirming this.
“They decided months ago they wanted to write a genocide report and then cobbled together some made up allegations in order to fit that definition because the point is to demonize Israel,” Herzberg said.
She noted that the organization had in the past expressed opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, and as such all of its actions should be viewed within that ideological context.
Amnesty’s selective omissions, which included downplaying or ignoring evidence of Hamas’s operations in areas targeted by Israeli strikes, were designed “to paint a picture of Israeli malevolence.”
Herzberg highlighted that Amnesty’s website described the Oct. 7 massacre as “Israel’s offensive,” a framing she said underscores the organization’s bias. “That just gives you a flavor of what this organization is about,” she concluded.
The post ‘Deplorable Blood Libel’: Amnesty International Under Fire for Accusing Israel of Genocide in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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