Rape by Hamas??????

The London Review of Books has a May 2024 article by Azadeh Moaveni studying the rapes by Hamas on 7 October 2023. She asks if all the rapes that Israel say Hamas committed actually occurred. It is a long article, and she did quite a lot of research.

Basically, Israel announced that Hamas had murdered more than 1,400 Israelis and raped and murdered many, many women, including those taken hostage. (The 1,400 was later reduced to 1,200 after it turned out that 200 of the dead were members of Hamas, not Israeli victims). The New York Times had a long article by Jeffrey Gettleman on 26 March giving all the horrific details, saying that rape was an essential part of the Hamas attack on 7 October, 2023. This article was based, in part, on the UN report by Pramila Patten, who wrote what the Israelis told her. She did some checking, and said that while mass rape was proven, not all of the Israeli claims could be verified, but most were obviously true. She admitted she had absolutely no evidence, only information, meaning a few of the Israeli stories had contradictions and so could not possibly be true, but she accepted all those not provably false as true. The New York Times accepted all the Israeli claims as irrefutably proven: not only did Hamas rape and kill many women, many of the hostages were also raped while in captivity, as the women released are reported (by Israel) to have testified (the women are so traumatised they cannot be interviewed).

The Grayzone has many articles by Max Blumenthal et al. saying there is no evidence of any rape, the accusation of rape is Israeli policy, since many of those learning about the attack agree that rape justifies the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) punishment of Palestinians more than mere murder. I heard one reporter testify that he had seen the videos of the rapes, some taken and released by Hamas and some by Israelis who had hidden themselves and turned their videos over to Israeli authorities, so those rapes were provably true. But the Grayzone says those videos can be found on YouTube dated 2022 (meaning the YouTube date of posting, not a date in the video which might not be correct). So yes, Israel has real videos of real rapes that they gave to those studying what Hamas did on 7 October 2023, but none of those rapes occurred on 7 October, 2023 during the Hamas attack.

Israel has a propaganda department that worked hard to manufacture the story of mass rapes. The women hostages released by Hamas had a chance for a few brief words before being taken into Israeli custody, and never mentioned being raped.

Azadeh Moaveni concludes that, while some rapes by Hamas indisputably occurred, not all the rapes reported by Israel were real. She read the Grayzone pieces about the rapes by Max Blumenthal, but dismissed him as a fringe reporter, and noted that none of the mainstream media accept any of his work. She said that Bret Stephens of the New York Times said that Blumenthal is an example of ‘rape denialism’ by a ‘useful idiot’.

Although, if they bothered reading Max Blumenthal...

But why would they do that, when they've got a great story to write about the horrible Hamas atrocities reported to them by Israel (who do not allow them to verify any of those atrocities, but no need, the mainstream media know that Israelis cannot tell a lie).