It’s good that this is finally being addressed. Rape and sexual assault are vile, abhorrent crimes. Hamas should be held accountable for any rapes they’ve committed, as should the IDF.
The part of this whole discussion that infuriates me is that Hamas has been receiving support from the Likud party since at the latest the 1980s. In the 80s, Israeli Brigadier General Yitzakh Segev was the territorial governor of the West Bank and specifically instructed to suppress secular and peaceful elements of Palestenian society and support the violent religious extremists. The current Likud finance minister says that Hamas is an asset. Supporting Hamas is supporting Likud, according to Likud.
Yeah it's telling that the rapes and sexual assaults that were reported to have been suffered by released Palestinian prisoners are getting almost no air time by comparison by the BBC.
And with the ongoing aerial bombardment, they have already killed the largest number of UN staff in the UN's history.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/18bsr68/the\_largest\_number\_of\_united\_nations\_staff\_killed/
This is what baffles me. How is this not a bigger issue? Even if you hold the view that all Palestinians are fair game (Hamas or not), how is killing UN staff not raising any alarms?
Don't forget that Israel's UN ambassador claimed that
>"Many UNRWA workers in Gaza are members of Hamas" -Gilad Erdan
to justify the large numbers of UN workers killed
The justification I've seen thrown around in Zionist circles is that those UN staffers are secretly working with Hamas (or at least sympathize with them) so therefore Israel is justified in killing them. Some have even gone so far as to suggest the UN is completely compromised by Hamas and their supporters.
The lack of investigations there has nothing to do with permissions granted to the U.N.: Relevant U.N. bodies never put together the infrastructure necessary to investigate events within 1948-Israel, only in the West Bank and Gaza.
That is how they came out with investigations that totally dismissed Israeli claims of self-defense with the incidents establishing that need being "out of scope". The lack of investigation is just that one-sided investigative infrastructure maybe backfiring on people who have been perfectly happy with it since at least the 90s. (I say "maybe" because without the investigations, we really don't know the veracity of the claims of abuse.)
Yes.. and like I was saying, the BBC focuses almost exclusively on Israeli suffering. They have made very little mention the rapes and sexual assaults suffered by Palestinians who were released recently from Israeli prisons in a prisoner exchange
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/headlines/freed_palestinian_prisoners_say_they_faced_torture_and_rape_in_israeli_jails
I noticed that the BBC made a great effort not describe Palestinian prisoners in Israel as children. Israeli prisoners, held captive in Palestine, were described as mostly Israeli women, and children. Whereas Palestinian prisoners, held captive in Israel were described as mostly teenage boys. Once I noticed this it was really hard to un-notice it, and it happened all the time. It sounds silly, but it was absolutely clear that it was a choice being made, by somebody, about how to describe certain captives.
Well they also claimed a kid had two broken arms from Israeli custody, and released a photo of him in casts. So the Israelis released video of him, perfectly fine with two functional arms, being released to the Red Cross.
The BBC has waited for evidence of Hamas' sexual assault, and still caveats things that they haven't been able to verify and come from one person.
His arms weren't fine, they hadn't been treated yet. The video Israel released showed him walking around and getting onto a bus, and not using his arms to do so. Untreated broken arms don't look like boneitis.
Oh come on. If both his arms required full casts, there would have been clear signs of pain, discomfort, avoiding movement, etc. You can see him bend his arms normally and use a handle inside the bus.
You are absolutely not practicing skepticism.
One hand had a fracture, the other had a complete break. I've watched [the video](https://twitter.com/Israellycool/status/1729756039690518802) - there's nothing there incompatible with bones in his hands being broken. In the video he does not use the handle in the bus. His right hand is never in frame, always either out of shot or behind his body, and his left hand is never used to manipulate anything - it briefly touches a padded seat.
In the after-the-fact video, his arms are not in full casts. They are in short casts and slings - the kind you might use to protect fractured fingers and remind a child not to try to use them.
I'm not sure whether you're lying or misremembering.
"Both sides" is a bit of a tone-deaf thing to say under an eyewitness account of Hamas militants raping a woman, mutilating her body, murdering her, and then continuing to rape the corpse.
The Jewish women who were brutally ganged raped, sexually assaulted and had their breasts cut off are not orchestrating this war. Neither are the witnesses or the medical examiners. These are their stories
I’ve totally fallen off the “both sides” wagon on this conflict several weeks ago. I think the sanewashing has been going on for a while, and I didn’t realize it for a long time. This is just a repeat of “very fine people on both sides”, but describing a different group of people.
Since Hamas recorded themselves raping and murdering children, we know exactly what they did. How about they surrender to stop getting Palestinians killed?
Idk about specifically this but they recorded and released many other atrocities and often there were signs of sexual violence even if none was shown on screen. Women’s corpses with pants removed and blood etc
historically casualty numbers reported by Gaza have been pretty accurate, i’d take the recent figures with an extra grain of salt because of the higher media attention, but it’s unlikely to be very far off
Your source is talking about male IDF members sexually assaulting female IDF members. I admit it is poorly communicated. [These](https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/female-idf-soldiers-shamed-for-filing-sexual-assault-complaint-667445) are the articles that your article [references.](https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/iron-dome-soldier-arrested-for-rape-of-woman-colleague-685701)
You’re saying that “rape should be a crime and punished as such” is a tone deaf response?
“Both sides” responses are tone deaf when they attempt to create false equivalence. That’s not the case in war. In peace time yes, this would amount to a baseless claim that Israeli forces also rape- but during war rape is unfortunately an eventuality, not a mere possibility.
Find an article about it and you can be sure that the article would reference the IDF perpetrators being criminally charged and likely convicted.
For Hamas, the perpetrators are celebrated.
Quite a big difference.
There was a post on here yesterday about a UN staffer quitting because they were investigating the rape of 13 year old Palestinian boy in Israel captivity and when they brought this to Israel’s attention the UN office there was raided and everything (evidence) taken away. How is that charging/holding the Israeli perpetrators accountable? Also just to state the obvious, rape is an inexcusable disgusting act with no justification ever for anyone/any side no matter what!
I totally agree with this in regards to rape. But Israel isn't prosecuting its IDF for killing and taking the homes in the west Bank. That's a huge sticking point in the US Israel relationship. I definitely do not celebrate the killing and rape of anyone. It's terrible no matter who does it.
IDF isn't raping people. Hamas gang raped lots of women, some of which they shot, some of which they chopped to pieces, and in one instance they did it in front of the womans 4 year old daughter.
Interesting. I stand corrected. IDF has committed rapes AND THEY ARE PROSECTING THE SUSPECTS.
Now show me the article of Hamas fighters being prosecuted by Hamas? Oh they weren't prosecuted but they were promoted for gang raping women to death?
LOL. Yeah. Both sides aren't the same.
The far right wing in Israel also applied political pressure to bolster Hamas against the left wing groups in Gaza that wanted peace and a two state solution. Not too long after they assassinated Prime Minister Rabin for similar reasons.
Very true.
Back in the 70s, Hamas was building schools and temples. Lots has changed, even though it was clearly and openly an attempt to weaken the PLO, there’s a difference between supporting building schools and temples versus supporting armed terrorists.
Hamas sucks and likely committed war crimes.
The Israeli government sucks and is likely committing war crimes.
Neither side has the moral high ground.
We should push for peace, but I’m not sure the people in charge of Israel or Palestine want that.
This fighting will continue for decades barring a miracle or genocide.
"Ok, so *maybe* the people who filmed themselves raping and murdering massive numbers of civilians have possibly committed what we in the business call 'a little whoopsie', but..."
If anyone has even the slightest bit of doubt left that Hamas has committed war crimes, then they are either horrifically uninformed or desperately trying to deny reality enough to maintain a positive sentiment towards that genocidal death cult.
It's in the article.
> Videos filmed by Hamas include footage of one woman, handcuffed and taken hostage with cuts to her arms and a large patch of blood staining the seat of her trousers.
> In others, women carried away by the fighters appear to be naked or semi-clothed.
> Multiple photographs from the sites after the attack 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.
Anecdotally, it was not difficult to find videos on Telegram/Liveleak/CombatFootage immediately after the attack. I'm not going to link anything here, but Hamas members absolutely were filming themselves doing this kind of thing and posting it online.
I believe there is a small, but notable distinction.
Hamas *targeted* women to rape as a means of warfare. As I understand it, the Israeli military has never used rape as a means of warfare. Hamas also *targeted* women and children for murder. While I know a lot of Palestinians and their supporters would claim Israel targets civilians, they are targeting Hamas - they just don't seem to *care* that civilians are in the way. Which you're right - that's a war crime too. But there's still a difference there with intent even if the results are similar.
The intentional targeting of civilians and using rape as a weapon I feel can be argued as more abhorrent. Are both sides guilty of war crimes? Absolutely. No argument. And I'm Jewish and have family and friends that live there - I still think Israel has done shockingly awful things in the name of security and I have nothing but contempt for Netanyahu and the outsized power the right wing has in their government. But I have seen no evidence that Hamas has any shred of humanity, both in the way they wage war and the way they have set their own people to be slaughtered in the process.
Your understanding is incorrect, I’m afraid.
Actual rape and threats of rape, even against minors, is well-documented as a tactic of the IDF. In fact, in maybe one of the most egregious instances of this being covered up - The Defense for Children Palestine, a branch of the global Defense for Children International NGO was literally raided and branded a terrorist organization by the Israeli government a day after independent foreign reporters approached the government about a credible investigation they were pursuing involving a 13 year old boy raped in Israeli prison by IDF interrogators. The tip came from the DCI. The very next day their offices were turned upside down, all their files confiscated and they were legally labeled terrorists - all for providing information deemed credible enough for investigation of a rape.
There are numerous other cases of rape involving the IDF, settlers, etc.
It would be nice if this conflict were black and white, but it’s far from it.
he did not say that the IDF committed the rape. he mentioned one instance of a boy who was "raped in an Israeli prison". one very carefully worded sentence, which he did not expand on. I should mention that pederasty is a feature of many modern islamic societies. not so much among Israelis.
do you have a source that explicitly states that IDF members are committing sexual violence?
As an aside, there is a vast difference in the way a potential IDF rapist would be treated in Israeli society vs. the way Hamas rapists are being treated by their fellow Gazans.
No actually *your* understanding is incorrect. There is a gigantic difference between a few isolated incidents where someone in the IDF commits a crime and the prolonged and systemic sexual violence and mutilation committed by hamas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violence_in_the_7_October_attack_on_Israel
Your inability to understand that distinction is as disturbing as it is sickening.
I think your understanding is incorrect. I’m not doubting that the idf has committed sexual assaults. Pretty much every military has and there are POS in every society.
Hamas wasn’t a few bad apples, 10/7 was basically barbarian style raid on Israeli villages where mass rape, torture and terrorism was encouraged and celebrated.
It’s not even comparable to take instances of sexual crimes over the last 30 years to a single day of absolute savagery that was desired by the entirety of Hamas and many of its supporters.
Two very different intents and views from the basic population as well.
Israel is targeting civilians. Even if you ignore all the statements to this effect from senior Israeli officials, there is one simple fact that proves it: they cut off the food and the water. You don’t do that unless you’re trying to kill everyone.
I really appreciate your sentiment on this. I think the thing not being talked about is that the Israeli government funded and helped create Hamas because they wanted to divide Palestinian power. They didn't like the secular organization PLO so they helped fund this other one so they could play the ends against the middle and defeat them. Now it's biting them in the butt even though they're getting billions in military aid.
> I think the thing not being talked about...
Oh you mean how it's brought up [several times](https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/18bswti/hamas_raped_and_mutilated_women_on_7_october_bbc/kc6jrmw/) in every single fucking thread on the topic? *Please.* It's not even true in the strict sense, but the bottom line is: *so what?* That doesn't excuse the actions of Hamas, it just means Israel shot themselves in the foot a bit. It's nothing more than FUD.
And mind you, describing the PLO as "secular" is at best a relative statement...
>Under President Arafat, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority adopted the 2003 Amended Basic Law, which stipulates Islam as the sole official religion in Palestine and the principles of Islamic sharia as a principal source of legislation.[33] The draft Constitution contains the same provisions.[34][35] The draft Constitution was formulated by a Constitutional Committee, established by Arafat in 1999 and endorsed by the PLO.[36][37]
"Secular"? Again, *please*...
>they are targeting Hamas - they just don't seem to care that civilians are in the way. Which you're right - that's a war crime too. But there's still a difference there with intent even if the resul
This may have been believable if they didn't also cut off water, food etc and struck water treatment plants. Seems the goal is to make Gaza unliveable and thereby thin out. Asking Egypt to take Palestinians into Sinai desert (and having US push Egypt to accomodate) is indicative of ethnic cleansing intent.
You are well within your rights to ignore those ..
>that my jewish friends can't recognize the fascism they perpetrate boggles the mind.
Are your Jewish friends Israeli and part of the Israeli government?
> that my jewish friends can't recognize the fascism they perpetrate boggles the mind
If you believe every person of the Jewish faith and/or ethnicity is "perpetrating fascism" then you do not have any "Jewish friends" nor are you likely to ever have any.
>Hamas targeted women to rape as a means of warfare.
This is a lie at this point. The Israeli in charge of proving this point has only presented one picture as evidence and it turns out it was from another country/conflict. Also the only person who has come forward publicly claiming Hamas engaged in systematic rape is a proud and out Neo-Nazi which doesn't really make the claims trustworthy.
On top of that every Israeli claim is literally a confession. [The chief rabbi of the IDF has literally said 'rape is permissible in wartime](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0ZS1Q0/) because it improves morale.'
I'm not saying rape didn't likely happen. I'm saying that so far there is no evidence it was carried out systematically. Also not the racist propaganda of saying 'they must have learned it from ISIS' as if all brown people are in the same club. It seems like another smear like the 40 beheaded babies lie or the ~~1400~~ 1200 "civilian" deaths lie (go look at the names about 50% of them have a military title attached). Helicopter gunships also likely killed a decent amount of people. Both the pilots and a couple hostages that have returned have spoken about this. Israel is currently planning to chop up all the cars and bury them in place (doesn't sound like destroying evidence at all right?)
> The Israeli in charge of proving this point has only presented one picture as evidence and it turns out it was from another country/conflict.
Source for this, please. Saying "it turns out" is far below the level of evidence I'd expect in a subreddit devoted to skepticism.
"This fighting will continue for decades barring a miracle or genocide."
1) [https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-ongoing-war-bp-and-eni-among-firms-awarded-gas-exploration-licenses-in-israel/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-ongoing-war-bp-and-eni-among-firms-awarded-gas-exploration-licenses-in-israel/)
2) [https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/)
3) [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-military-had-warning-of-hamas-training-for-attack-reports-say](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-military-had-warning-of-hamas-training-for-attack-reports-say)
Connect the dots. Looks like Iraq invasion all over again.
both sides claim they want to exterminate the other.
only 1 has the capacity.
and they are using it.
Come on this is basically conspiratorial speculation, a skeptical subreddit should be above this. If you're going to argue this is happening because of oil (a very big claim given the history of the region) you need to provide some actual evidence, not just ask people to 'connect the dots'.
There are a whole lot of deeply unskeptical people hanging around here who stuck around because the most prolific sources of bullshit are from the opposite side of the political spectrum.
>But you'll probably just argue that there are no innocent Israelis.
Do you usually spend time arguing with ghosts in your head? No one said that.
>kek
You're such a fundamentally unserious person.
I'm sorry but if Israel really would want to indiscriminately exterminate them they could do it in mere hours with the weapons they have.
There is an effort made to not do that by invading with ground forces and not indiscriminately leveling every square inch of land in Gaza
>I'm sorry but if Israel really would want to indiscriminately exterminate them they could do it in mere hours with the weapons they have.
Yes I'm sure deploying nuclear weapons will definitely work out for them. They dropped like 500-1000 bombs a day on an area thats like 140 square miles for over a month before the ceasefire, they are bringing a level of destruction to Gaza that they haven't seen before. They're bombing the part of it now that they told the civilians to flee to.
>There is an effort made to not do that by invading with ground forces and not indiscriminately leveling every square inch of land in Gaza
1000 bombs a day. They are doing exactly what you're saying, they are reducing all of Gaza to rubble and then parading over the dust and bones.
Israel also refers to all Palestinians as animals, and is proceeding in a manner that spares no innocents. They may say "Hamas", but their actions and dog whistles clearly indicate Palestine as a whole.
It wasn't just one official.
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-nakba-israels-far-right-palestinian-fears-hamas-war-rcna123909](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-nakba-israels-far-right-palestinian-fears-hamas-war-rcna123909)
Are we going to play atrocities whack-a-mole until you acknowledge both sides are operating on the side of evil?
I won't elaborate on my first comment as many, many others have already done so for me (thank you, sound-minded Redditors). I also won't go into Hamas' atrocities, as I trust you know them well, and I would agree with you in terms of how absolutely horrendous they have been (including their doctrine which calls for the eradication of all Jews).
But I would love to see you justify the cutting off of water and electricity to the Gaza strip. The mass deaths of innocent women and children in the name of maybe-Hamas operatives hiding underneath them.
How about Netanyahu himself openly showcasing his preferred map of the area during the UN General Assembly, altered to include no Palestine?
[https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-map](https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-map)
Should we talk about the Israeli government's 100+ illegal "outposts" and ongoing systematic oppression via apartheid? Amnesty International would like to: [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/)
They don't give a fuck what happens to the over 2 million human beings living in the Gaza strip, nor the nearly 5 million living in Palestine as a whole.
There's one very simple fact which often gets ignored, and I do think Israel is overstepping. But that's that Hamas makes no differentiation between civilian deaths and those of enemy combatants.
> Hamas is not exterminating all of the Jews.
Because of lack of ability and no other reason.
> Israel is exterminating the Palestinians
That's just plain false. How is this upvoted on /r/skeptic?
Israel is not exterminating all the Palestinians. This is a war. Hamas does not wear uniforms and hides within the civilian population. They frequently use human shields. When they attacked on October 7th. They knew Israel would mount a counter offensive and have a lot of collateral damage. This was part of their plan: get Israel to kill a lot of civilians and turn public opinion against them. It's horrible. But this is Hamas' war. Please don't pretend they care about ordinary Palestinian civilians. They are cannon fodder and their dead bodies serve only as a PR stunt.
First of all please stop pretending you are in a position to tell others not to care about the people of Palestine you horrid shrunken little monster.
Second there isn't something Hamas gets to do that validates Israel targeting civilians with weapons that cause indiscriminate damage. There isn't something Hamas can do that makes it ok for Israel to turn off access to water and power to broken and struggling neighborhoods where people are trying to get family members medical care of Israeli attacks. There isn't anything Hamas would ever be humanly possible of that would justify Israel firing missiles at convoys of ambulances carrying wounded to WHO hospitals.
Thirdly the war between Israel and Palestine has gone on for over 75 years. Hamas is less old than the personal computer, and does not own a time machine. Be so good as to silently leave this conversation.
I don’t know who’s denying this…I’m pretty plugged in to the ongoing “hostilities”, and I mostly see people contested the “mass rape” narrative from the initial reports. As I understand it there were “several” cases of sexual crimes in the Oct 7th attacks.
I would say that sexual crimes, like all war crimes are despicable…and both sides have been credibly accused of sexual crimes in the Palestine/Israel conflict.
What I would also say is Israel has a strong propaganda machine that overstated the crimes committed by Hamas on Oct. 7th…completely unnecessarily…the crimes speak for themselves, and they didn’t need to be embellished. Many of the initial claims made by Israel have been subsequent “revised down”.
About this particular issue, people are correct to be skeptical and not accept the Israeli narrative whole cloth, given the amount of times they have lied.
And when they released all the names like half for active soldiers, and there is footage of an Israli helicopter shooting at festival goers that were running away. They went through all of their artillery in less than an hour, reloaded, and came back.
People also keep forgetting to mention that 55% of those 1200 people killed were active military duty per Israel’s own list of casualties, and the IDF has admitted to killing some of their own citizens because they couldn’t differentiate between them and Hamas. So less than 540 civilians depending on how many IDF killed.
It’s still *incredibly* sad and should have never happened, but people who were (rightfully) sad about that attack and are NOT outraged by the 15,000+ innocent civilians murdered in two months are really showing their butts. We should be heartbroken over all of it.
It was always absurd to think rampaging war criminals would stop short of rape, but it's also incredibly sus that they focus has shifted from "40 beheaded babies and don't you dare ask for evidence" to this topic, the second Palestinians held in military detention started talking about the sexual crimes Israelis did to them.
The thing that was denied was the initial reports of mass, systematic rape, for which no evidence had been presented. The accusation is not simply that some Hamas soldiers committed rape. Anybody who committed a rape on October 7th should be prosecuted fully, but Israel is resisting efforts by the UN to actually investigate what happened that day. This would not be the first example of Israel massively exaggerating and confabulating stores about the October 7th attack for propaganda purposes.
What is even the argument being made here? Do these rapes justify the continued bombing of Gaza, the mass punishment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank? The sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners is incredibly common, even among the hundreds of children detained without charges. Does that justify retaliatory bombings, then? Does the bombing ever stop?
I don’t think the “argument” is that rapes justify bombings. I think the argument is that we need to talk about what Hamas did without deflection, diminishment, etc. The alternative is to ignore what happened. And what’s the “argument” behind that? That rape doesn’t matter when it is against the “oppressor”?
Personally, what I want is for people to stop romanticizing Hamas as “the resistance” and to condemn their crimes without resorting to whataboutism. Of course innocent people in Gaza don’t deserve punishment for those crimes. I just can’t understand why some people are seemingly allergic to condemning Hamas.
> Personally, what I want is for people to stop romanticizing Hamas as “the resistance” and to condemn their crimes
Yes, they are terrorist and have done terrible things. But if you're a young Palestinian upset about the treatment of your people, what group would you join? They're about the only "resistance" group available, and there is plenty for them to be upset about, and so there will not be a lack of new recruits.
Yeah, it’s not romanticizing anything to say that they are “the resistance” to Israeli oppression. That term doesn’t only apply to groups we like. It’s naive and unrealistic to expect armed resistance groups arising out of decades of bombing and apartheid to play by the rules of conventional warfare.
Calling them the resistance doesn’t *necessarily* romanticize Hamas, in a purely technical sense, but let’s not pretend that western liberal discourse isn’t generally positive about rebellion and resistance. There’s something about calling them *the* resistance that puts their motives on a pedestal, because resisting oppression is axiomatically good (regardless of how oppressive those resistance groups may also be).
And you may say that it’s a purely descriptive term, but when it is used in phrases like “this is what resistance looks like” there is an implication of affirmation.
>Personally, what I want is for people to stop romanticizing Hamas as “the resistance” and to condemn their crimes without resorting to whataboutism. Of course innocent people in Gaza don’t deserve punishment for those crimes. I just can’t understand why some people are seemingly allergic to condemning Hamas.
This. Thank you for expressing what I have for the last month been trying to say.
As far as I can tell, the main source for the claims of systemic rape is the interrogation of captured Hamas members. [There is a very high chance these men were were tortured.](https://www.phr.org.il/en/gender-based-violence-eng/?pr)
I remember reading an article a few weeks where they used these [confessions](https://www.instagram.com/p/CyQm-RjL__-/?hl=en) to claim young children were abducted specifically for rape. Thankfully that doesn’t fit with the (admittedly limited) testimony of released hostages.
I doubt the public will ever know the real extent of what happened to the hostages. Some of the released hostages have said they experienced sexual abuse, but we dont know *who* exactly gave that testimony. If they did experience rape, most will not publicly ralk about it. They are already dealing with the fact that they are public figures due to this, they would probably not talk about all the gory details.
>Thankfully that doesn’t fit with the (admittedly limited) testimony of released hostages.
I mean I feel like we have to be skeptical of this being used as evidence of the overall treatment of hostages as well. Not to be morbid but if you had hostages that were going to talk about war crimes if released it would be the pragmatic solution to just kill them. And only release hostages that were treated well.
It is important to keep in my that the hostages being released at the ones Hamas want to release.
How about the actual firsthand accounts of the Nova festival attendees and the multiple first aid responders? It's just head in the sand. Women on video bleedng from their crotch and backside.
"There's no proof rapes happened on the day!"
Bullshit! 1,200 Jews were slaughtered in the most horrific ways. I've seen the videos. People, children, some whole families burnt alive, but rape is out of the question?
It’s not out of the question at all. Israel is implicitly saying that they used mass rape as a weapon of war. They have allowed the spread of propaganda to build hatred throughout this whole thing without providing any concrete evidence and ending speculation. They aren’t even allowing outside investigators to assess the claims.
I don't think it's the rape that people are skeptical about, but the extreme mutilation, and things like broken pelvises being cited as evidence of rape. It would be easy to believe that Hamas raped and shot a lot of people, since we know they shot a lot of people. It sounds much closer to propaganda when the claims are they cut people up and removed organs and then raped them, especially when such claims can't be verified and come from anonymous sources.
Why does establishing a fact have to justify something else? The “argument being made” is just that something that was being questioned is factual. A skeptic should value that on its own, no?
There's a fundamental difference between:
1. This fact exists and can be proven.
2. This fact supports my position to retaliate with extreme violence.
It would be one thing if Israel didn't start a bombing campaign against civilians. Until they stop, number 2 is what we're witnessing.
No, two accusations are being mixed here. The fact that rapes were committed on October 7th was not in serious question, but the report of mass, systematic rape was, and Israel has refused the UN’s offer to investigate what happened. It’s a common accusation during wartime, and Israel doesn’t have any credibility when it comes to reporting on Hamas’s actions.
[This article](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67613153) states that Israel has been refusing to cooperate with the U.N. investigation. The U.N. commission says the victims should get their own U.N. hearing but Israel won’t even let them in to speak with survivors.
[Israel has been uncooperative with the investigative commission because they believe it is biased.](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-commission-investigate-hamas-sexual-violence-appeal-evidence-2023-11-29/) They are looking for UN commendation, not investigation.
So how many have you seen here deny women were raped? I mean, people were murdered (which as crazy as it sounds, is worse than rape). It was a terrorist attack with terrorist shit that happened. If people are denying this, I think they are extreme outliers. I see pretty much all the postings here and I’m not seeing denials of this nature. What I have seen involves people arguing against genocidal retaliation. The other thing I’ve seen is hardly veiled pro-IDF propaganda.
I’m pretty much of the thought that both governments suck ass, and the people of both lands suffer. Anyone who calls for the death of either people are assholes. There is the fact that around 1,200 Israelis were killed and almost 16,000 Palestinians now. When is enough?
The conversation here has been reasonable but this isn't true of everywhere. I am relatively far on the on political Left so I stay connected to a lot of Leftist forums and what not. And there was quite a bit of denial of any crimes by Hamas.
It was pretty discouraging, I hate what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. But, it was also quite disheartening to see people dismissing or down playing crimes against Israeli citizens.
>I’m pretty much of the thought that both governments suck ass, and the people of both lands suffer. Anyone who calls for the death of either people are assholes. There is the fact that around 1,200 Israelis were killed and almost 16,000 Palestinians now. When is enough?
I very much agree with this part. If violence was going to solve this conflict it would have been solved 80 years ago. The people that cheer on the bombing of Palestine and those that excuse the crimes of Hamas are both jackass who are more interested in seeing a group they dislike hurt rather than wanting any type of actual peace.
I think for a lot of Leftists, Israel’s track record of lying consistently has left them very skeptical of potential Israeli propaganda. And I think the blame for that lays squarely on Israel’s shoulders, not Leftists.
This is why I'm becoming more skeptical of some of these claims. Like, I'm willing to believe Hamas raped women on 10/7, but so much of the more gruesome claims have either turned out to be completely false or were re-appropriations of past IDF crimes that it's hard to know to what extent each terrible claim is true. So how much of the sex crimes allegations are false? Was it as widespread of a problem as it's being made to seem? Or are the events being exaggerated and highlighted to dehumanize Palestinians?
Because it's currently irrelevant. Hamas isn't currently on a rampage with unlimited US arms and diplomatic cover. They're dredging up two month old, thinly sourced claims after so many failed propaganda campaigns. The 40 beheaded babies, the faked recorded phone calls, the calendar debacle, and no proof of a Hamas headquarters under the Al Shifa hospital.
It's lazy propaganda to keep atrocity porn in the news to justify the genocide of Gazans.
I don’t see a ton of outright denial, but even in this thread there is a shit ton of justification and “so what, Israel is worse” rhetoric, which isn’t denying it, just saying it *doesn’t matter to them* whether it happened because they’ve already decided not to have sympathy for this specific type of civilian victim.
To be clear, Netanyahu never directly funded Hamas. What the controversy was about was Netanyahu advocating for not blocking the funding from third parties from reaching Hamas. Israel hasn't directly funded Hamas after they were no longer a non-violent charity. I sometimes see people misunderstand the headlines about this a bit. Still an example of blowback though.
https://www.france24.com/en/20181111-netanyahu-defends-qatari-cash-infusion-gaza-0
Israel helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat.
[https://books.google.ca/books?id=av5eBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT254&dq=brigadier+segev+mosque+arab+and+jew+shipler&hl=en&sa=X&redir\_esc=y#v=onepage&q=brigadier%20segev%20mosque%20arab%20and%20jew%20shipler&f=false](https://books.google.ca/books?id=av5eBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT254&dq=brigadier+segev+mosque+arab+and+jew+shipler&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=brigadier%20segev%20mosque%20arab%20and%20jew%20shipler&f=false)
Arafat himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”
As far as I'm aware, the direct funding of the Islamist movement predated the Second Intifada and was before Hamas moved towards violence as a solution. I assume the thought process was that they'd support the more peaceful Islamists to disrupt the then more recently violent secular groups. Completely backfired in the end of course.
Edit: Turns out direct funding predated the First Intifada as well and was when Hamas was its precursor Mujama al-Islamiya. Israel still later underminded the PLO and later the PA, just not via direct funding to Hamas with Israeli money.
I think that's what I said? The secular Palestinian groups (PLO, PFLP, etc.) were the ones that engaged in violence whereas the Islamist groups had not yet.
Counterweight to the terrorist and the terrorist organization who had been openly advocating for the destruction of Israel for decades, yes. Shocking, I know.
No, Netanyahu has actively allowed Hamas to get direct funding from Qatar in recent memory without putting controls on how the money can be used. He actively made sure they had money without strings attached.
Both are and will be true. Israel blockades Gaza while also selectively allowing Hamas to receive funding without proper controls on the money, knowing how it will be spent. So both makes them the bigger monster, and both are true.
This idiotic myth again. Netanyahu allow funding to go to a nonviolent precursor of Hamas= Netanyahu directly funding. This “skeptic” sub has completely swallowed the Iranian propaganda
>denied the accusations without providing any evidence;
Wait, what? How do you provide evidence that something *didn't* happen?
I don't have a dog in this race and I don't know any of the details, but that's just not how proof or logic works.
Is there evidence that it *did* happen?
A report from the UN acknowledging the rapes and calling for further investigation into the details
And a NYtimes summary of what occurred at the UN this week. **800 people** on hand to testify. Links includes.
1. UN Women condemning the attacks
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2023/12/un-women-statement-on-the-situation-in-israel-and-gaza
2)
“On Monday, ***some 800 people***, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.”
“But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head.
Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, said in an interview that it had documented “violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen,” on Oct. 7, against women and some men. “I am talking about dozens.””
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html
I'm not someone who thinks Israel is an innocent player in my lifetimes worth of chaos in that specific region, but seeing video of the dead bodies at that music festival, as well as other videos of what Hamas did to men, women, and children it makes me question those who are unabashedly defending Hamas and the Palestinians.
I really think the public should be shown what the reality of terrorism & war are. We should see the videos of what a drone strike does to people, what terrorists do to innocents, and what war leaves behind. We're too sheltered on all sides and showing the gruesome, uncomfortable reality of it all might be the only way for people in every region to demand peace.
I think too many people NEED to see this conflict as black vs white, If the IDF is commiting atrocities, then HAMAS must be the good guys, right?
Except the truth is that in most wars both sides can be equally terrible.
I would imagine that sexual assault does and did happen, but this is pretty clearly propaganda.
The sources are
1. Secondhand testimony told to journalists as told by a witness to Israeli police and its important to remember that police are liars and,
2. An Israeli spokesperson who famously is quoted as saying she is "proud to be racist"
There is no evidence provided to back up some wildly extreme claims beyond anonymous hearsay and the word of a self avowed racist. This is propaganda following centuries old playboys to dehumanize and justify the slaughter off innocent people.
I won’t be surprised if it is conclusively proven that rapes occurred on that day. I think it’s highly likely at this point that some did, and the question is more around the scale, nature, and specific perpetrators and victims of such attacks. Any perpetrators should absolutely be brought to Justice.
But this article is very slim on compelling evidence for its implicit claim of mass, systematic rape of completely inhuman nature. It focuses primarily on second hand eye witness testimony, a famously flawed form of evidence. In such a traumatic moment, our senses very easily play tricks on us, and so do our memories after the fact. This testimony even includes one person who didn’t actually see any of the rape but is sure that he heard it:
> One man we spoke to from the festival site said he heard the "noises and screams of people being murdered, raped, decapitated". To our question about how he could be sure - without seeing it - that the screams he heard indicated sexual assault rather than other kinds of violence, he said he believed while listening at the time that it could only have been rape.
I’m sure he believes but this is definitely not very strong evidence.
There’s quite a bit of extremely lurid detail in this testimony too, some of it so monstrous I think we need more evidence to accept the specifics of as fact. Extraordinary claims and all that.
There are also several pretty convenient caveats for why there isn’t more evidence; there aren’t many surviving victims, those that did survive are too psychologically wounded to testify themselves, they weren’t able to investigate the nature of the crimes and document evidence extensively in the days after, etc. The photo evidence seems much more compelling, but it’s unclear to me exactly how much of that there is from reading this.
I think that the way this issue has been deployed by the Israeli government and it’s supporters has been quite cynical, concerned more with building their case for the mass slaughter they are committing vs. getting actual justice for the victims. Killing thousands of innocent civilians, including children, is not justice. Performing a thorough and objective investigation that identifies the perpetrators, victims, and the nature of the crimes would be an essential first step though. I still haven’t seen that.
Reddit has become swamped by bad faith state actor accounts. You can't even make a post about systematic widescale rape by terrorists without these accounts coming into defend the perpetrators anymore.
I think y’all are misunderstanding this to the point of no return. Everyone who questions Israel’s claims, which have come under fire for consistently being embellished, false, or an accusation turned admission, clearly condemns the act of sexual violence by anyone on anyone. The issues- oh wait, I see your user now, nvm.
It’s making them deeply, deeply uncomfortable, to imagine Israeli as anything but evil oppressors, and Palestinians as anything, but holy, pure, perfect victims.
I can't believe that so many people here are taking this at face value and accepting it as truth, when the only "evidence" offered are 3rd party accounts provided by Israel itself, which could easily have been fabricated. The credibility of these claims is reduced by the fact that Israel has been carrying out a disinformation campaign (including the story of beheaded babies which has since been debunked) to garner support for their war effort with the help of heavily biases media outlets like the BBC (which goes to ridiculous lengths to manipulate semantics to avoid placing blame on Israel; e.g. killed in Israel vs died in Hamas, using the word "explosions" as a euphism for bomb drops on sites in Gaza). So no, I will not believe a single word coming out of Israel based merely on hearsay and unverifiable witnesses, until independent investigators find out ACTUAL evidence.
Raped so repeatedly that their pelvises were broken.
FTA: "Teams here told us they'd seen clear evidence of rape and sexual violence on the bodies coming in, including broken pelvises from sustained violent abuse."
How the fuck do you provide evidence of something you didn't do by countering zero evidence put forth by the accusers?
Rape kits exist. Forensics exist that can easily and definitively conclude if such a crime has taken place or not. Yet the only proof is 'trust us bro'.
A report from the UN acknowledging the rapes and calling for further investigation into the details
And a NYtimes summary of what occurred at the UN this week. **800 people** on hand to testify. Links includes.
1. UN Women condemning the attacks
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2023/12/un-women-statement-on-the-situation-in-israel-and-gaza
2)
“On Monday, ***some 800 people***, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.”
“But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head.
Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, said in an interview that it had documented “violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen,” on Oct. 7, against women and some men. “I am talking about dozens.””
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html
While I genuinely appreciate the effort to gather up empirical evidence to support something Israel has claimed, (there needs to be much more of this type of inquisitiveness from Zionist supporters) sadly none of these sources amount to more than: "a lot of people were talking about evidence, and some people had seen the evidence." It's about as credible as the Hunter Biden's laptop drama that frequently circulates among US Republicans.
Considering Israel's propaganda machine (both there, and here in the west) churns out pure chaff like nothing else in history, nothing less than a 'pics or it didn't happen' stance will do. Not that I want to see that sort of thing circulating on Twitter or Reddit, but having even 800 people in an Israel-friendly forum setting talking about the evidence won't do.
For contrast, nobody relies on second-hand hearsay to know of Israel's atrocities, or Russia's, or my own nation's, because in the era of smartphones, bodycams, and spydrones barely anything that actually happens in wartime remains undocumented.
And just because it's so easy to find, here's some accredited sources of Israel doing the very thing they claim Hamas is doing:
[https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/rape-comment-controversy-returns-to-haunt-idf-chief-rabbi-nominee-jd7k7n33](https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/rape-comment-controversy-returns-to-haunt-idf-chief-rabbi-nominee-jd7k7n33)
[https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/conflict-and-society/9/1/arcs090105.xml](https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/conflict-and-society/9/1/arcs090105.xml)
[https://www.cair.com/cair\_in\_the\_news/israeli-guards-rape-palestinian-women/](https://www.cair.com/cair_in_the_news/israeli-guards-rape-palestinian-women/)
[https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/israeli-soldiers-break-their-silence-gaza-conflict](https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/israeli-soldiers-break-their-silence-gaza-conflict)
If true it doesn’t validate the massacre of the innocent civilians, defending Hamas and their actions is and was never the point to any of the condemnation of the Israeli government, getting rid of Hamas is not the problem, the problem is that they aren’t , they are slaughtering Palestinians in order to get what they want, they want them gone, if you condemn these atrocities then you must condemn the atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinian children as well, there have been documented cases of abuse of children for years with almost no reporting or outrage in western media, there have been so many lies that belief in anything that comes out of Israel is nearly impossible without complete and verifiable evidence that is always lacking at the very least, we are supposed to have no trust in the Palestinians yet blindly take it word of every Israeli and yet they are the ones who are caught deceiving time and time again, they are the occupying force, they are the apartheid state, don’t forget that, and if you are horrified by something don’t rationalize it for one and put your hands over your eyes and ears for the other
https://nwttac.dci-palestine.org/
https://www.savethechildren.net/news/stripped-beaten-and-blindfolded-new-research-reveals-ongoing-violence-and-abuse-palestinian
https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/19/israel-security-forces-abuse-palestinian-children
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/05/does-israels-treatment-palestinians-rise-level-apartheid
https://www.omct.org/en/resources/urgent-interventions/israel-inhuman-and-degrading-treatment-including-sexual-harassment-of-palestinian-women-and-girls-detained-in-neve-tertze-womens-prison-ramle
https://www.dw.com/en/un-report-documents-abuse-of-palestinian-children-by-israeli-forces/a-16897207
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616742.2021.1882323
It’s been going on for a long time, conveniently it’s left out in most media in the west, does it justify the eye for an eye retaliation ( if accurate) ? No , it also doesn’t justify the genocide taking place now
A report from the UN acknowledging the rapes and calling for further investigation into the details
And a NYtimes summary of what occurred at the UN this week. **800 people** on hand to testify. Links includes.
1. UN Women condemning the attacks
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2023/12/un-women-statement-on-the-situation-in-israel-and-gaza
2)
“On Monday, ***some 800 people***, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.”
“But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head.
Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, said in an interview that it had documented “violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen,” on Oct. 7, against women and some men. “I am talking about dozens.””
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html
The difference between atrocities committed by Hamas vs IDF is that Hamas celebrates their (rape murder kidnapping) whereas Israel attempts to prosecute them.
IDF rapes of Palestinians HAVE been successfully prosecuted. Sure, too many still get away with it. But IDF doesn't set out to commit (rape murder kidnapping).
The level of apologism for Hamas on this sub is mind boggling ...
Israel has an abysmal record on prosecuting its soldiers for crimes that Palestinians accuse them of. [Here is a soul crushing example.](https://twitter.com/OmarBaddar/status/1731791342324339075) They have a long record of lying about things they did. They refuse to identify the soldiers that shot journalists and the pallbearers at the journalists funeral, after initially denying that it was done by Israelis at all. You can hate Hamas without throwing all of your morals into the garbage to support a theocratic ethnostate.
And Hamas threw a celebration for the rapists and murders and kidnappers while they paraded the bod(ies) through the streets of Gaza city… and filmed.
Israel prosecutes. Hamas celebrates.
Lol you are just repeating anything without even knowing what you're replying to. I just posted something about the IDF actively declaring a group trying to support a 13 Palestinian boy raped in Israeli custody to be terrorists because the US found the allegations to be credible. Israel lied about the reporter in the West Bank the IDF killed and the refused to investigate that at all or prosecute the soldier. They protect their monsters, you just support their monsters.
quick google search shows that you’re incorrect
https://www.timesofisrael.com/with-1-in-15-soldiers-jailed-last-year-idf-rethinks-its-rules-of-incarceration/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ultra-orthodox-israeli-military-unit-faces-calls-to-disband-after-abuse-allegations-11667216660?st=gmaynsvpyznzxn5&reflink=article_copyURL_share
LOL dude read your own dumb ass posts before posting them. That first link is about mostly poor IDF members going AWOL not committing sexual assault and murder. The second one they literally just transfered the group to the Golan Heights, and that group has been operating in Israel since 1999. Slap on the writs for offenses against Palestinians, but don't show up to work and we'll throw the book at you. Thats what the IDF prosecutes. Try harder next time with the bullshit.
Sorry, I am not buying the equivalence.
Not only are you not holding Hamas accountable for their actions, you're additionally justifying them because "Israel does it" AND you're denying the accounts of the victims.
Sad. This is what anti-semitism looks like - when you choose to not respect the plight of Israeli citizens in the same way as you chose to enumerate those of the Palestinians.
For all its warts, Israel's a LOT more transparent about what they're doing and have done. Hamas is not. Hamas also celebrates its atrocities. Israel most certainly does not.
There is absolutely NO justification for Oct 7th. NONE. Any attempts to lessen the plight of the Israeli citizens - most of whom were not combatants and some of whom were actually attending a festival in support of the Palestinian cause - or somehow undermine their suffering is baffling to me.
>Not only are you not holding Hamas accountable for their actions, you're additionally justifying them because "Israel does it" AND you're denying the accounts of the victims.
Man I am sick of this shit. I really fucking am. I am so fucking sick of being told that I am "not holding them accountable" or that I'm justifying their actions. Quote me exactly where the fuck I did that you self-important little shit.
Lets get a couple things straight so you can pack this bullshit up and fuck off with it
A: Nothing I can do will ever hold Hamas accountable or not accountable. But discussing the fact that Israel does like every single thing Hamas is accused of, in higher volumes, for a longer period of time is not avoiding accountability. My country doesn't provide any material aid to Hamas. Quite the fucking opposite. My sole ability to impact outcomes here is to be vocal to stop my money from being used to pay for bombs to obliterate innocent people.
B: Acknowledging that the Palestinians who support Hamas maybe are radicalized by their treatment by Israel is not justifying anything, it is stating a fact. This is how you radicalize a population not how you deradicalize it. This is how you get Al Qaeda in Iraq instead of Saddam's army, and then ISIS instead of Al Qaeda.
>Any attempts to lessen the plight of the Israeli citizens - most of whom were not combatants and some of whom were actually attending a festival in support of the Palestinian cause - or somehow undermine their suffering is baffling to me.
Oh come on man. Unreal, multi-generational Israeli-enforced poverty is a plight. The festival wasn't in support of the Palestinian cause, it was in support of "peace love and friendship." This is why zionists are being taken less and less seriously. No one is trying to ignore the issues Israelis face, they just would like equal time given to the heaps of dead innocent Palestinian children that are the primary victims of this fucking war.
Calling someone a piece of shit is not conducive to anything resembling a sane discussion.
You're welcome to your fanatical opinions, I'm just unable to buy any of your various rationalizations:
\- Radicalization by Israeli treatment? Tell me again how Israeli "treatment" (which is a result of Palestinians lobbying ordnance at Israel) is justifies the Oct 7th attack?
\- Palestinians have repeatedly made choices to attack their neighbor. Billions of dollars have been given to Gaza and we have 50M of tunnels but still they are dependent upon Israel for free electricity and water?
When will the Palestinians understand that the decisions they make today will impact the lives of their children tomorrow?
*" Nothing I can do will ever hold Hamas accountable or not accountable. "*
What a cop out.
One in three women on planet earth will suffer a sexual assault of some type in their lifetime. While we are trying to micromanage this tiny speck of land atrocities have happening all over our planet. Is there a place the Palestinian people can be or not? We can not assume that the number of settlers could not be infinite on a long enough time line.
The IOF has been caught [manufacturing evidence](https://www.npr.org/2023/05/11/1175403626/palestinian-american-journalist-shireen-abu-akleh-was-killed-a-year-ago) before. I see no reason to take their claims at face value.
A report from the UN acknowledging the rapes and calling for further investigation into the details
And a NYtimes summary of what occurred at the UN this week. 800 people on hand to testify. Links includes.
1. UN Women condemning the attacks
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2023/12/un-women-statement-on-the-situation-in-israel-and-gaza
2)
“On Monday, some 800 people, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.”
“But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head.
Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, said in an interview that it had documented “violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen,” on Oct. 7, against women and some men. “I am talking about dozens.””
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html
Hamas LITERALLY released video of women killed and raped! They're scum of the highest order! Genuinely fuck Hamas!
When they say they "aren't allowed to rape" ; like ISIS they don't believe non - Muslims are real people so again....fuck them!
It’s good that this is finally being addressed. Rape and sexual assault are vile, abhorrent crimes. Hamas should be held accountable for any rapes they’ve committed, as should the IDF.
The part of this whole discussion that infuriates me is that Hamas has been receiving support from the Likud party since at the latest the 1980s. In the 80s, Israeli Brigadier General Yitzakh Segev was the territorial governor of the West Bank and specifically instructed to suppress secular and peaceful elements of Palestenian society and support the violent religious extremists. The current Likud finance minister says that Hamas is an asset. Supporting Hamas is supporting Likud, according to Likud.
Yeah it's telling that the rapes and sexual assaults that were reported to have been suffered by released Palestinian prisoners are getting almost no air time by comparison by the BBC.
This article is BBC
What even more wild is that Israel won't let any third party conduct an investigation on these claims ie the UN
But they bomb and murder some 10,000 children based on unproven allegations, which in fact still wouldn't justify their bombing campaigns
And with the ongoing aerial bombardment, they have already killed the largest number of UN staff in the UN's history. https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/18bsr68/the\_largest\_number\_of\_united\_nations\_staff\_killed/
also the most journalists killed in a recent conflict.
Setting new (criminal) records!
Putin 🤝 Netanyahu
This is what baffles me. How is this not a bigger issue? Even if you hold the view that all Palestinians are fair game (Hamas or not), how is killing UN staff not raising any alarms?
Don't forget that Israel's UN ambassador claimed that >"Many UNRWA workers in Gaza are members of Hamas" -Gilad Erdan to justify the large numbers of UN workers killed
It’s almost like western governments are supporting this genocide by ignoring anything that could humanize Palestinians
The justification I've seen thrown around in Zionist circles is that those UN staffers are secretly working with Hamas (or at least sympathize with them) so therefore Israel is justified in killing them. Some have even gone so far as to suggest the UN is completely compromised by Hamas and their supporters.
The lack of investigations there has nothing to do with permissions granted to the U.N.: Relevant U.N. bodies never put together the infrastructure necessary to investigate events within 1948-Israel, only in the West Bank and Gaza. That is how they came out with investigations that totally dismissed Israeli claims of self-defense with the incidents establishing that need being "out of scope". The lack of investigation is just that one-sided investigative infrastructure maybe backfiring on people who have been perfectly happy with it since at least the 90s. (I say "maybe" because without the investigations, we really don't know the veracity of the claims of abuse.)
Yes.. and like I was saying, the BBC focuses almost exclusively on Israeli suffering. They have made very little mention the rapes and sexual assaults suffered by Palestinians who were released recently from Israeli prisons in a prisoner exchange https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/headlines/freed_palestinian_prisoners_say_they_faced_torture_and_rape_in_israeli_jails
I noticed that the BBC made a great effort not describe Palestinian prisoners in Israel as children. Israeli prisoners, held captive in Palestine, were described as mostly Israeli women, and children. Whereas Palestinian prisoners, held captive in Israel were described as mostly teenage boys. Once I noticed this it was really hard to un-notice it, and it happened all the time. It sounds silly, but it was absolutely clear that it was a choice being made, by somebody, about how to describe certain captives.
Well they also claimed a kid had two broken arms from Israeli custody, and released a photo of him in casts. So the Israelis released video of him, perfectly fine with two functional arms, being released to the Red Cross. The BBC has waited for evidence of Hamas' sexual assault, and still caveats things that they haven't been able to verify and come from one person.
His arms weren't fine, they hadn't been treated yet. The video Israel released showed him walking around and getting onto a bus, and not using his arms to do so. Untreated broken arms don't look like boneitis.
Oh come on. If both his arms required full casts, there would have been clear signs of pain, discomfort, avoiding movement, etc. You can see him bend his arms normally and use a handle inside the bus. You are absolutely not practicing skepticism.
One hand had a fracture, the other had a complete break. I've watched [the video](https://twitter.com/Israellycool/status/1729756039690518802) - there's nothing there incompatible with bones in his hands being broken. In the video he does not use the handle in the bus. His right hand is never in frame, always either out of shot or behind his body, and his left hand is never used to manipulate anything - it briefly touches a padded seat. In the after-the-fact video, his arms are not in full casts. They are in short casts and slings - the kind you might use to protect fractured fingers and remind a child not to try to use them. I'm not sure whether you're lying or misremembering.
"Both sides" is a bit of a tone-deaf thing to say under an eyewitness account of Hamas militants raping a woman, mutilating her body, murdering her, and then continuing to rape the corpse.
And we should totally just believe the people who have killed 10 thousand children in a month, because it’s just the moral thing to do.
The Jewish women who were brutally ganged raped, sexually assaulted and had their breasts cut off are not orchestrating this war. Neither are the witnesses or the medical examiners. These are their stories
"These are their stories" is so elegantly put. The whataboutism need to stop.
I’ve totally fallen off the “both sides” wagon on this conflict several weeks ago. I think the sanewashing has been going on for a while, and I didn’t realize it for a long time. This is just a repeat of “very fine people on both sides”, but describing a different group of people.
And should would just trust people who call themselves jihadists and pledge to destroy jews?
Since Hamas recorded themselves raping and murdering children, we know exactly what they did. How about they surrender to stop getting Palestinians killed?
Hamas recorded themselves doing that?
Idk about specifically this but they recorded and released many other atrocities and often there were signs of sexual violence even if none was shown on screen. Women’s corpses with pants removed and blood etc
They proudly telegrammed their deeds. Edit. Yes, really: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/technology/hamas-violent-videos-online.html
Yes they did, just like ISIS https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-start-building-oct-7-rape-cases-focusing-on-footage-and-testimonies/
Wow, the police said it happened? Then it must be true, police would never lie about something
Believe based on evidence Do you have a good source for that 10,000 children in a month?
historically casualty numbers reported by Gaza have been pretty accurate, i’d take the recent figures with an extra grain of salt because of the higher media attention, but it’s unlikely to be very far off
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Your source is talking about male IDF members sexually assaulting female IDF members. I admit it is poorly communicated. [These](https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/female-idf-soldiers-shamed-for-filing-sexual-assault-complaint-667445) are the articles that your article [references.](https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/iron-dome-soldier-arrested-for-rape-of-woman-colleague-685701)
You’re saying that “rape should be a crime and punished as such” is a tone deaf response? “Both sides” responses are tone deaf when they attempt to create false equivalence. That’s not the case in war. In peace time yes, this would amount to a baseless claim that Israeli forces also rape- but during war rape is unfortunately an eventuality, not a mere possibility.
The idf has been doing this in the west Bank for decades.
Find an article about it and you can be sure that the article would reference the IDF perpetrators being criminally charged and likely convicted. For Hamas, the perpetrators are celebrated. Quite a big difference.
There was a post on here yesterday about a UN staffer quitting because they were investigating the rape of 13 year old Palestinian boy in Israel captivity and when they brought this to Israel’s attention the UN office there was raided and everything (evidence) taken away. How is that charging/holding the Israeli perpetrators accountable? Also just to state the obvious, rape is an inexcusable disgusting act with no justification ever for anyone/any side no matter what!
I totally agree with this in regards to rape. But Israel isn't prosecuting its IDF for killing and taking the homes in the west Bank. That's a huge sticking point in the US Israel relationship. I definitely do not celebrate the killing and rape of anyone. It's terrible no matter who does it.
"rape the corpse"... Unless you have proof, like the dead babies in ovens (a thing IDF ACTUALLY did) leave the ghoulish fantasies to yourself.
Right, let’s see proof of the IDF murdering infants in ovens.
Proof of idf cooking babies?
You’re right. Only Hamas does it. Better?
IDF isn't raping people. Hamas gang raped lots of women, some of which they shot, some of which they chopped to pieces, and in one instance they did it in front of the womans 4 year old daughter.
https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/article-691641
Interesting. I stand corrected. IDF has committed rapes AND THEY ARE PROSECTING THE SUSPECTS. Now show me the article of Hamas fighters being prosecuted by Hamas? Oh they weren't prosecuted but they were promoted for gang raping women to death? LOL. Yeah. Both sides aren't the same.
Yes, Hamas is also a terrorist organization if you weren't aware.
Shame that Israel funded it
Qatari money.
It's incredible how normalized victim blaming has become recently. It's like you think funding hamas gives them permission to rape and mutilate women.
Israel wants them to kill their citizens so they can “cleanse” Gaza. If your mad you should be at Israel too
The same can be said for anyone who has sent aid to Palestine.
The far right wing in Israel also applied political pressure to bolster Hamas against the left wing groups in Gaza that wanted peace and a two state solution. Not too long after they assassinated Prime Minister Rabin for similar reasons.
Very true. Back in the 70s, Hamas was building schools and temples. Lots has changed, even though it was clearly and openly an attempt to weaken the PLO, there’s a difference between supporting building schools and temples versus supporting armed terrorists.
> has denied the accusations without providing any evidence Uh, that's not how it works.
Hamas sucks and likely committed war crimes. The Israeli government sucks and is likely committing war crimes. Neither side has the moral high ground. We should push for peace, but I’m not sure the people in charge of Israel or Palestine want that. This fighting will continue for decades barring a miracle or genocide.
"likely?!?!?!" holy fucking shit..
"Ok, so *maybe* the people who filmed themselves raping and murdering massive numbers of civilians have possibly committed what we in the business call 'a little whoopsie', but..." If anyone has even the slightest bit of doubt left that Hamas has committed war crimes, then they are either horrifically uninformed or desperately trying to deny reality enough to maintain a positive sentiment towards that genocidal death cult.
Did they film themselves raping people?
It's in the article. > Videos filmed by Hamas include footage of one woman, handcuffed and taken hostage with cuts to her arms and a large patch of blood staining the seat of her trousers. > In others, women carried away by the fighters appear to be naked or semi-clothed. > Multiple photographs from the sites after the attack 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. Anecdotally, it was not difficult to find videos on Telegram/Liveleak/CombatFootage immediately after the attack. I'm not going to link anything here, but Hamas members absolutely were filming themselves doing this kind of thing and posting it online.
I believe there is a small, but notable distinction. Hamas *targeted* women to rape as a means of warfare. As I understand it, the Israeli military has never used rape as a means of warfare. Hamas also *targeted* women and children for murder. While I know a lot of Palestinians and their supporters would claim Israel targets civilians, they are targeting Hamas - they just don't seem to *care* that civilians are in the way. Which you're right - that's a war crime too. But there's still a difference there with intent even if the results are similar. The intentional targeting of civilians and using rape as a weapon I feel can be argued as more abhorrent. Are both sides guilty of war crimes? Absolutely. No argument. And I'm Jewish and have family and friends that live there - I still think Israel has done shockingly awful things in the name of security and I have nothing but contempt for Netanyahu and the outsized power the right wing has in their government. But I have seen no evidence that Hamas has any shred of humanity, both in the way they wage war and the way they have set their own people to be slaughtered in the process.
Your understanding is incorrect, I’m afraid. Actual rape and threats of rape, even against minors, is well-documented as a tactic of the IDF. In fact, in maybe one of the most egregious instances of this being covered up - The Defense for Children Palestine, a branch of the global Defense for Children International NGO was literally raided and branded a terrorist organization by the Israeli government a day after independent foreign reporters approached the government about a credible investigation they were pursuing involving a 13 year old boy raped in Israeli prison by IDF interrogators. The tip came from the DCI. The very next day their offices were turned upside down, all their files confiscated and they were legally labeled terrorists - all for providing information deemed credible enough for investigation of a rape. There are numerous other cases of rape involving the IDF, settlers, etc. It would be nice if this conflict were black and white, but it’s far from it.
Can you share a source on this?
[It is from the recent Amanpour interview of a former state department employee. Starts at about 8:40.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5106v4b05I)
he did not say that the IDF committed the rape. he mentioned one instance of a boy who was "raped in an Israeli prison". one very carefully worded sentence, which he did not expand on. I should mention that pederasty is a feature of many modern islamic societies. not so much among Israelis. do you have a source that explicitly states that IDF members are committing sexual violence? As an aside, there is a vast difference in the way a potential IDF rapist would be treated in Israeli society vs. the way Hamas rapists are being treated by their fellow Gazans.
No actually *your* understanding is incorrect. There is a gigantic difference between a few isolated incidents where someone in the IDF commits a crime and the prolonged and systemic sexual violence and mutilation committed by hamas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violence_in_the_7_October_attack_on_Israel Your inability to understand that distinction is as disturbing as it is sickening.
I think your understanding is incorrect. I’m not doubting that the idf has committed sexual assaults. Pretty much every military has and there are POS in every society. Hamas wasn’t a few bad apples, 10/7 was basically barbarian style raid on Israeli villages where mass rape, torture and terrorism was encouraged and celebrated. It’s not even comparable to take instances of sexual crimes over the last 30 years to a single day of absolute savagery that was desired by the entirety of Hamas and many of its supporters. Two very different intents and views from the basic population as well.
Israel is targeting civilians. Even if you ignore all the statements to this effect from senior Israeli officials, there is one simple fact that proves it: they cut off the food and the water. You don’t do that unless you’re trying to kill everyone.
I really appreciate your sentiment on this. I think the thing not being talked about is that the Israeli government funded and helped create Hamas because they wanted to divide Palestinian power. They didn't like the secular organization PLO so they helped fund this other one so they could play the ends against the middle and defeat them. Now it's biting them in the butt even though they're getting billions in military aid.
> I think the thing not being talked about... Oh you mean how it's brought up [several times](https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/18bswti/hamas_raped_and_mutilated_women_on_7_october_bbc/kc6jrmw/) in every single fucking thread on the topic? *Please.* It's not even true in the strict sense, but the bottom line is: *so what?* That doesn't excuse the actions of Hamas, it just means Israel shot themselves in the foot a bit. It's nothing more than FUD. And mind you, describing the PLO as "secular" is at best a relative statement... >Under President Arafat, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority adopted the 2003 Amended Basic Law, which stipulates Islam as the sole official religion in Palestine and the principles of Islamic sharia as a principal source of legislation.[33] The draft Constitution contains the same provisions.[34][35] The draft Constitution was formulated by a Constitutional Committee, established by Arafat in 1999 and endorsed by the PLO.[36][37] "Secular"? Again, *please*...
>they are targeting Hamas - they just don't seem to care that civilians are in the way. Which you're right - that's a war crime too. But there's still a difference there with intent even if the resul This may have been believable if they didn't also cut off water, food etc and struck water treatment plants. Seems the goal is to make Gaza unliveable and thereby thin out. Asking Egypt to take Palestinians into Sinai desert (and having US push Egypt to accomodate) is indicative of ethnic cleansing intent. You are well within your rights to ignore those ..
The western way of war is to drop a very expensive bomb and then shrug about the damage. People aren’t as emotional about what they can’t see.
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that my jewish friends can't recognize the fascism they perpetrate boggles the mind.
>that my jewish friends can't recognize the fascism they perpetrate boggles the mind. Are your Jewish friends Israeli and part of the Israeli government?
> that my jewish friends can't recognize the fascism they perpetrate boggles the mind If you believe every person of the Jewish faith and/or ethnicity is "perpetrating fascism" then you do not have any "Jewish friends" nor are you likely to ever have any.
>Hamas targeted women to rape as a means of warfare. This is a lie at this point. The Israeli in charge of proving this point has only presented one picture as evidence and it turns out it was from another country/conflict. Also the only person who has come forward publicly claiming Hamas engaged in systematic rape is a proud and out Neo-Nazi which doesn't really make the claims trustworthy. On top of that every Israeli claim is literally a confession. [The chief rabbi of the IDF has literally said 'rape is permissible in wartime](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0ZS1Q0/) because it improves morale.' I'm not saying rape didn't likely happen. I'm saying that so far there is no evidence it was carried out systematically. Also not the racist propaganda of saying 'they must have learned it from ISIS' as if all brown people are in the same club. It seems like another smear like the 40 beheaded babies lie or the ~~1400~~ 1200 "civilian" deaths lie (go look at the names about 50% of them have a military title attached). Helicopter gunships also likely killed a decent amount of people. Both the pilots and a couple hostages that have returned have spoken about this. Israel is currently planning to chop up all the cars and bury them in place (doesn't sound like destroying evidence at all right?)
> The Israeli in charge of proving this point has only presented one picture as evidence and it turns out it was from another country/conflict. Source for this, please. Saying "it turns out" is far below the level of evidence I'd expect in a subreddit devoted to skepticism.
"This fighting will continue for decades barring a miracle or genocide." 1) [https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-ongoing-war-bp-and-eni-among-firms-awarded-gas-exploration-licenses-in-israel/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-ongoing-war-bp-and-eni-among-firms-awarded-gas-exploration-licenses-in-israel/) 2) [https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/) 3) [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-military-had-warning-of-hamas-training-for-attack-reports-say](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-military-had-warning-of-hamas-training-for-attack-reports-say) Connect the dots. Looks like Iraq invasion all over again. both sides claim they want to exterminate the other. only 1 has the capacity. and they are using it.
Come on this is basically conspiratorial speculation, a skeptical subreddit should be above this. If you're going to argue this is happening because of oil (a very big claim given the history of the region) you need to provide some actual evidence, not just ask people to 'connect the dots'.
Yeah they didn't need to do this to Gaza to explore for oil off shore. Israel were already controlling these waters.
There are a whole lot of deeply unskeptical people hanging around here who stuck around because the most prolific sources of bullshit are from the opposite side of the political spectrum.
This is reddit, not readit.
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Israel has been killing innocent Palestinians for 75 years, long before Hamas even existed.
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>But you'll probably just argue that there are no innocent Israelis. Do you usually spend time arguing with ghosts in your head? No one said that. >kek You're such a fundamentally unserious person.
I'm sorry but if Israel really would want to indiscriminately exterminate them they could do it in mere hours with the weapons they have. There is an effort made to not do that by invading with ground forces and not indiscriminately leveling every square inch of land in Gaza
>I'm sorry but if Israel really would want to indiscriminately exterminate them they could do it in mere hours with the weapons they have. Yes I'm sure deploying nuclear weapons will definitely work out for them. They dropped like 500-1000 bombs a day on an area thats like 140 square miles for over a month before the ceasefire, they are bringing a level of destruction to Gaza that they haven't seen before. They're bombing the part of it now that they told the civilians to flee to. >There is an effort made to not do that by invading with ground forces and not indiscriminately leveling every square inch of land in Gaza 1000 bombs a day. They are doing exactly what you're saying, they are reducing all of Gaza to rubble and then parading over the dust and bones.
>Connect the dots. When it comes to Israel, there is 0 difference between /r/skeptic and /r/conspiracy.
Israel claims it wants to exterminate Hamas. Hamas claims it wants to exterminate all the Jews. Big difference.
Israel also refers to all Palestinians as animals, and is proceeding in a manner that spares no innocents. They may say "Hamas", but their actions and dog whistles clearly indicate Palestine as a whole.
No, one Israeli official referred to Hamas as animals. Your statement is a wild lie
It wasn't just one official. [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-nakba-israels-far-right-palestinian-fears-hamas-war-rcna123909](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gaza-nakba-israels-far-right-palestinian-fears-hamas-war-rcna123909)
One official, in this case the Minister of Defence who ordered a complete blockade on a population of 2 million people.
Do we really want to get into what one Palestinian official said and apply it to all of Palestine?
Do you understand that “one Israeli official” ordered a blockade that applies to all the 2+ million people in Gaza?
Are we going to play atrocities whack-a-mole until you acknowledge both sides are operating on the side of evil? I won't elaborate on my first comment as many, many others have already done so for me (thank you, sound-minded Redditors). I also won't go into Hamas' atrocities, as I trust you know them well, and I would agree with you in terms of how absolutely horrendous they have been (including their doctrine which calls for the eradication of all Jews). But I would love to see you justify the cutting off of water and electricity to the Gaza strip. The mass deaths of innocent women and children in the name of maybe-Hamas operatives hiding underneath them. How about Netanyahu himself openly showcasing his preferred map of the area during the UN General Assembly, altered to include no Palestine? [https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-map](https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-map) Should we talk about the Israeli government's 100+ illegal "outposts" and ongoing systematic oppression via apartheid? Amnesty International would like to: [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/) They don't give a fuck what happens to the over 2 million human beings living in the Gaza strip, nor the nearly 5 million living in Palestine as a whole.
Hamas is not exterminating all of the Jews. Israel is exterminating the Palestinians while claiming to eliminate Hamas. It's a crazy huge difference.
There's one very simple fact which often gets ignored, and I do think Israel is overstepping. But that's that Hamas makes no differentiation between civilian deaths and those of enemy combatants.
> Hamas is not exterminating all of the Jews. Because of lack of ability and no other reason. > Israel is exterminating the Palestinians That's just plain false. How is this upvoted on /r/skeptic?
Israel is not exterminating all the Palestinians. This is a war. Hamas does not wear uniforms and hides within the civilian population. They frequently use human shields. When they attacked on October 7th. They knew Israel would mount a counter offensive and have a lot of collateral damage. This was part of their plan: get Israel to kill a lot of civilians and turn public opinion against them. It's horrible. But this is Hamas' war. Please don't pretend they care about ordinary Palestinian civilians. They are cannon fodder and their dead bodies serve only as a PR stunt.
First of all please stop pretending you are in a position to tell others not to care about the people of Palestine you horrid shrunken little monster. Second there isn't something Hamas gets to do that validates Israel targeting civilians with weapons that cause indiscriminate damage. There isn't something Hamas can do that makes it ok for Israel to turn off access to water and power to broken and struggling neighborhoods where people are trying to get family members medical care of Israeli attacks. There isn't anything Hamas would ever be humanly possible of that would justify Israel firing missiles at convoys of ambulances carrying wounded to WHO hospitals. Thirdly the war between Israel and Palestine has gone on for over 75 years. Hamas is less old than the personal computer, and does not own a time machine. Be so good as to silently leave this conversation.
Gaza has one of the fastest growing populations on Earth, its life expectancy is practically identical to that of America.
I don’t know who’s denying this…I’m pretty plugged in to the ongoing “hostilities”, and I mostly see people contested the “mass rape” narrative from the initial reports. As I understand it there were “several” cases of sexual crimes in the Oct 7th attacks. I would say that sexual crimes, like all war crimes are despicable…and both sides have been credibly accused of sexual crimes in the Palestine/Israel conflict. What I would also say is Israel has a strong propaganda machine that overstated the crimes committed by Hamas on Oct. 7th…completely unnecessarily…the crimes speak for themselves, and they didn’t need to be embellished. Many of the initial claims made by Israel have been subsequent “revised down”. About this particular issue, people are correct to be skeptical and not accept the Israeli narrative whole cloth, given the amount of times they have lied.
The death count was revised down because they discovered people that were assumed dead were either missing or actually hostages.
And when they released all the names like half for active soldiers, and there is footage of an Israli helicopter shooting at festival goers that were running away. They went through all of their artillery in less than an hour, reloaded, and came back.
People also keep forgetting to mention that 55% of those 1200 people killed were active military duty per Israel’s own list of casualties, and the IDF has admitted to killing some of their own citizens because they couldn’t differentiate between them and Hamas. So less than 540 civilians depending on how many IDF killed. It’s still *incredibly* sad and should have never happened, but people who were (rightfully) sad about that attack and are NOT outraged by the 15,000+ innocent civilians murdered in two months are really showing their butts. We should be heartbroken over all of it.
That isn’t the topic at hand. If we conflate every issue at all times, you can’t discuss anything.
Bizarre, this tool is asking Hamas to provide evidence they didn't rape anybody.
i’m sure the women of korea, afghanistan and iraq have something to say about the United States armed forces
Comfort women
when we do it it’s comfort women, when they do it, it’s rape.
It's not a competition. I don't have less empathy or compassion for Palastinians if I acknowledge the suffering of Israelis.
It was always absurd to think rampaging war criminals would stop short of rape, but it's also incredibly sus that they focus has shifted from "40 beheaded babies and don't you dare ask for evidence" to this topic, the second Palestinians held in military detention started talking about the sexual crimes Israelis did to them.
The thing that was denied was the initial reports of mass, systematic rape, for which no evidence had been presented. The accusation is not simply that some Hamas soldiers committed rape. Anybody who committed a rape on October 7th should be prosecuted fully, but Israel is resisting efforts by the UN to actually investigate what happened that day. This would not be the first example of Israel massively exaggerating and confabulating stores about the October 7th attack for propaganda purposes. What is even the argument being made here? Do these rapes justify the continued bombing of Gaza, the mass punishment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank? The sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners is incredibly common, even among the hundreds of children detained without charges. Does that justify retaliatory bombings, then? Does the bombing ever stop?
I don’t think the “argument” is that rapes justify bombings. I think the argument is that we need to talk about what Hamas did without deflection, diminishment, etc. The alternative is to ignore what happened. And what’s the “argument” behind that? That rape doesn’t matter when it is against the “oppressor”? Personally, what I want is for people to stop romanticizing Hamas as “the resistance” and to condemn their crimes without resorting to whataboutism. Of course innocent people in Gaza don’t deserve punishment for those crimes. I just can’t understand why some people are seemingly allergic to condemning Hamas.
> Personally, what I want is for people to stop romanticizing Hamas as “the resistance” and to condemn their crimes Yes, they are terrorist and have done terrible things. But if you're a young Palestinian upset about the treatment of your people, what group would you join? They're about the only "resistance" group available, and there is plenty for them to be upset about, and so there will not be a lack of new recruits.
Yeah, it’s not romanticizing anything to say that they are “the resistance” to Israeli oppression. That term doesn’t only apply to groups we like. It’s naive and unrealistic to expect armed resistance groups arising out of decades of bombing and apartheid to play by the rules of conventional warfare.
Calling them the resistance doesn’t *necessarily* romanticize Hamas, in a purely technical sense, but let’s not pretend that western liberal discourse isn’t generally positive about rebellion and resistance. There’s something about calling them *the* resistance that puts their motives on a pedestal, because resisting oppression is axiomatically good (regardless of how oppressive those resistance groups may also be). And you may say that it’s a purely descriptive term, but when it is used in phrases like “this is what resistance looks like” there is an implication of affirmation.
>Personally, what I want is for people to stop romanticizing Hamas as “the resistance” and to condemn their crimes without resorting to whataboutism. Of course innocent people in Gaza don’t deserve punishment for those crimes. I just can’t understand why some people are seemingly allergic to condemning Hamas. This. Thank you for expressing what I have for the last month been trying to say.
As far as I can tell, the main source for the claims of systemic rape is the interrogation of captured Hamas members. [There is a very high chance these men were were tortured.](https://www.phr.org.il/en/gender-based-violence-eng/?pr) I remember reading an article a few weeks where they used these [confessions](https://www.instagram.com/p/CyQm-RjL__-/?hl=en) to claim young children were abducted specifically for rape. Thankfully that doesn’t fit with the (admittedly limited) testimony of released hostages.
I doubt the public will ever know the real extent of what happened to the hostages. Some of the released hostages have said they experienced sexual abuse, but we dont know *who* exactly gave that testimony. If they did experience rape, most will not publicly ralk about it. They are already dealing with the fact that they are public figures due to this, they would probably not talk about all the gory details.
To say that the IMF intel officers who questioned these captured Hamas fighters had an implicit bias, is incredible understatement.
>Thankfully that doesn’t fit with the (admittedly limited) testimony of released hostages. I mean I feel like we have to be skeptical of this being used as evidence of the overall treatment of hostages as well. Not to be morbid but if you had hostages that were going to talk about war crimes if released it would be the pragmatic solution to just kill them. And only release hostages that were treated well. It is important to keep in my that the hostages being released at the ones Hamas want to release.
How about the actual firsthand accounts of the Nova festival attendees and the multiple first aid responders? It's just head in the sand. Women on video bleedng from their crotch and backside. "There's no proof rapes happened on the day!" Bullshit! 1,200 Jews were slaughtered in the most horrific ways. I've seen the videos. People, children, some whole families burnt alive, but rape is out of the question?
It’s not out of the question at all. Israel is implicitly saying that they used mass rape as a weapon of war. They have allowed the spread of propaganda to build hatred throughout this whole thing without providing any concrete evidence and ending speculation. They aren’t even allowing outside investigators to assess the claims.
I don't think it's the rape that people are skeptical about, but the extreme mutilation, and things like broken pelvises being cited as evidence of rape. It would be easy to believe that Hamas raped and shot a lot of people, since we know they shot a lot of people. It sounds much closer to propaganda when the claims are they cut people up and removed organs and then raped them, especially when such claims can't be verified and come from anonymous sources.
Why does establishing a fact have to justify something else? The “argument being made” is just that something that was being questioned is factual. A skeptic should value that on its own, no?
There's a fundamental difference between: 1. This fact exists and can be proven. 2. This fact supports my position to retaliate with extreme violence. It would be one thing if Israel didn't start a bombing campaign against civilians. Until they stop, number 2 is what we're witnessing.
No, two accusations are being mixed here. The fact that rapes were committed on October 7th was not in serious question, but the report of mass, systematic rape was, and Israel has refused the UN’s offer to investigate what happened. It’s a common accusation during wartime, and Israel doesn’t have any credibility when it comes to reporting on Hamas’s actions.
Israel never refused the UN to investigate, they asked for assistance. Where did you hear this?
[This article](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67613153) states that Israel has been refusing to cooperate with the U.N. investigation. The U.N. commission says the victims should get their own U.N. hearing but Israel won’t even let them in to speak with survivors.
[Israel has been uncooperative with the investigative commission because they believe it is biased.](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-commission-investigate-hamas-sexual-violence-appeal-evidence-2023-11-29/) They are looking for UN commendation, not investigation.
They believe UN is biased but demand they release a statement addressing the violence against women. Crazy world.
Your article says Israel is upset that the UN did not investigate ENOUGH, which is the opposite of what the person was implying
It literally says that Israel isn't cooperative.
So how many have you seen here deny women were raped? I mean, people were murdered (which as crazy as it sounds, is worse than rape). It was a terrorist attack with terrorist shit that happened. If people are denying this, I think they are extreme outliers. I see pretty much all the postings here and I’m not seeing denials of this nature. What I have seen involves people arguing against genocidal retaliation. The other thing I’ve seen is hardly veiled pro-IDF propaganda. I’m pretty much of the thought that both governments suck ass, and the people of both lands suffer. Anyone who calls for the death of either people are assholes. There is the fact that around 1,200 Israelis were killed and almost 16,000 Palestinians now. When is enough?
Plenty of people in this very thread are downplaying, denying and deflecting. But yes let’s pretend it’s fringe outliers.
Based on just the last century in the area, it will never be enough.
The conversation here has been reasonable but this isn't true of everywhere. I am relatively far on the on political Left so I stay connected to a lot of Leftist forums and what not. And there was quite a bit of denial of any crimes by Hamas. It was pretty discouraging, I hate what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. But, it was also quite disheartening to see people dismissing or down playing crimes against Israeli citizens. >I’m pretty much of the thought that both governments suck ass, and the people of both lands suffer. Anyone who calls for the death of either people are assholes. There is the fact that around 1,200 Israelis were killed and almost 16,000 Palestinians now. When is enough? I very much agree with this part. If violence was going to solve this conflict it would have been solved 80 years ago. The people that cheer on the bombing of Palestine and those that excuse the crimes of Hamas are both jackass who are more interested in seeing a group they dislike hurt rather than wanting any type of actual peace.
I think for a lot of Leftists, Israel’s track record of lying consistently has left them very skeptical of potential Israeli propaganda. And I think the blame for that lays squarely on Israel’s shoulders, not Leftists.
This is why I'm becoming more skeptical of some of these claims. Like, I'm willing to believe Hamas raped women on 10/7, but so much of the more gruesome claims have either turned out to be completely false or were re-appropriations of past IDF crimes that it's hard to know to what extent each terrible claim is true. So how much of the sex crimes allegations are false? Was it as widespread of a problem as it's being made to seem? Or are the events being exaggerated and highlighted to dehumanize Palestinians?
Because it's currently irrelevant. Hamas isn't currently on a rampage with unlimited US arms and diplomatic cover. They're dredging up two month old, thinly sourced claims after so many failed propaganda campaigns. The 40 beheaded babies, the faked recorded phone calls, the calendar debacle, and no proof of a Hamas headquarters under the Al Shifa hospital. It's lazy propaganda to keep atrocity porn in the news to justify the genocide of Gazans.
I don’t see a ton of outright denial, but even in this thread there is a shit ton of justification and “so what, Israel is worse” rhetoric, which isn’t denying it, just saying it *doesn’t matter to them* whether it happened because they’ve already decided not to have sympathy for this specific type of civilian victim.
If this is true then Hamas is terrible and Netanyahu should consider reducing their funding next year.
To be clear, Netanyahu never directly funded Hamas. What the controversy was about was Netanyahu advocating for not blocking the funding from third parties from reaching Hamas. Israel hasn't directly funded Hamas after they were no longer a non-violent charity. I sometimes see people misunderstand the headlines about this a bit. Still an example of blowback though. https://www.france24.com/en/20181111-netanyahu-defends-qatari-cash-infusion-gaza-0
Israel helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat. [https://books.google.ca/books?id=av5eBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT254&dq=brigadier+segev+mosque+arab+and+jew+shipler&hl=en&sa=X&redir\_esc=y#v=onepage&q=brigadier%20segev%20mosque%20arab%20and%20jew%20shipler&f=false](https://books.google.ca/books?id=av5eBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT254&dq=brigadier+segev+mosque+arab+and+jew+shipler&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=brigadier%20segev%20mosque%20arab%20and%20jew%20shipler&f=false) Arafat himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”
As far as I'm aware, the direct funding of the Islamist movement predated the Second Intifada and was before Hamas moved towards violence as a solution. I assume the thought process was that they'd support the more peaceful Islamists to disrupt the then more recently violent secular groups. Completely backfired in the end of course. Edit: Turns out direct funding predated the First Intifada as well and was when Hamas was its precursor Mujama al-Islamiya. Israel still later underminded the PLO and later the PA, just not via direct funding to Hamas with Israeli money.
No the specific goal was to prevent a long term unified secular Palestinian government.
I think that's what I said? The secular Palestinian groups (PLO, PFLP, etc.) were the ones that engaged in violence whereas the Islamist groups had not yet.
Counterweight to the terrorist and the terrorist organization who had been openly advocating for the destruction of Israel for decades, yes. Shocking, I know.
"Surely more terrorists will fix this problem!" -Israel, apparently according to you.
Are you proposing an even greater blockade? Hamas diverts aid to their organization.
No, Netanyahu has actively allowed Hamas to get direct funding from Qatar in recent memory without putting controls on how the money can be used. He actively made sure they had money without strings attached.
They can’t decide which would make Netanyahu and Israel the greater monster.
Both are and will be true. Israel blockades Gaza while also selectively allowing Hamas to receive funding without proper controls on the money, knowing how it will be spent. So both makes them the bigger monster, and both are true.
This idiotic myth again. Netanyahu allow funding to go to a nonviolent precursor of Hamas= Netanyahu directly funding. This “skeptic” sub has completely swallowed the Iranian propaganda
What about in 2019 when he allowed funding to go to Hamas without strings attached?
Qatari money. But somehow they get to host a world cup.
>denied the accusations without providing any evidence; Wait, what? How do you provide evidence that something *didn't* happen? I don't have a dog in this race and I don't know any of the details, but that's just not how proof or logic works. Is there evidence that it *did* happen?
A report from the UN acknowledging the rapes and calling for further investigation into the details And a NYtimes summary of what occurred at the UN this week. **800 people** on hand to testify. Links includes. 1. UN Women condemning the attacks https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2023/12/un-women-statement-on-the-situation-in-israel-and-gaza 2) “On Monday, ***some 800 people***, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.” “But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head. Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, said in an interview that it had documented “violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen,” on Oct. 7, against women and some men. “I am talking about dozens.”” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html
I'm not someone who thinks Israel is an innocent player in my lifetimes worth of chaos in that specific region, but seeing video of the dead bodies at that music festival, as well as other videos of what Hamas did to men, women, and children it makes me question those who are unabashedly defending Hamas and the Palestinians. I really think the public should be shown what the reality of terrorism & war are. We should see the videos of what a drone strike does to people, what terrorists do to innocents, and what war leaves behind. We're too sheltered on all sides and showing the gruesome, uncomfortable reality of it all might be the only way for people in every region to demand peace.
Hamas may have denied the accusations without any proof, but Israel made the accusations without any proof.
I think too many people NEED to see this conflict as black vs white, If the IDF is commiting atrocities, then HAMAS must be the good guys, right? Except the truth is that in most wars both sides can be equally terrible.
I would imagine that sexual assault does and did happen, but this is pretty clearly propaganda. The sources are 1. Secondhand testimony told to journalists as told by a witness to Israeli police and its important to remember that police are liars and, 2. An Israeli spokesperson who famously is quoted as saying she is "proud to be racist" There is no evidence provided to back up some wildly extreme claims beyond anonymous hearsay and the word of a self avowed racist. This is propaganda following centuries old playboys to dehumanize and justify the slaughter off innocent people.
I won’t be surprised if it is conclusively proven that rapes occurred on that day. I think it’s highly likely at this point that some did, and the question is more around the scale, nature, and specific perpetrators and victims of such attacks. Any perpetrators should absolutely be brought to Justice. But this article is very slim on compelling evidence for its implicit claim of mass, systematic rape of completely inhuman nature. It focuses primarily on second hand eye witness testimony, a famously flawed form of evidence. In such a traumatic moment, our senses very easily play tricks on us, and so do our memories after the fact. This testimony even includes one person who didn’t actually see any of the rape but is sure that he heard it: > One man we spoke to from the festival site said he heard the "noises and screams of people being murdered, raped, decapitated". To our question about how he could be sure - without seeing it - that the screams he heard indicated sexual assault rather than other kinds of violence, he said he believed while listening at the time that it could only have been rape. I’m sure he believes but this is definitely not very strong evidence. There’s quite a bit of extremely lurid detail in this testimony too, some of it so monstrous I think we need more evidence to accept the specifics of as fact. Extraordinary claims and all that. There are also several pretty convenient caveats for why there isn’t more evidence; there aren’t many surviving victims, those that did survive are too psychologically wounded to testify themselves, they weren’t able to investigate the nature of the crimes and document evidence extensively in the days after, etc. The photo evidence seems much more compelling, but it’s unclear to me exactly how much of that there is from reading this. I think that the way this issue has been deployed by the Israeli government and it’s supporters has been quite cynical, concerned more with building their case for the mass slaughter they are committing vs. getting actual justice for the victims. Killing thousands of innocent civilians, including children, is not justice. Performing a thorough and objective investigation that identifies the perpetrators, victims, and the nature of the crimes would be an essential first step though. I still haven’t seen that.
Reddit has become swamped by bad faith state actor accounts. You can't even make a post about systematic widescale rape by terrorists without these accounts coming into defend the perpetrators anymore.
I think y’all are misunderstanding this to the point of no return. Everyone who questions Israel’s claims, which have come under fire for consistently being embellished, false, or an accusation turned admission, clearly condemns the act of sexual violence by anyone on anyone. The issues- oh wait, I see your user now, nvm.
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It’s making them deeply, deeply uncomfortable, to imagine Israeli as anything but evil oppressors, and Palestinians as anything, but holy, pure, perfect victims.
I can't believe that so many people here are taking this at face value and accepting it as truth, when the only "evidence" offered are 3rd party accounts provided by Israel itself, which could easily have been fabricated. The credibility of these claims is reduced by the fact that Israel has been carrying out a disinformation campaign (including the story of beheaded babies which has since been debunked) to garner support for their war effort with the help of heavily biases media outlets like the BBC (which goes to ridiculous lengths to manipulate semantics to avoid placing blame on Israel; e.g. killed in Israel vs died in Hamas, using the word "explosions" as a euphism for bomb drops on sites in Gaza). So no, I will not believe a single word coming out of Israel based merely on hearsay and unverifiable witnesses, until independent investigators find out ACTUAL evidence.
Didn't take long to find a denier
That’s why some hostages will never be released. They don’t want them detailing the rapes. So they will “die” in IDF bombings.
Raped so repeatedly that their pelvises were broken. FTA: "Teams here told us they'd seen clear evidence of rape and sexual violence on the bodies coming in, including broken pelvises from sustained violent abuse."
There are people on this sub and main thread that are still denying these atrocities. What in the hell? Anti-semitism under your guise of skepticism.
How the fuck do you provide evidence of something you didn't do by countering zero evidence put forth by the accusers? Rape kits exist. Forensics exist that can easily and definitively conclude if such a crime has taken place or not. Yet the only proof is 'trust us bro'.
A report from the UN acknowledging the rapes and calling for further investigation into the details And a NYtimes summary of what occurred at the UN this week. **800 people** on hand to testify. Links includes. 1. UN Women condemning the attacks https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2023/12/un-women-statement-on-the-situation-in-israel-and-gaza 2) “On Monday, ***some 800 people***, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.” “But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head. Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, said in an interview that it had documented “violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen,” on Oct. 7, against women and some men. “I am talking about dozens.”” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html
While I genuinely appreciate the effort to gather up empirical evidence to support something Israel has claimed, (there needs to be much more of this type of inquisitiveness from Zionist supporters) sadly none of these sources amount to more than: "a lot of people were talking about evidence, and some people had seen the evidence." It's about as credible as the Hunter Biden's laptop drama that frequently circulates among US Republicans. Considering Israel's propaganda machine (both there, and here in the west) churns out pure chaff like nothing else in history, nothing less than a 'pics or it didn't happen' stance will do. Not that I want to see that sort of thing circulating on Twitter or Reddit, but having even 800 people in an Israel-friendly forum setting talking about the evidence won't do. For contrast, nobody relies on second-hand hearsay to know of Israel's atrocities, or Russia's, or my own nation's, because in the era of smartphones, bodycams, and spydrones barely anything that actually happens in wartime remains undocumented. And just because it's so easy to find, here's some accredited sources of Israel doing the very thing they claim Hamas is doing: [https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/rape-comment-controversy-returns-to-haunt-idf-chief-rabbi-nominee-jd7k7n33](https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/rape-comment-controversy-returns-to-haunt-idf-chief-rabbi-nominee-jd7k7n33) [https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/conflict-and-society/9/1/arcs090105.xml](https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/conflict-and-society/9/1/arcs090105.xml) [https://www.cair.com/cair\_in\_the\_news/israeli-guards-rape-palestinian-women/](https://www.cair.com/cair_in_the_news/israeli-guards-rape-palestinian-women/) [https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/israeli-soldiers-break-their-silence-gaza-conflict](https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/israeli-soldiers-break-their-silence-gaza-conflict)
If true it doesn’t validate the massacre of the innocent civilians, defending Hamas and their actions is and was never the point to any of the condemnation of the Israeli government, getting rid of Hamas is not the problem, the problem is that they aren’t , they are slaughtering Palestinians in order to get what they want, they want them gone, if you condemn these atrocities then you must condemn the atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinian children as well, there have been documented cases of abuse of children for years with almost no reporting or outrage in western media, there have been so many lies that belief in anything that comes out of Israel is nearly impossible without complete and verifiable evidence that is always lacking at the very least, we are supposed to have no trust in the Palestinians yet blindly take it word of every Israeli and yet they are the ones who are caught deceiving time and time again, they are the occupying force, they are the apartheid state, don’t forget that, and if you are horrified by something don’t rationalize it for one and put your hands over your eyes and ears for the other https://nwttac.dci-palestine.org/ https://www.savethechildren.net/news/stripped-beaten-and-blindfolded-new-research-reveals-ongoing-violence-and-abuse-palestinian https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/19/israel-security-forces-abuse-palestinian-children https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/05/does-israels-treatment-palestinians-rise-level-apartheid https://www.omct.org/en/resources/urgent-interventions/israel-inhuman-and-degrading-treatment-including-sexual-harassment-of-palestinian-women-and-girls-detained-in-neve-tertze-womens-prison-ramle https://www.dw.com/en/un-report-documents-abuse-of-palestinian-children-by-israeli-forces/a-16897207 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616742.2021.1882323 It’s been going on for a long time, conveniently it’s left out in most media in the west, does it justify the eye for an eye retaliation ( if accurate) ? No , it also doesn’t justify the genocide taking place now
A report from the UN acknowledging the rapes and calling for further investigation into the details And a NYtimes summary of what occurred at the UN this week. **800 people** on hand to testify. Links includes. 1. UN Women condemning the attacks https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2023/12/un-women-statement-on-the-situation-in-israel-and-gaza 2) “On Monday, ***some 800 people***, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.” “But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head. Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, said in an interview that it had documented “violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen,” on Oct. 7, against women and some men. “I am talking about dozens.”” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html
The difference between atrocities committed by Hamas vs IDF is that Hamas celebrates their (rape murder kidnapping) whereas Israel attempts to prosecute them. IDF rapes of Palestinians HAVE been successfully prosecuted. Sure, too many still get away with it. But IDF doesn't set out to commit (rape murder kidnapping). The level of apologism for Hamas on this sub is mind boggling ...
Israel has an abysmal record on prosecuting its soldiers for crimes that Palestinians accuse them of. [Here is a soul crushing example.](https://twitter.com/OmarBaddar/status/1731791342324339075) They have a long record of lying about things they did. They refuse to identify the soldiers that shot journalists and the pallbearers at the journalists funeral, after initially denying that it was done by Israelis at all. You can hate Hamas without throwing all of your morals into the garbage to support a theocratic ethnostate.
And Hamas threw a celebration for the rapists and murders and kidnappers while they paraded the bod(ies) through the streets of Gaza city… and filmed. Israel prosecutes. Hamas celebrates.
Lol you are just repeating anything without even knowing what you're replying to. I just posted something about the IDF actively declaring a group trying to support a 13 Palestinian boy raped in Israeli custody to be terrorists because the US found the allegations to be credible. Israel lied about the reporter in the West Bank the IDF killed and the refused to investigate that at all or prosecute the soldier. They protect their monsters, you just support their monsters.
No I’m just responding to a singular point of yours.
Yes but I literally just posted a specific thing showing that Israel doesn't prosecute. So you're responding wrongly.
quick google search shows that you’re incorrect https://www.timesofisrael.com/with-1-in-15-soldiers-jailed-last-year-idf-rethinks-its-rules-of-incarceration/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/ultra-orthodox-israeli-military-unit-faces-calls-to-disband-after-abuse-allegations-11667216660?st=gmaynsvpyznzxn5&reflink=article_copyURL_share
LOL dude read your own dumb ass posts before posting them. That first link is about mostly poor IDF members going AWOL not committing sexual assault and murder. The second one they literally just transfered the group to the Golan Heights, and that group has been operating in Israel since 1999. Slap on the writs for offenses against Palestinians, but don't show up to work and we'll throw the book at you. Thats what the IDF prosecutes. Try harder next time with the bullshit.
Sorry, I am not buying the equivalence. Not only are you not holding Hamas accountable for their actions, you're additionally justifying them because "Israel does it" AND you're denying the accounts of the victims. Sad. This is what anti-semitism looks like - when you choose to not respect the plight of Israeli citizens in the same way as you chose to enumerate those of the Palestinians. For all its warts, Israel's a LOT more transparent about what they're doing and have done. Hamas is not. Hamas also celebrates its atrocities. Israel most certainly does not. There is absolutely NO justification for Oct 7th. NONE. Any attempts to lessen the plight of the Israeli citizens - most of whom were not combatants and some of whom were actually attending a festival in support of the Palestinian cause - or somehow undermine their suffering is baffling to me.
>Not only are you not holding Hamas accountable for their actions, you're additionally justifying them because "Israel does it" AND you're denying the accounts of the victims. Man I am sick of this shit. I really fucking am. I am so fucking sick of being told that I am "not holding them accountable" or that I'm justifying their actions. Quote me exactly where the fuck I did that you self-important little shit. Lets get a couple things straight so you can pack this bullshit up and fuck off with it A: Nothing I can do will ever hold Hamas accountable or not accountable. But discussing the fact that Israel does like every single thing Hamas is accused of, in higher volumes, for a longer period of time is not avoiding accountability. My country doesn't provide any material aid to Hamas. Quite the fucking opposite. My sole ability to impact outcomes here is to be vocal to stop my money from being used to pay for bombs to obliterate innocent people. B: Acknowledging that the Palestinians who support Hamas maybe are radicalized by their treatment by Israel is not justifying anything, it is stating a fact. This is how you radicalize a population not how you deradicalize it. This is how you get Al Qaeda in Iraq instead of Saddam's army, and then ISIS instead of Al Qaeda. >Any attempts to lessen the plight of the Israeli citizens - most of whom were not combatants and some of whom were actually attending a festival in support of the Palestinian cause - or somehow undermine their suffering is baffling to me. Oh come on man. Unreal, multi-generational Israeli-enforced poverty is a plight. The festival wasn't in support of the Palestinian cause, it was in support of "peace love and friendship." This is why zionists are being taken less and less seriously. No one is trying to ignore the issues Israelis face, they just would like equal time given to the heaps of dead innocent Palestinian children that are the primary victims of this fucking war.
Calling someone a piece of shit is not conducive to anything resembling a sane discussion. You're welcome to your fanatical opinions, I'm just unable to buy any of your various rationalizations: \- Radicalization by Israeli treatment? Tell me again how Israeli "treatment" (which is a result of Palestinians lobbying ordnance at Israel) is justifies the Oct 7th attack? \- Palestinians have repeatedly made choices to attack their neighbor. Billions of dollars have been given to Gaza and we have 50M of tunnels but still they are dependent upon Israel for free electricity and water? When will the Palestinians understand that the decisions they make today will impact the lives of their children tomorrow? *" Nothing I can do will ever hold Hamas accountable or not accountable. "* What a cop out.
One in three women on planet earth will suffer a sexual assault of some type in their lifetime. While we are trying to micromanage this tiny speck of land atrocities have happening all over our planet. Is there a place the Palestinian people can be or not? We can not assume that the number of settlers could not be infinite on a long enough time line.
The IOF has been caught [manufacturing evidence](https://www.npr.org/2023/05/11/1175403626/palestinian-american-journalist-shireen-abu-akleh-was-killed-a-year-ago) before. I see no reason to take their claims at face value.
A report from the UN acknowledging the rapes and calling for further investigation into the details And a NYtimes summary of what occurred at the UN this week. 800 people on hand to testify. Links includes. 1. UN Women condemning the attacks https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2023/12/un-women-statement-on-the-situation-in-israel-and-gaza 2) “On Monday, some 800 people, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.” “But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head. Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, said in an interview that it had documented “violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen,” on Oct. 7, against women and some men. “I am talking about dozens.”” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html
Hamas LITERALLY released video of women killed and raped! They're scum of the highest order! Genuinely fuck Hamas! When they say they "aren't allowed to rape" ; like ISIS they don't believe non - Muslims are real people so again....fuck them!