Sexual violence in all its forms is always a very sensitive topic for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, as critically minded people, we must not shy away from examining even the most gruesome details presented to us by various outlets, such as news media, social media, and our governments. All of this to say, this article does not seek to claim the absence of any sexual violence during the events of October 7th, rather, in this first part, it seeks to examine how and why our media landscapes and governments nearly unanimously accept the notion of mass sexual violence (msv) perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th. In a second part it will also provide some academic and historical perspective on the matter of wartime sexual violence, in Palestine and in general.
To start this analysis, let us look at the “how”: the various sources for the allegations of msv. I base my analysis on several news articles, as there are limited sources for the allegations, and they are repeated by the large number of reports written on the subject. The different sources can be grouped into multiple categories: Israeli state sources, ZAKA, and civilian witnesses.
If you don’t trust the government, who do you trust?
In 1988, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky published their now famous book, Manufacturing Consent. In it, they set forth what they call the “propaganda model”, describing among other things, how mass media is very much dependent on government sources for their reporting, consequently often adopting them uncritically. This phenomenon is very much on display in this situation, as all major news reports, be it The New York Times, The New Yorker, BBC, AP, etc., rely on some part of the Israeli state apparatus for their reporting. To uncritically relay claims about a conflict, provided by any party directly involved in said conflict is not serious journalistic practice and represents a clear conflict of interest, violating the journalistic code of ethics. Besides these concerns of principle, the Israeli state has a long record of releasing misinformation, from misrepresentations of reality to outright fabrications. In October 2023, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated the widely circulated claim of Hamas decapitating 40 babies in Kfar Aza. This claim has been thoroughly debunked since, and even the IDF refused to confirm it. On October 13th, 2023, the IDF bombed a civilian aid convoy travelling on a designated safe route to deliver aid material. The Israeli military strongly denied this and instead accused Hamas of spreading “manipulative fake information”, however independent analysis confirmed the attack to be executed by airstrike, the capacity for which is exclusive to Israel. On May 11th 2022, the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper, while being unarmed and clearly marked as press. Naftali Bennett, then prime minister, and the military blamed her death on Palestinians, however once again several independent investigations confirmed her to have been killed by an Israeli sniper, this was further confirmed by an independent UN investigation. These are only a few instances of state misinformation in the history of Israeli occupation, but they illustrate why statements by any facet of the Israeli state cannot be taken at face value and must be regarded with utmost scepticism.
Let us now consider how the major news stories about msv on the 7th of October have treated Israeli state sources. A BBC report titled “Israel Gaza: Hamas raped and mutilated women on 7 October, BBC hears”, relies heavily on Israeli state sources, it interviews a minister, a police chief, a police spokesman, an IDF captain, an IDF soldier, and a member of Israel’s cybercrime unit. The article does not once acknowledge this, it does not question the bias of these interviewees, and most importantly it does at no point ask them to provide proof for their claims. It is of note that the minister interviewed by BBC, May Golan, called herself a “proud racist”, she has said that she wants “Jewish purity”, and that this means the expulsion of Palestinians and of African refugees, whom she calls psychopaths, infectious carriers of AIDS, and murderers. Yaakov Shabtai, the police chief interviewed in the article has called for Palestinian citizens of Israel who identify with Gazans to be put on buses and sent there. He has also stated that any Palestinian protesting Israeli atrocities within Gaza would face repercussions. Again, this is not mentioned, these people are presented as credible sources.
An AP article titled “New signs emerge of ‘widespread’ sexual crimes by Hamas, as Netanyahu alleges global indifference”, also takes the Israeli state by its word. It shares the words of the Israeli war cabinet, it again uncritically cites Yaakov Shabtai, and it interviews an IDF paramedic, an IDF reservist, and an IDF colonel. Once more, the article quotes all these naturally biased sources as if they did not have a vested interest in distorting the facts to their benefit.
A New York Times article titled “How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7” follows the same pattern. Without any pushback, it publishes the words of Israeli police in several different instances, those of an anonymous IDF paramedic, an IDF soldier, and of Israeli government officials. This is made even more shocking by the fact that it was written by a Pulitzer winning reporter.
Finally, a New Yorker article titled “How Hamas Used Sexual Violence on October 7th”, again cites Israeli police, and relies heavily on the aforementioned BBC article. When reading any article about msv on October 7th, it is inevitable to find some regurgitation of official Israeli statements, or uncritical reprintings of interviews with agents of the Israeli state. This constitutes a first problem with the reporting on the events on October 7th, Israeli government statements are being accepted as fact, and Israeli officials are never required to provide concrete and verifiable proof for their statements. In conclusion, it must be acknowledged that the word of the Israeli state is worth nothing on its own, as it has a vested interest in the conflict.
Zaka
Yehuda Meshi Zahav, born in 1959, spent his youth as member of “Keshet”, an ultra-orthodox terrorist organisation which fought against “autopsies and archaeological digs in gravesites”. In the 1990s, he founded ZAKA, which describes itself as “Israel’s dominant non-governmental rescue and recovery organization (…) with sole responsibility in Israel for dealing with incidents of unnatural death”. Meshi-Zahav led this organisation until three years ago, when he attempted suicide after it was revealed he had raped and assaulted dozens of people, many of them children and teenagers, he consequently fell into a coma and died in 2022. It is this organisation which has been responsible for much of the civilian first response to the events of October 7th, and many first-hand testimonies about msv come from members of ZAKA. As was the case with Israeli state (mis)information, ZAKA testimonies are also included in reporting by The New York Times, The New Yorker, CNN, BBC, The Guardian, etc.
How is this problematic then if all these are first-hand testimonies? Firstly, ZAKA personnel are not trained or qualified to make judgements on their findings (they do not have medical training), their function merely is to recover human remains and to bury them according to strict Jewish religious law. Mondoweiss reports that ZAKA members do not for example include the time and place of the recovery of corpses or body parts, and that they refuse to show journalists evidence for their claims, making them impossible to verify.
Secondly, the organisation has a vested financial and ideological interest in atrocities being discovered. The organisation largely relies on donations, and being able to report on rapes and beheaded babies makes donors more receptive, no matter how little evidence for any claim is offered. Benjamin Netanyahu told ZAKA teams: “We need to buy time, which we also buy by turning to world leaders and to public opinion. You have an important role in influencing public opinion…[ZAKA testimonies] give us the maneuvering room.” Indeed, the supposedly Non-Governmental Organisation ZAKA, collaborates with Israel’s Foreign Ministry and its Hasbara Headquarters, Hasbara being “a form of propaganda aimed at an international audience, primarily, but not exclusively, in western countries. It is meant to influence the conversation in a way that positively portrays Israeli political moves and policies, including actions undertaken by Israel in the past. Often, Hasbara efforts includes a negative portrayal of the Arabs and especially of Palestinians.”
Thirdly, ZAKA has an endless record of providing false statements, which is well resumed in this Mondoweiss article. Some notable examples include “bodies of twenty children with severed heads”, “piles of burned children”, and “pregnant woman’s stomach ripped open, and her fetus stabbed”. All of these claims have been debunked by Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Additionally, some select members of ZAKA were chosen to deliver a media campaign for international media and the UN, among them Simcha Greiniman who is an illegal settler, Yossi Landau, and Haim Otmezgin. All three have spread misinformation about the conflict, Greiniman for example, claimed to have found two burnt bodies of children aged 5-6, and 3-4 years old. Leaving aside the fact that he changed his testimony several times, there is no record of children of that age residing in the Kibbutz where they were claimed to have been found. Landau, the source of false claims such as dozens of beheaded babies, also provides numerous unverifiable numbers. According to him, 80% of bodies showed signs of torture, 70% of bodies were shot in the back, Greiniman also claims that 85% of women arriving at the morgue, did so naked. None of these claims are substantiated by anything other than their words. A senior ZAKA official called Haim Otmezgin testified in front of the Knesset on the 30th of November 2023, which was widely publicised by Israeli media. Like his colleagues, he repeated false claims of beheaded babies, and claimed to possess photos proving the occurrence of sexual violence by Hamas on October 7th but failed to produce any evidence of them.
Despite all these obvious malpractices, it is hard to find a news report on msv during October 7th without some ZAKA testimony. Fictitious tales such as the ones of Greiniman, Landau, and Otmezgin are printed despite having been thoroughly debunked, and their baseless claims are repeated by world leaders. Because ZAKA refuses to provide proof for its claims, is not trained to collect proof, is a part of Israel’s propaganda apparatus, and has been caught lying many times, makes it an inadmissible journalistic resource.
First-hand witnesses
First-hand witnesses are often the most reliable and trustworthy source of information in situations where no record of a crime exists (no camera footage for example). In the case of Israel however, even those waters get muddied, as those witnesses get used and manipulated by different actors. To start it should be made clear that Israeli eyewitnesses have been caught fabricating stories before, even about sexual violence from Palestinians, so this is not a new phenomenon. If we leave aside the ZAKA witnesses, we are left with several witnesses who were present as bystanders during October 7th. It is impossible to analyse every single witness statement in this article, so I will look at those reported in news articles, as those must be the most credible. In the New York Times article mentioned previously, several witnesses are interviewed: Sapir, Yura Karol, Raz Cohen, Shoam Gueta, and Waka. An analysis of their statements reveals critical gaps and other problems with their stories.
Sapir, a woman who chose to remain anonymous, claims to have seen gunmen rape and kill at least five women at the Nova music festival. She then goes on to very graphic description of the rapes and murders, during which she mentions seeing “terrorists” carrying at least three severed heads of women. The problem with this statement is that there are no reports of beheadings from the festival. Why would Sapir lie about this, and what tells us the rest of her story is not a lie too? Yura Karol, a friend of Sapir’s who was hiding with her, does not corroborate her claims of at least five women raped and killed, he also does not deliver a graphic description of their rape and murder.
Raz Cohen, the next witness, is described as someone who “had worked recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo training Congolese soldiers”. He describes seeing five men gangraping a woman, and then killing her. This is not the first time he has told that story, in fact at this point he has told it seven times already, to a variety of news outlets. Strangely however, his story changes notably in-between retellings. On October 9th, he is interviewed by i24News, and tells his story in detail, but explicitly says he “chose not to look”, contradicting his further statements of having seen the rape. In another interview published on October 9th, he makes no mention of sexual violence of any kind. In an interview with Radio Canada, he again makes no reference to rape or other kinds of sexual violence. He mentions women in an interview with an Israeli newspaper, but again he makes no explicit mention of rape, he certainly does not talk of gangrape and subsequent murder. On October 10th, in a PBS Newshour interview, he says he saw “terrorists” rape many women, kill them, and then rape their corpses. On October 11th, in an ABC interview, he says he saw “terrorists” rape and kill many women, but no mention of necrophilia here. On December 19th, the Israeli foreign ministry posted an interview with him, in which he describes five people circling a woman, one rapes her, she stops moving and he continues to rape her. On December 28th, the New York Times publishes their article, in which he makes no mention of necrophilia. On January 4th, during a CNN interview, he describes five “civilians from Gaza” raping a woman, knifing her to death, and continuing to rape her.
His statements are very much inconsistent, why not mention the horrific rape from the beginning, was there necrophilia involved or not, who committed the rape, civilians or terrorists, the list goes on. A former member of the Maglan Unit, an IDF special ops force responsible for the Qana massacre in 1996, Cohen has called for Gaza to be turned into a parking lot, thus it is safe to say his testimony does not hold much weight. As if this was not enough, Shoam Gueta, a friend of Cohen’s who was hiding with him does not corroborate his claims of a gangrape, he does not even explicitly mention rape, he simply describes the men stabbing and killing a woman with knifes. As mentioned above, this article was written by a Pulitzer winner, and published in one of the most read newspapers in the world, yet it is full of journalistic malpractice and shoddy reporting.
There are many more instances of witness manipulation, data misrepresentation, etc., and outlets such as Mondoweiss or Electronic Intifada do a great job at exposing them. Having now analysed the “hows” of msv reporting: reliance on state sources, ZAKA testimonies, and questionable witness statements, among others, we must now look at the “whys”. To circle back to “Manufacturing Consent”, Herman and Chomsky show clearly how media plays a role in shaping public opinion in favour of state policy. There is much precedent for this, such as when American media covered the Iraq war, giving disproportionate attention to pro-war voices, despite an overwhelming majority of the public being against it. The coverage of the events of October 7th falls in the same category, they give much weight to unproven extreme claims, which make it easier for Israel to justify its crimes against humanities. To see whether an article is to be taken seriously, one should consider the following: does it rely on Israeli state sources, does it uncritically report ZAKA testimonies, and how reliable are the witness statements it presents. Again, this is not to say it is impossible rape occurred on October 7th, it is to say there is no forensic evidence, no rape victims speaking out, and no independent investigation into the events, thus we cannot draw conclusions on the topic, as is being done currently.
In the next part of my analysis, I will look at historical context and take a more theoretical approach to this subject, in order to gain a more holistic perspective on this complex topic.
Read more: Sexual Violence and Hamas: An AnalysisBy Lino Battin
Le Dragon Déchaîné 