Justifying the rape of women

The scale of these events was probably overstated ,

@Kindatired that's minimising to say the least.

https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/tory-peer-condemns-excusing-rape-in-israel-its-me-too-unless-youre-a-jew/

Yes, there is NO doubt that Hamas, PIJ and other terrorists did in fact sexually degrade, humiliate, assault and rape women and girls on October 7th and from then to now for female hostages held in Gaza.

The UN report is confirming this definitely happened and is happening.

The UN only declined to agree with this being taken one step further which is the allegation that Hamas ordered the rape of women, known as the weaponisation of sexual violence. This means that as well as all the above sexual assaults being war crimes committed by individual terrorists, the Hamas leaders and commanders can be held criminally liable for ordering their men to do sexual violence.

The UN didn’t say they have exonerated Hamas of weaponising sexual violence, but that the investigation hasn’t yet identified who did what and why as many terror groups were involved in the October 7th attack.

It is one thing to state yes we have enough evidence to know this happened in a more than isolated way, but it takes a lot more to investigate whether the individual terrorist/soldier did it of their own accord, even against orders or if they were ordered or even forced to do it by their commanders and leadership.

As it is, the UN can neither confirm nor deny the IDF has raped Palestinian women because of the difficulties in investigating these allegations without IDF co-operating fully. This isn’t unique to IDF; the US and coalition countries’ militaries closed ranks about similar allegations of conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not unusual for soldiers and commanders to only be brought to trial for war crimes over a decade after they committed them. It’s not ideal or right, or how it should be, I am just saying that IDF is no better or worse than any western, democratic military when it comes to stonewalling and trying to cover up war crimes.

In summary:
They brought a team of the 9 of world’s best technical experts to Israel for 15 days and met with representatives of 33 national institutions as well as various academics and reps of civil organisations and even the President and First lady. They met with loads of other people . So a lot of reaching out as it were to those in lofty places and beyond.
However, the women whose alleged rapes they were investigating were often dead and buried, internally displaced, too traumatised to talk or had fled to a third country. It was clear that there was a lot of potential for forensic evidence to be destroyed or not collated together. They were also short of time.
The looked at 50 hours of footage and 5000 photos but carried out only 34 standardised interviews. The interviewees included victims, witnesses, released hostages, first responders, but they did not get a single woman who identified themselves as a rape victim.
Not a single semen sample was analysed. No evidence of genital trauma was photographed or recorded.
They found evidence of misinformation and inaccurate and unreliable forensic interpretation by non-professionals. They discounted some of the allegations relating to Be’eri - specifically the ones about forced penetration with objects and the stabbing of the pregnant woman.
But Hamas is a terrorist group, not a group on a Sunday school picnic. The whole point of the attacks was to make sure that Israelis never ever felt safe again and there was convincing evidence that women were forcibly restrained and stripped at enough locations to convince me that in their final minutes women were either raped or thought they would be raped. They surely didn’t strip voluntarily.
They seemed to find the accounts of rape by released hostages quite convincing and consistent- they called for immediate release of the hostages and expressed concern that these women may be experiencing ongoing sexual violence.
My impression in reading this report is that forced stripping and restraint is sexual violence. Something doesn’t ring true in relation to the lack of forensic evidence and verified eye witness accounts. The scale of these events was probably overstated , given the lack of victims coming forward. However, I don’t think the women voluntarily stripped and it’s unlikely the first responders / Zaka colluded to strip the victims post mortem at various locations.Even if penetration didn’t occur, it was demeaning and disrespectful to the victims and furthermore these actions appear to have carried out with the intention of increasing the shock factor of the atrocities and callously increasing the impact of the attacks.

😥

Quite disgusted at the way some women cast doubt by any means possible on rape used during October 7th. Sickening snipy comments, faux concerns that rape kits were not used in the immediate aftermath of a bloody slaughter. Shame on you.

Well the Nova site was like a battlefield and it's not normal to go round collecting forensics from a battlefield in the way it is usually done from individual crime scenes, Not to mention the religious aspect with regard to the bodies and the swift burials.

Hamas has stated its ambition is to repeat this. God forbid it happens but if it does, hopefully Israel will make sure they take rape kits along with them next time to satisfy all the doubters.

Israel has a grand total of seven forensic pathologists in the entire country, who were tasked with examining and identifying hundreds of mutilated and desecrated corpses.

They were absolutely swamped and had to get some help from outside. I wonder if the doubters on this thread would accept the word of the non Israelis or would they consider them to be liars as well?

Yes you have misunderstood
I believe Israelis and Palestinians have been raped. I do hope that the investigation could be fully done without Israel getting on the way (this investigation has only been done with the information israel has provided and refused to let investigation to be done about Palestinian rapes). I also hope , that the mistakes that were done after 7/10 by some organisations in the aftermath, can be learnt , addressed and in the event of something similar happening again anywhere they’re not repeated. Some of the mistakes that were done by zaka are addressed by UN in their report and why some of the rapes have been discarded and some not verified.

It seems you are willing to accept that Palestinians were raped but demand more compelling evidence for rapes of Israelis - despite the video evidence , the witness statements and the mutilated dead bodies? Or have I misunderstood?

I was referring to @EasterIssland‘s comment.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to use flippant sarcasm in a discussion about rape.

I am allowed to be disappointed by the way the evidence was handled.
Is it not OK for me to be upset for the victims and their families?
Or are you one of those people who will never criticise anything Israel does?
When evidence of rape isn’t collected properly it does a disservice to the person who it was committed against. One of the reasons it is so hard to convict anyone for rape is because it is hard to prove. Oh, and of course because it mostly happens to women.

“ a bit disappointed “ is a coldly sarcastic nasty quip .

Do you a consider a snide little attempt at point scoring over the chaotic aftermath of a terrorist attack, which killed and injured thousands, to be a helpful contribution here?

I think UN might be a bit disappointed as well. (53)

Fair enough I was just trying, clumsily, to point out how difficult it can be to prove but that difficulty should not be used by some to suggest it didn't happen

I’ll correct my sentence. I don’t take what the news are saying that UN had found convincing information. Whilst they’ve found it, it’s only what Israel has wanted to provide them (i.e they’re not willing to cooperate on the rapes on Palestinians)

Israel has a grand total of seven forensic pathologists in the entire country, who were tasked with examining and identifying hundreds of mutilated and desecrated corpses. I’m sure they’d be mortified to hear of your disappointment in their work. Maybe you can also put in a complaint about the degradation of evidence caused by the lack of adequate storage facilities due to the overwhelming number of bodies.