Rape and Hamas and the denial of rape.

Yeah, she's a soldier. Which makes her a PoW and Hamas guilty of breaching the Geneva Convention

Additionally, Israel has mandatory military service for men and women from the age of 18, so these girls are likely to be conscripts doing their 2 years.

A very long post excusing the rape of females.

‘but she was a solider..’

Can't believe some are still missing the point. Must be deliberate because surely nobody can be that stupid 🤷🏼‍♀️

This footage was available from October 7th-8th. I saw it then. Not sure why it's being said to be released now.

The DM article linked in the OP says, "Just hours earlier they had been taken from the Nahal Oz base on the Gaza border doing mandatory national service as observation lookouts."

They were not civilians, they were soldiers. Or are, if they're still alive. There are conscientious objectors in Israel, so they had another choice, although that involves prison and being socially outcast, so at 18/19 I'm not sure how much of a decision it really is.

Female soldiers run MASSIVE risks of being raped in combat (and by colleagues). Female civilians too, but for soldiers it's huge. That does not make it ok. It's simply a fact, a horrible fact. It's one reason people don't want them on the front line - if they're captured rape is a certainty.

Should female Israeli soldiers be raped? Of course fucking not! But are they in any way unique if they have been? Very, very sadly, no.

I'd like someone to find me a war, a combat zone, in any point in history, where women were captured, military or civilians, where they were not raped or in any way sexually threatened, at any point in history. Combatants tend to be male and rape and sexual torture is a weapon of war. Even if women are kidnapped and it's not war, they're under MASSIVE threat of rape. Groups of men do not kidnap groups of women - especially soldiers - and then say, "Let us protect you, we respect you."

Rape and threat of it, as well as sexual assault, is used - and been documented well before October 2023 - in Israeli military prisons on Palestinian detainees. On women AND men. Americans sexually torture detainees in Abu Ghraib. I'd be very surprised to hear British soldiers haven't done it. Ever. I mean, it's not like British men don't rape British women. So why not rape female prisoners nobody can see? Do men suddenly behave with stricter morals when they don a military uniform and have an enemy than in civilian life?!

Anybody who thinks it's unacceptable for Israeli women to be raped or sexually assaulted, must surely think it's unacceptable across the board. Unless they think that some women count, and others don't, that some women's lives are more important than other women's, or that some women actually deserve to be raped?

Rape is a common weapon of war. Rape is a common weapon against women. It's horrendous.

Just so that we can stick to facts, here are some extracts from a newspaper based in Israel.

The women in the video are / were civilian employees of the IDF, who alerted the army to a potential attack and were ignored. The result was that as unarmed civilians they were captured. (And not to minimise what has happened to them, it is quite likely that male civilians captured in those circumstances would have faced similar violence.)

The utter failure of the IDF has in fact led to a law suit against them.

From the article:

It was an agonizing decision for the families of the five young female soldiers kidnapped on October 7: Exposing their daughters' ordeal to the world by releasing a three-minute video showing them herded into trucks bloody, battered, brutalized and terrified while at the mercy of cruel and scornful kidnappers – who then, once in Gaza, displayed them like trophies of war.

The fact that the parents of these young women abducted from their army base on Kibbutz Nahal Oz were driven to take this step points to their anger and desperation in the face of the Netanyahu government's callousness when it comes to prioritizing the lives of the hostages.

The families made that clear, in a statement calling the video "an indictment for a national failure, and the abandoning of the hostages" and pushing the government to "wake up" and save their daughters – along with <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/zPHqu/www.haaretz.com/haaretz-explains/2023-10-22/ty-article-magazine/hostages-held-by-hamas-the-names-of-those-abducted-from-israel/0000018b-55f8-d5d2-afef-d5fdd04e0000" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the other 123 hostages who have been held in captivity for 229 days.

It is shameful that families of kidnapped Israelis feel they have to resort to these tactics – just as they have resorted to <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/zPHqu/www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/police-hostage-families-clash-as-hundreds-rally-outside-pm-home-in-jerusalem-5-arrested/0000018e-9feb-d4f2-a9cf-bfff4a830000" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">civil disobedience at countless demonstrations in order to receive what should be their inalienable right: intensive and uninterrupted sympathy, attention and respect from the country's elected leaders.

Their feeling of abandonment cuts to the heart of the ethos of the Israel Defense Forces. In an unwritten contract, parents in Israel entrust their most precious assets and hopes for the future to the state. They have done so throughout Israel's history with the understanding that leaders will be careful with their children's lives – only risking them when there is no other choice, and doing anything possible to get them back if they are taken prisoner.

What the video depicts is visual evidence of the violation of that contract. The five young women in the video were not combat soldiers – they were left unarmed and vulnerable on a remote kibbutz adjacent to the Gaza border to do their job. No one was there to defend and protect them. They were not even provided with weapons to protect themselves.

Full article at https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/haaretz-today/2024-05-22/ty-article/.highlight/israeli-government-responds-to-brutal-film-of-women-hostages-with-shameless-arrogance/0000018f-a0cf-d639-a5bf-f3ffef930000

Can also be read at https://archive.ph/zPHqu

I fail completely to understand how this is being brushed aside and ignored.

Has it not occured to you that to constantly bring up what might be happening to these women is considered not to be supportive of the families, and indeed the women themselves. You demand that we all speculate about whatever private hell they are going through is quite strange.

As we all know, in areas of conflict and natural disasters women (and too often children) become victims of male violence including sexual violence.

And as a PP said, did you spend any time wonder about the women kidnapped by Boko Haram and the fact that some of these women have returned with children as a result of rape. And many are now leading wretched lives.

I started a thread about women who have been victims of war, and why countries are still not acting on international promises to try and stop this.

Can you explain why you are only concerned about Israeli women.

If of course you have started other threads in the past about women who have suffered in a similar way, eg the Yazidi women who have and continue to face horrendous situtation.

Of course if you have started threads about them please do provide links.

And just to add because some women who are left aligned make silly comments on twitter, it surely isn't worth while starting a thread about such a deliquent minority. Why are you obsessed with these baby politicos?

It's horrendous and certainly would be counted as a war crime. I support the families in their desire to bring all the hostages home safely.
There's clearly disagreement inside Israel about the military operations in Gaza, and all I can do is hope for the best.

You might not know them but they exist. They're all over social media and some have turned up on Mumsnet.

Men rape in war and peace. It is always minimised. Where are the women of Hamas? And it doesn’t seem that the IDF have been successful in either getting rid of Hamas or returning these hostages. We care, we notice, we know.

I really don't understand what you are getting at here.

SpiritAdder suggested that the reason it's not talked about in this particular conflict is the same reason it's not talked about in other conflicts - people don't care much about rape.

Even if you thought there was a different reason, I have no idea how you think that's minimizing. It's a reasonable suggestion.

I don’t think opposing the slaughter in Gaza means you don’t condemn the assaults of October 7th.

TBH just to add to my previous post, I don’t think I’ve EVER seen the mass rape, torture and barbaric murder of anybody, let alone civilians, women, children and babies minimised and seen as somehow deserved on such a scale as Oct 7th has been by people in the West (as seen in the mass demonstrations and protests on the streets and University campuses).

To say it has shocked me to the core is an understatement.

I often wonder if all those young women protesting even think about what it must be like to have their Achilles tendons sliced open so they can’t run before being beaten and raped, and held hostage by a terrorist government (and civilians) capable of pouring petrol on babies and burning them alive, for months enduring unimaginable horrors. Or being raped and murdered in absolute terror and their naked dead bodies paraded (and filmed) for people to cheer at, hit and spit on.

Most of the young girls in that video were 18-19. A similar age to most of the University protestors who have the luxury of living in safe countries with Mummy and Daddy funding them.

This 100%.

I can't get my head around student protests - seemingly mostly women supporting this shit - I just honestly can't believe that they see this and know what these evil evil bastards do and stand up for them. You really couldn't make it up!

This is rape and these beautiful young women have had to endure this every day for the past seven months. Just imagine this was one of your family tell me that you would not want your government to send in the army to eliminate these monsters.

Just to say I agree with you OP.

The images and videos sicken me. I am angered when people say that it's a lie, it didn't happen, what about Gazan children dying etc, as though we cannot be repulsed by multiple atrocities at once.

I don’t know anyone who denies the horrifying atrocities of October 7th.

I have no idea if you are Jewish or not, it doesn't even matter.. but thank you so much. I think some people have developed an incredibly thick skin when it comes to the terror of the 7th. I do feel as though people have now distanced themselves thinking "They're all killing each other in the Middle East".

The truth is, these girls could be any of our daughters or daughter's friends. They're no different. One minute having Friday night dinner with their families, the next being raped.

That's not to minimise rape elsewhere in the world. It's to acknowledge THIS rape.

Don’t forget cheering on the perpetrators, protesting for them, saying that the victims asked for it for being citizens of a legal state that they don’t agree should exist (I mean WTAF!), saying that it is ‘resistance’ to gang rape, torture and murder women and girls etc.

I have never been so disgusted in my fellow humans, including women. since Oct 7th and I’m not Jewish.

Has anyone noticed the tens of thousands of women and children slaughtered in Gaza as revenge?

I don't see anyone downplaying, whatabouting, and outright denying the horrors carried out on women in other parts of the world as much as they do the Israeli women currently being beaten and raped.

Some pretty disgusting posts here - you're 'all lives mattering' the rapes on 7/10; kidnapping and sexual assault specifically on Jewish women.

"You don’t think race was relevant in Rochdale?"

I can't imagine how you've come to that conclusion having read my post.

I specifically mentioned anti-semitism to distinguish the denial of sexual violence following the 7th October attacks from other events that you have mentioned. I don't understand why you would not want this to be discussed.

Thank you for the thread, OP. I'm not able to watch the video, I'm sorry. I can't.

Thinking of those girls and women, and everyone suffering. What a world.

Didn’t the denials also go on for decades with the grooming (child sexual exploitation and rape) gangs?