Justifying the rape of women

[armchairactivist1]

Something I keep coming back to.. for the people whose sympathies lie with the Palestinians and think an eye for an eye and that Hamas have been pushed to act the way they have, how do you justify the brutal rape of women by Hamas?
Post edited by MNHQ

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?

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.

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.

😥

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.

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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.

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

The scale of these events was probably overstated ,

@Kindatired that's minimising to say the least.

UN ‘evidence’ of Hamas rape questioned by journalist - “How is this different from the NYT Story?”

UN’s Pramila Patten questioned by journalist on Hamas rape report claims “How is this any different from the New York Times Story?”. From UNTV Press Briefing 4 March 2024.
“The reason I’m asking this is because there are real consequences to this report. I mean I know you keep saying the Commission of Inquiry need to go and do their investigation, which I believe they’re doing, but the Israeli ambassador to the UN has said publicly ‘We’re not going to cooperate with that’ so that recommendation is already DOA I guess you could say.
Are you at all concerned that this report: Sexual violence against women, is being weaponised as a way to continue violence in Gaza?”
——
Pramila Patten, UN Special Envoy on Sexual Violence in Conflict, responds to questions from the press on her the recent visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank, and subsequent report. The report from her Office, arose from the official week-long visit to Israel at the invitation of the Israeli government, which included a 1-day visit to the occupied West Bank, between 29 January and 14 February.
In the Press Briefing she stressed that the mission and report were not “investigative” in nature, and that the purpose was to gather and verify “information” not “evidence” which she made pains to clarify were completely different.
Patten stated that she did not meet with any survivors of sexual violence of the 7th of October attacks or it’s aftermath. She stated that she received information from Israeli representatives that “a handful of survivors were receiving very specialized trauma treatment and where too traumatized to speak.”
The team conducted 33 meetings with Israeli representatives, examining more than 5,000 photographic images and 50 hours of video footage, and had 34 confidential interviews including with survivors and witnesses of the 7 October attacks, released hostages, first responders and others including discredited Yosi Landow of Zaka at Kibbutz Be'eri.
The report states that “the information gathered by the mission team was in a large part sourced from Israeli national institutions. This is due to the absence of United Nations entities operating in Israel, as well as the lack of cooperation by the state of Israel with relevant United Nations bodies with an investigative mandate.”
Based on this information, the UN mission team found that there are ‘reasonable grounds to believe' that conflict-related sexual violence occurred. The mission also determined that at least two allegations of rape were unfounded.
The team also visited the occupied West Bank, where Patten met 4 recently released Palestinian detainees who provided first hand accounts of sexual violence perpetrated by Israeli authorities in threats of rape, and heard concerns raised over “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinians, men and women, in detention,” including “sexual violence in the form of invasive body searches, threats of rape, and prolonged forced nudity.”
The report made recommendations included calling for a full fledged investigation by competent UN bodies into allegations of sexual violence on October 7th, and a humanitarian ceasefire.

Links - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BPKo0VhGxWQ

That's an interesting little youtube channel. Very newly created, very specific sphere of interest.

What does the channel matter? It's a video of the press conference.

The reddit account linked to it is also rather interesting.

@stomachamelon
No intention to minimise the experience of anyone who was subjected to SVC.

What I meant was that given the scale of the attacks, there is little in the way forensic or eye witness records in proportion to the amount of restraint and stripping noted. I was surprised that the report didn’t just take this as actual sexual violence in itself. I think that the pattern was too much of a coincidence and there was intent and that an order to degrade the victims was given, although they could not find evidence.

Looking at paragraphs 13, 58 and 60 there seem to have credible witness accounts for 4 rapes including one of a dead person.

Has anyone else actually read the full report?

Your heart goes out to those affected:(

Okay, literally, how about "the extent to which sexual violence occurred on 7 Oct 2023 [or before that, or after, in how Israel treats Palestinians"] is, literally, ...

A) yes, something that needs to be investigated
B) and prosecuted - yes, that would include Israeli as well as Palestinian perpetrators!
C) completely immaterial to the question whether or not the current horror in Gaza is justified [for the record: it really fucking isn't!]

Even if 1000 Israeli women had been systematically raped on 7 Oct [they haven't been - nobody, not even the state of Israel, claims that!] - that still would not justify the killing, maiming, starving and thirsting out, kidnapping and arresting of tens of thousands of Palestinian women and girls!

Personally, I am willing to believe every single victim, and precisely zero government spokespeople, on sight! Sexual violence is "normal" in war! I have personally experienced being sexually taunted and threatened by Israeli soldiers [and: I am white British; they just wanted to humiliate my Palestinian husband and had no personal "beef" with me]. Yes, those soldiers needed to be disciplined, prosecuted and jailed [they weren't, of course], but, no, their behaviour was not "unusual". It was just "how men with guns treat women in war zones" - why would I assume Palestinians are any better behaved? I don't!

Still: no justification for mass murder!

From the tweet (there is a video):
https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1765338537954611465
Israel is frustrated with the UN report on Oct 7 sexual violence b/c it doesn't accuse Hamas or any other armed groups of these alleged acts

Pramila Patten says Israel should give access to an investigation to look into this

Israel refuses to cooperate with the UN investigation

I think that while many people believe accounts from those who were there and that sexual violence and rape happened, they are unwilling to trust the official narrative from Israel, because of a lack of transparency, the way evidence was collected, and because the issue has been weaponised to justify a disproportionate offensive. All of this makes a horrendous situation even worse.

Exactly. Why isn’t Israel willing to let UN fully investigate. Wouldn’t it be on the benefit of the victims ? Or is Israel worried about something against them being found ?

Several articles to follow...

There are other reasons why victims may not be willing to cooperate fully. See the paragraph below from the UN report published earlier in the thread.

1. While the mission team met with a number of released hostages, it noted their well-founded fears about the risk of revealing their stories, which may result in their identification and further harm to them as well as to those still in captivity. The mission team further noted the fact that the identities of some of them have been publicly disclosed in both national and international media, often with their names and photos, which has contributed to some choosing to remain silent.
2. Moreover, trust in national governmental institutions or intemational organizations, such as the United Nations, are at an all-time low amongst many survivors and/or witnesses of the 7 October attacks, making them reluctant to come forward, in addition to the high media scrutiny of those who do opt to share their accounts publicly

@stomachamelon

It’s horrible that the men on October 7th decided it would be a good idea to do this to women, and it’s horrible how politicised the issue has become.

Feeling very angry today about how much more governments and men in power (apparently) care about violence against women when it’s committed by an out group. But when it happens within their own societies they don’t do enough. Not a specific criticism of Israel, can’t think of a country where it wouldn’t be applicable.

Sharing an interesting article which talks about the link between misogyny and terrorism. Perhaps all countries should as part of their terrorism strategy invest more in holding the men in their own communities accountable for their misogyny and violence towards women.

I’m sure I will have inadvertently said something here that you will deem incorrect, but hope we can at least agree that more needs to be done to prevent and hold accountable those who rape and sexually abuse women, and be united as women against this.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/05/many-terrorists-abuse-women-research-extremist-attackers-violent-misogyny