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

@Dibilnik there are more reports than one person's testimony, as can be seen emerging across social media and Middle East news sources. Some have been posted on this board already.

But as I predicted, the response to reports of non-Palestinian/non-Muslim women reporting sexual assault is to Believe Women, but the response to Palestinian/Muslim women reporting sexual assault is that there's nothing else to do but keep an open mind.

Quite

It seems odd that you want two threads about the rape of women, one for Palestinian women and one for Israeli women. Why are you dividing women in this way?

So there can be a thread about how justifying or denying rape is bad, and a separate thread for justifying or denying rape?

Another link about woman being raped in Gaza

Women in Gaza are being raped and this is not being investigated or reported’

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240324-women-in-gaza-are-being-raped-and-this-is-not-being-investigated-or-reported/

No, I just find some of the sources you plaster all over MN a bit dodgy to be honest. But the truth will emerge over time.

But the truth will emerge over time.

if this news aren’t true then I’ll accept them, and I’ll be happy that women weren’t raped as nobody should go through it. Same way I’ve accepted some of the atrocities that were mentioned about 7-10 (some of them about rape) and with time it’s been proven that they never happened.

@Dibilnik "that you plaster all over MN..." referring to me personally? There's more to Mumsnet than a few threads on a fairly small board on the site, so 'all over' is a bit of an exaggeration. Sharing a few links of emerging reports is hardly a heinous crime, and you can of course choose not to look at them. It's a shame to see that I'm right in how some people view Palestinian and Muslim women reporting sexual violence.

If these were British, or US, or Israeli women reporting that they had been raped by armed men, would your starting point be Believe Women? If the Canadian doctor in the article above weren't wearing hijab and had a different name, would that make her interview more credible?

@Scirocco Sorry, I thought it was clear I am talking about EasterIssland's article "Eyewitness Accuses Israel of Raping Women During Ongoing Al-Shifa Raid." More broadly, about similarly biased sources using crude and inflammatory reporting language. There is no apparent quality control on information shared on MN, which is fine if you just treat it like a gossip forum.

Well, I didn't post that link. So not sure why it would be obvious that was what you meant, when you used a quote from me directly above what you wrote. You'd need to ask @EasterIssland about that article.

Does this go both ways? The other day In another thread a poster posted something that IDF had said only for IDF to backtrack about their information 24h later.

there are several sources indicating idf has been raping Palestinian women. I would want to believe they’re all lies because that would mean no woman has been raped. Unfortunately, I’ve the feeling some of those reports will be true , and based on IDFs experience abusing Palestinian women I’ve the feeling many of them will be true.

as you’ve said. Time will tell the truth.

@Scirocco I did reply to EasterIssland and thought the conversation was ongoing.

The bit I was responding to when quoting you was your first paragraph:
@Dibilnikthere are more reports than one person's testimony, as can be seen emerging across social media and Middle East news sources. Some have been posted on this board already.

And no, I am not just referring to you in isolation. There is a general tendency to post obviously poor-quality reports and then condemn anyone who doesn't express outrage immediately.

@EasterIssland Yes, of course it works both ways. War is fought partly with misinformation, probably nowadays more than ever.

You're hardly going to get RCTs on this sort of thing. Emerging first-hand accounts, eyewitness accounts, etc were considered sufficient quality for compassion and concern when the victims were not Palestinian. It says a lot when suddenly these accounts aren't good enough for even a sentence or two of compassion or concern from many sources.

I don’t condemn those that don’t condemn immediately. I condemn those that tell me “some rapes are worse than others” or that “rapes are part of war and because of that it’s a shame but it happens” and also those that deny rapes despite there are several organisations that are reporting them.

But the language used in the article I'm commenting on is so melodramatic and inflammatory it would be comical if the subject-matter weren't so awful. This is what makes me wary of propaganda.

I might be wrong but I believe the first link i posted is referring to this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3mN1SRUx0R8

If these reports were about British, or US or Israeli women, would your primary concern still be the writing style of one article, or would your starting point be to believe women? If there's a difference in how you would react to women reporting sexual assault and rape, why is that?

These are emerging reports, so surely, as with other reports made by other groups of women in the past, the starting point should be belief, support and concern, followed by a rigorous investigation in order to determine what exactly has happened or can be proven to have happened, and in order to bring perpetrators to justice. Shouldn't it? Shame we can't even get the first step started.

It isn’t odd when you remember this will be on people’s “threads I’m on” feed. They will not even necessarily know about the other thread. I did not except for what you’ve said here.

Even so, this thread is about the “rape of women”, not “ rape of Israeli women” ( which would be strange). The arguments against anything justifying rape are important whoever is doing the raping and justifying it.

There will be a difference between the truth emerging over time regarding the possible rapes of Palestinian women and those that happened to Israeli women 0ct 7. There will be no forensic examination of bodies as no one will be allowed to carry this out. The camera equipment vans at Al Shifa were destroyed and reporters arrested. Hundreds have been killed.

Talking about sources...

apple.news/AG753RZj4R7mWtvQ3cQ9Qnw

UN said it in its report regarding rapes in 7-10 and Palestine. That they can’t investigate much further regarding the Palestinian rapes because Israel is not willing to cooperate and let them investigate

This is the doctor reporting. I find her credible:

Dr. Aliya Aziz Khan is a Professor of Medicine at McMaster University. She is the Director of the Calcium Disorders Clinic and the Fellowship in Metabolic Bone Disease at McMaster University. She graduated from the University of Ottawa Medical School with Honors and completed postgraduate training at the University of Toronto. She has published over 200 scientific papers and numerous books on osteoporosis and parathyroid disease.

Dr. Khan has been recognized by numerous national and international awards including the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for excellence in clinical care, research and teaching as well as the International Hypoparathyroidism Award, the International Osteoporosis Foundation award for publishing excellence and recognized by Osteoporosis Canada for outstanding contributions to research and education. She was recognized as being in the top 0.1% of the world experts in hyperparathyroidism by Expertscape.