Your silence is deafening!

[Umyisraelchai]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/11/israeli-women-and-girls-have-suffered-horrific-sexual-violence-from-hamas-where-is-the-outrage?CMP=share_btn_link
Your silence is deafening!

My point was whether or not Israel is committing war crimes should be a separate discussion because while reacting to a terrorist attack/securing the safety of your own people/rescuing hostages is justified, war crimes aren't. So if France attacked the UK and killed 1 civilian or 1000 English people, or 10000 or 50000 it still wouldn't be justified to commit war crimes (e.g. deliberately targeting civilians). You could argue the case for going to war in those circumstances. But for something to be a war crime it has to happen in a war/conflict - even if the war is "just".
So the argument then is, is Israel committing war crimes or not which is a whole discussion but I don't think its healthy (or respectful to the victims) to tie it to a debate about whether Hamas did terrible things on Oct 7 (I mean there's Go-pro footage).

To be honest if someone I loved or cared about had been murdered and raped in those circumstances my kneejerk response would be "give them hell, crush them all, turn the rubble to dust". Especially in the face of people acting like it didn't happen/didn't matter. But because they weren't, I have the luxury of being more emotionally detached so I can pretend to be more moderate/morally superior/rational. I think that goes for most people. Also its why I would make a terrible politician.

My thoughts exactly. Hamas went to war to start a bigger war. Unless they really are a people made up of sexual psychopaths, the point of the invasion was to provoke a huge reaction from Israel; thus the cruel grotesqueries inflicted on Israeli citizens. Israel responded and Hamas had its war. Israel has stated that a Hamas attack will never happen again. They mean what they say.

It is possible to believe both sides have behaved appallingly in different ways.

Sadly it is predominantly women and girls who are subjected to rape and sexual abuse.

Sadly women and children are killed in urban warfare or when used as shields.

There are no winners but women and children are the victims.
We do need to find out the verified evidence and hold perpetrator's to account.

killing people doesn’t help anyone. Raping and sexually abusing doesn’t help anyone. Arguing about which is worse is not helpful as that energy would be far better spent trying to achieve peace and a fair solution for both sides.

I’m sure when the other side do this, it’s shouted down with “whataboutism”. But it’s fair game here, apparently.

Eliminating a savage killing machine? That's what you think Palestinian hospitals are?
You've completely dehumanised the people whose land has been brutally occupied

I don’t understand why we were funding Hamas by sending aid to Gaza.

I think it’s evident that money food and fuel intended to support civilians was funnelled to the war effort- not bomb shelters or defensive measures (which would also have been inappropriate) but weapons and tunnels.

Build a hospital- connect it to the military infrastructure underground and use it for coordination of terror.

The civilian population in Gaza should have been supported in ways that didn’t allow Hamas to target Israel.

Poisonous situation with no clear solution, but made worse rather than better by international politics.

“So if France attacked the UK and killed 1 civilian or 1000 English people, or 10000 or 50000 it still wouldn't be justified”- Did you actually read this hypothetical nonsense before you posted? It’s beyond terrifying to learn how little most of the posters here know either politically,historically or geographically re: our “neighborhood”! As a parallel- if you had an independent Wales and a county the size of Northumberland constantly threatening the rest of the UK’s security,having training camps & UN backed anti-UK schools teaching Jihad then when optimum training had been achieved,carried out a massacre on Hereford , Shropshire & Cheshire & stabbing attacks & car rammings in Newcastle & Durham - what would you do to protect your family? What would you demand of your government? Would you be willing for your kids or spouse to serve in the army? What would you do? Because that’s reality of daily life here in Israel!

Not going into what-about-ism comparing one set of atrocities to another.

But with regards the ‘silence’ referred to by the OP, I think you are barking up the wrong tree. I’ve certainly heard coverage of sexual violence, in excruciating detail, every single day since Oct 7th on all major news sources. Beyond horrifying and like any rational person am deeply sorry for what those poor women and girls endured and haunted by what their families must be going through.

Maybe coverage in Israel and elsewhere in the world is less? For cultural reasons perhaps? In the UK it’s in the media constantly to a rather horrifying level of detail.

I’ve certainly heard coverage of sexual violence, in excruciating detail, every single day since Oct 7th on all major news sources.
In the UK it’s in the media constantly to a rather horrifying level of detail.

Do you live in a different UK from me?

When the brilliant RAF pilots fought the Battle of Britain, they weren’t trained in a madness called “proportionality”! This was make or break time for Gt Britain. They gave their lives, many were maimed & burnt. Fighter pilots flew because Britain stood alone! War is not about proportionality. Any civilian life lost is a tragedy. Hamas relishes every loss & your arguments are their vampiric lifeblood!

No but maybe we read different news sources? I read the guardian (who reference it in most coverage of the attacks), the times (less so but have done a fee features), the indie (same) and the bbc?

Certainly for a person who consumes a normal amount of news and hasn’t been out looking for details of sex crimes i know a lot about the injuries these women suffered, the one who’s body was boobytrapped with a grenade, reports of attackers cutting off intimate body parts (the account is well publicised so i don’t need to repeat it here). I know all this from coverage in mainstream media that i have come across just in my daily news reading.

None of this makes any difference to the horror of the situation. I just question the OP’s original suggestion as I questioned that guardian article when I read it, as i thought to myself, I know so much and have read so much I don’t think that’s silence really.

Also, frankly, fuck the cowardly little worms who went on a rampage against unarmed women/men/children, committed the most horrific crimes including gang rape and then went back to hide in tunnels leaving the civilians (including many women and children who regardless of their beliefs had done NO gang rapes or murder) to suffer the resulting fury of Israel with nowhere safe to shelter or supplies.

THIS. In spades.

Sympathies in the west are absolutely not for these utter scumbags.

I think Israel have proved that ISRAEL is the savage killing machine!

That is why Israel is being condemned. For it's genocidal savagery against the Palestinian people regardless of Hamas. Hamas if the excuse they used for their atrocities. It has never been about Hamas. They want to eradicate all Palestinians. People like you who think otherwise are ignorant fools.

Israel is about the same size as Wales, approx 20,000km sq. (No, I don't know whether that figure includes or excludes the OTs.) Imagine 100s of Bristolians charged into Newport on a murdering, raping, destroying spree, taking hostages away with them and abusing them, too.

Would you feel safe because you lived in Cardiff or Aberdovey? Would you feel safe because you lived even further away in Liverpool?

Would you expect the United Nations to immediately condemn the attacks?

Would you feel safe because you're a bloke and only women were raped? Clue: men were also raped and abused.

I haven't seen much reference to the rapes and sexual assaults in the mainstream media I consume. The occasional brief "This and this happened". The occasional interview with a survivor, which never goes into such detail.

I see more denials than details. The denials are like Holocaust denial: it didn't happen because reasons.

It also reminds me of the smoke and mirrors after the Cologne attacks. Some papers reported more details than others, but there was more emphasis at first on not reporting properly, so as not to cause offence or racial tension. The women did not matter. Their attackers did.

This 💯

I was horrified by the original attacks on 7/10. Worse - that the rape of Israeli women was somehow excused, that constantly people say "what about Gaza?" As if that makes the crimes somehow acceptable.
Where were the UN? Women's groups? Feminists?
Just shocking.

No amount of coverage or comment since, and nothing anyone has or has not done, can ever change the fact that in the aftermath of that horrific attack many many organisations and media sources were silent or pausing while they decided how to respond.

There was a collective ‘yes, but…’, underway.

It’s too late now. The attitudes of those most impacted are going to be forever affected by the world’s delay in expressing outrage.

I have no connection to any of this- I am not naturally partisan in this. As a neutral onlooker, that’s what I saw.

I believe it took the UN two months to condemn the sexual violence. Even the UN's special rapporteur on VAWG failed to mention it for two months, until there was outcry. But immediately after the October 7th attacks, and repeatedly, there were calls from these UN representatives for Israel to refrain from responding.

Hamas need to release the hostages and surrender.

Is it any wonder that Israel does not trust the UN to take over peacekeeping in Gaza.

I'm the same as you, @pickledandpuzzled and have no skin in this game, but I find it shocking that sexual violence against women was not, and has still not been condemned. Why not?
I'm horrified that people still say, "yes, but..." Or "men always rape" as if it makes it acceptable. No justification, no excuse.

No, I can assure you I have read the same media sources as you. I also read and listen to a great deal more, including French, American and Middle Eastern media. As others have pointed out, reporting on the rape, torture and mutilation of Israeli women was practically mute for the first two months following 7/10, and that's not to even mention the lack of condemnation by supposed feminist groups.

The first truly meaningful report I read about the sexual violence perpetrated on 7/10 with "a horrifying level of detail" (your words) was the New York Times, and that wasn't until late December. So to claim you've read about this in "excruciating detail every single day since Oct 7th on all major news stories" is just not borne out by the evidence, not even in the slightest, which leads me to think you made that up.

I am certain that Hamas's objective for the attack - and Iran's - was nothing to do with Palestinian autonomy, and everything to do with triggering exactly what Israel is now doing.

Yes. What did Hamas think the Israelis would do? Wag their fingers and tell Hamas not to do it again? Anyone reading the reports of what happened on 7 October could predict how Israel would react. Hamas knew what would happen and went ahead anyway. They put their own people in the firing line.