I am not sure if anyone posted these articles about Hamas rape earlier on in the thread, but here are two going back a month, about the lack of evidence collecting by the Israeli state.
It was tan an Israeli paper that lead on this, then it was picked up by the Guardian. It is one reason why it has taken so long for people in the West to properly pick up on it.
Here is my Google translation of the Israeli newspaper article:
From Israeli newspaper
Yedioth Ahronoth
Ronen Bergman Updated:06.11.23 |
The omission of the testimonies and evidence will make it difficult to bring the sadists to international justice
Videos documenting the horrors of October 7 are deleted from Hamas Telegram channels. A large part of the bodies were not recorded at all and tractors drive over the scenes of the massacre. Many survivors were not asked to testify. 4 different bodies deal with the collection of information, but they are not synchronized, sometimes
Every day that passes, every hour that passes, every minute that passes since the day that changed us all - takes us away from completing the picture of what happened there. More bodies are buried without documentation, more crime scenes are crushed under the paws of the tractors that came to protest the memories of death and sadism, more short videos on one of the 150 Hamas Telegram channels evaporate from the web (because they too are beginning to understand that documenting crimes against humanity does not really help their international status ), more fresh evidence is not collected - and may be buried forever under the shock and post-trauma
The evidence and testimonies about the most important event that took place here at least since the Yom Kippur War are not preserved, not preserved, not investigated as a single piece - and accordingly do not yield conclusions, do not establish international indictments and do not integrate into the media campaign which aims to keep these Nazi atrocities at the forefront of the world agenda .
The State of Israel could have made such an orderly and evidence-rich study its leading political and international trump card, and perhaps with its help it would have succeeded in dramatically changing the attitude of the world - or at least parts of it - to the activities in Gaza. She could, but she didn't. This is how it is when the prime minister appoints him as a spokesperson for the international media only 16 days after the outbreak of war, and this important role becomes part of the time a side task, along the way, of the political advisor. Benjamin Netanyahu himself, the national commentator, who always found time to be interviewed by the world's media, stopped his appearances there precisely at a time when they were so
important.
But beyond the immediate, practical benefit, for the sake of information - how is it possible that the State of Israel, which was built on the Holocaust and its aftermath, does not see this documentation as a special commandment, of national priority, that justifies a budget of hundreds of millions and the establishment of a special HML? We are raised in our duty as Israelis, as Jews , as Middle Easterners, as human beings
In the name of my parents, the survivors of the Holocaust, Miriam and Shmuel, may their memory be blessed, and I am sure - in the name of many more of those who perished, and their living descendants, I want to say to the government ministers and the offices of the prime minister and foreign affairs and other parties who had to deal with this: shame on you.
ministerial impotence
Turning the horrors of Hamas on October 7th from an accumulation of terrorist events into an event in its own league, a new standard of indifference to human life, while inventing new methods of causing indescribable suffering, was supposed to take place in two ways: bringing to the world's knowledge of their existence, their dimensions, details and extraordinary wickedness of the acts, in a manner that cannot be obtained; And building an array of evidence not only against the approximately 200 Nohva people who were captured and are being investigated by the Shin Bet and Amman, but also against Hamas and anyone associated with the organization - evidence that will stand and hold like hardened steel, in any international legal forum.
Both of these avenues should rely on a centrally directed hand, careful collection and enormous resources for obtaining evidence and documenting it. In Israel there are now a lot of military personnel, underground and above ground, with several thousand young and old people from all parts of Israeli society who know how to find solutions to the impossible, and in a short time. Nahon, a friend has from scratch artificial intelligence systems with powerful computers, to write new algorithms, which will run on thousands of hours of video and audio and text at the same time as hundreds of people improving the information, all to help locate and recover the kidnapped - is one example that inspire
a very positive example that we can talk about.
But, at the same time, this is another example of the impotence of the unqualified ministers and the entire crumbling system under them, and how civil society, in many cases the one that previously led the protest against the legal coup, simply enters the vacuum created because there is no one to save
This is also how the treatment of crimes against humanity should have been conducted - a central HML, under which everything is, and from which the two paths are turned: bringing the material to the attention of media outlets in the world, who can verify for themselves its reliability, analyze it and study it (because most of it cannot be published , due to the difficult content) and at the same time, a careful collection of evidence that will help as legal material before any tribunal
Abroad is not enough
Say: But there are already countless movies, we've all seen them, who else needs to prove that Hamas terrorists are like Nazis? The answer to this is threefold. First, the public in Israel did not see everything. Definately not. Not even a small part. and better this way. The horrors are much greater.
Second, the event that changed our world and changed it forever did not necessarily leave the same mark on others, and many people do not understand what happened at all. And thirdly, even today there are those who doubt it, and not just Queen Rania.
A European journalist told an official Israeli representative after seeing the terror film made by the IDF spokesman, that even in view of what you see there (and you see - it is a film that shakes the soul and heart) Israel still has not proven its position. As time passes, more and more doubts will arise, That way it will be more important for major media outlets to conclude that these are real films. The anonymously edited recordings lacking details of device, time and place, that the Shin Bet or the IDF occasionally release, are accepted by the Israeli public and media. Abroad, what to do, and not only Because they hate Jews, we need more than that.
Already now Hamas realizes what damage it has caused itself, and is trying to place the responsibility for the atrocities on the civilian infiltrators from Gaza. This is a blatant lie, and the mental preparations that Hamas made for its terrorists in order to spur them on to commit the heinous acts will be revealed, but beyond that: if they collected all the evidence in an orderly manner, many proofs would accumulate that Hamas itself encouraged the people of Gaza to infiltrate into Israel, to loot, to torture , murder and kidnap
When the members of the IDF and the Shin Bet, and especially the members of the IDF spokesperson in regular and reserve positions, who have taken on this sacred task even though it is not their job at all and are stretched to the limit because of the war, request to present evidence from October 7 to foreign media about In order to change the way they relate to Hamas, they encounter bureaucratic walls and various difficulties that make publication slow and complicated, and not at all adapted to today's times. In order to reveal materials from the Balhot collection to journalists or senior officials abroad, an IDF representative must be present in the room, to make sure they don't take pictures of the screen with their phone. An organized and budgeted setup would solve this problem, and make the presentation of the materials much faster and more effective.
The Ministry of Justice claims in response that "the allegations of negligence on the part of the state are irresponsible and have no basis", and add that "since October 7, intensive investigative and legal activity has been carried out, with an overall view of the entire terrorist attack, in all its aspects", and in cooperation with all the bodies - The Shin Bet, the Israel Police and the IDF, under the close supervision of the State Attorney's Office and the legal advice to the government and while allocating "extensive, senior and experienced personnel from all organizations." What was assigned, when, what does it do, and what is the purpose of the entire project? The Ministry of Justice says that "for obvious reasons it is not possible to reveal more than that at this stage." The truth - not really understood. But I wish they were right.
Ukraine precedent
Meanwhile, not a single house in any kibbutz in the Gaza Envelope, at least as of a few days ago, was marked as a crime scene, not documented, not blocked from entering; A large part of the bodies that were brought in for identification were not photographed, and those that were photographed for the most part only opened the bag partially and recorded a bit of the upper part, and what could be extracted from them as evidence was lost forever.
Thousands of witnesses, if not tens of thousands, were not asked to reproduce what happened.
Four huge databases were created that hold large amounts of information: in the special operations unit (SOM), in the Shin Bet, in a secret unit of the operations wing and elsewhere. They have a selection that is partly different and partly overlapping - among other things, a huge harvest from the terrorists' head cameras, or from hundreds of closed-circuit cameras in the kibbutzim - and no one knows exactly what the other one has. The repositories are designed and built each for a different purpose, and are defined as secret. The public cannot be exposed to them.
It didn't have to be this way. A few days after the Russian invasion, which put all of Ukraine in existential danger, teams of the General Prosecutor's Office were already deployed at all border crossings between Ukraine and its neighbors, where hundreds of thousands of refugees began their journey to a safer place. "We meet them there and collect evidence from them about what happened," the state's attorney general told Ziv Koren and Lee at the time. In addition, Ministry of Justice personnel throughout Ukraine were recruited for this task, and the State Attorney's Office opened a special website, "a platform that will allow anyone who thinks they were a witness or victim of a war crime to upload material - personal testimony, photographs of pieces of machine guns or missiles, video documentation, anything, in a way secure and with complete protection of his privacy."
Other materials were collected from journalists, citizens and various organizations that were involved in helping refugees and documenting the actions of the Russians. And all of this, a huge array of dimensions that includes hundreds of employees, is happening while the country is fighting for its very existence - in recognition of the importance of the ability of Ukraine and the international community to come to terms the day after with those who committed these terrible crimes, and to publish large parts of this information in real time. Thus, indictments were prepared against thousands of members of the security forces and the Russian political elite.Even in the case of the legal and public confrontation with the actions of Hamas, the state needs someone from above who will determine that this is a supreme national effort, budget it, discuss it - and make sure the whole world knows 06/11/23 First published