Feminism, rape, and Israel. Content warning.

[ArthurbellaScott]

https://unherd.com/2023/11/metoo-unless-youre-a-jew/

I skipped parts of this article, specifically the first person account.

The rest of it I think is an important read.

I'm going to play devil's advocate:

The crimes detailed are so abhorrent that they are very hard to read about or hear about.

Sometimes people have an extreme aversion to this kind of atrocity.

That's it, that's all I've got.

I'm actually deeply concerned about the fate of the female IDF members who are still being held. The woman with the bloodied trousers, handcuffed and pushed into the back of a truck was a soldier. When you hear how the small children held hostage were actually treated, it doesn't bear thinking about.

I'm imagining that at some point when Hamas is so degraded, and the other Middle Eastern countries accept the situation cannot continue, they will be forced inton the shadows. Of course they will still exist - but hopefully they will have less obvious support.

They are going to have to come up with something better than " From the river to the sea".

'The civil commission headed by Dr Elkayam-Levy, to collect testimony on sexual crimes, is calling for international recognition that what happened on 7 October was systematic abuse, constituting Crimes Against Humanity.
"We see definite patterns," she told me. "So it wasn't incidental, it wasn't random. They came with a clear order. It was […] rape as genocide."'
...
'David Katz from Israel's cyber crime unit which is involved in the investigation, told journalists that it was too early to prove that sexual violence was planned as part of the attack, but that data extracted from the phones of the Hamas attackers suggested that "everything was systematic".
"It would be reckless to say we can already prove it […] but everything that was one there was done systematically," he said. "Nothing happened by coincidence. Rape was systematic."
Israel's government points to documents it says were found on Hamas fighters that appear to support the idea that sexual violence was planned. It's released clips of interrogations with some captured fighters in which they appear to say that women were targeted for this purpose.'

I've tried to leave out quotes with graphic detail.

Hamas is a mentality that exists amongst many Palestinians. Even the doctor who was the BBC's go to interviewee turns out to be a Hamas supporter - who denied that Hamas were using the hospital as a base - even though he knew they were. 40,000 palestinians living in Gaza are members; and others are members of other factions. Terrorism is a way of life and a mind set.

I'm dismissing it as being reflective of a feminist position, not completely. Man's a twerp who hates women and vaginas. Not surprised he would minimise rape

Yes agreed.
In the second link it says "Sexual violence during conflict can be divided into three overarching categories: a war tactic, widely committed with an intentional purpose; tolerated, but not specifically ordered, by leaders; and committed independently by individuals when the opportunity arises."
Hamas rapes are clearly in 1), the purpose being the same thing that drove them to commit all their other atrocities.

I guess my concern is when I Google "meetoounlessURajew" it appears to be a popular topic amongst right wing publications and commentators. So I think they are using it to score points off feminists/the left, rather than out of concern for victims, which I find morally repugnant
(Hopefully it goes without saying, not more morally repugnant than rapes, but I better had say that before someone misunderstands my point)

You don't think that's a bit of a sweeping generalisation? And if it is true, how does bombing the shit our of them help move the population away from being sympathetic to Hamas? Surely it just plays into Hamas' hands by making it seem like the Israelis want to destroy Gaza?

Bizarrely, I just got a notification from the BBC saying they’ve seen evidence of rape and sexual assault that took place on 7 Oct. 8 weeks. 8 pathetic weeks.

I don’t know how to bring about peace, but I don’t think it’s a conversation for now and it’s certainly not Israel’s responsibility to come up with a plan.

They are going to go after every member of Hamas they can find and there will be 000s of civilian casualties. You cannot take out Hamas (and I include all the different factions within that for ease) without killing civilians because of how they have embedded themselves into the civilian population. This is war. Israel isn’t going to give Hamas a count of 10 to come then they’ll take away their screens. They’re going to minimise IDF loses while maximising the success of their objective. If they send troops in to knock on doors and arrest terrorists, they will lose hundreds if not thousands of soldiers. Using long range/non-personnel weapons means they protect their soldiers while achieving their objective. They tell the civilian population where they’re going to bomb…leaflets….texts…an app…phone calls to individuals (and when that individual’s battery dies they contact their neighbour and get them to hand their phone over so they can continue to talk through the evacuation). They then roof knock before dropping the proper bombs. They are making things more difficult for themselves.

Hamas has the option of surrendering. They can release the hostages. The government could say “Ok. Too many of our people are being killed and our infrastructure is destroyed which will cause more suffering. Here are your hostages and we’ve got this group of people who took part in 7 Oct. Take them and stop killing civilians. There’s been too much suffering so it’s time to work out how we can be neighbours”. I can’t imagine them ever doing that. They have got young, young children worshipping martyrs and swearing they will kill Jews all the way to men who look like they’re in their 70s holding Israeli women prisoner. I’m sure there are “innocent” Palestinians who just want peace, but what does their peace look like and will it involve not killing Jews?

Hamas chose to take aid money, build tunnels, provide for their members and leave the rest of the country in poverty. The refugee camps we hear about are effectively towns with buildings as they have a unique definition of refugee. They destroyed water pipes, agriculture etc to wage war. Palestine could be a much better place if Hamas hadn’t destroyed it. It had malls, restaurants, beach resorts, villas with swimming pools, a gold market and a luxury car showroom. Quite the open air prison.

I can also understand how the hate is perpetuated, especially in the West Bank. Will 2.5 million people be collateral damage? I pray to God they won’t be. I pray that a solution is found before that happens. I pray beyond everything that Hamas is destroyed because Palestine needs to be free of its control before anything can progress.

I think it will be years before this is resolved. What happened on 7 Oct was so grotesque that a peaceful response was never an option. That response is going to cause more hatred from the Palestinians which will in turn garner more retaliation from Israel. It doesn’t stop and that is why it’s not a conversation for now. Neither side is capable of negotiating as they’re too far in the fight. Add to that the fact that 4 year olds are being taught to hate Jews and you’ve got an infinite supply of terrorists I’m afraid. I don’t want to comprehend what will need to happen to make it stop, but it’s not going to happen within the next few weeks or months.

For anyone calling for a ceasefire or who is a pro-Palestine supporter, I would love to know what they would say if Hamas carried out their promise that 7 Oct was a rehearsal. If they do it again and Israel does obliterate Gaza, will they still support Palestine knowing what we do know? If they would, then that is exactly why Israel needs to exist. Jews need somewhere they can escape from the near constant hatred they’ve experienced for millennia. I wouldn’t want to live next to people who would happily call for my death just because of my heritage. Israel isn’t even safe and it’s apparently not allowed to defend itself. It’s just too much.

🇮🇱💙🇮🇱

It is not a genralisation it is true. According to most surveys most people living in Gaza still support Hamas. And most people absolutely know that they use hospitals and schools and even children's bedrooms as entrances to their terror tunnels.

Though I have seen interviews (which were rapidly cut ), where some Gazans do go off message and condemn Hamas for what they have done, and for making them unwilling Martyrs. -whilst their children and wives live in luxury in Kuwait, Istanbul and Quatar.

An interesting resource which compiles recordings of interviews taken from various middle eastern TV channels:

https://www.memri.org/tv

I'm really not sure what you expect Israel to do after what occured on October 7th? They have to attempt to eliminate Hamas and their infrastructure.

I largely agree with this. They raped those women as they hate Jews. And that’s a way to express that hate. I also think they did it as they enjoyed it. They’ve been raised on violent misogynistic online porn as much as any other men in the world. October 7th must have been a porn wrecked misogynists’ fantasy. And they did it as a form of bonding with the other men.

I’m not surprised they raped men too. I’ve heard first person accounts from Palestinian men of being raped by Palestinian police. It seems expected if you are a gay man in Palestine.

If I lived in a war zone and received notification that my house was about to be bombed I would find somewhere else to be.

Those that support Israel know that it’s not just about bombing the shit out of Gaza. Those that don’t support Israel won’t be convinced otherwise so why pander to them? Everything can’t be Israel’s responsibility. Again, it’s not up to Israel to moderate their behaviour to save the Palestinian people from themselves. Gazans could choose to come to an agreement with Israel about how co-exist. Both sides would have to concede a ton of ground (literally and figuratively) but I’d happily put money on which chairs would be empty when the peace talks start.

I do wonder, given Hamas's propensity for violent retribution, how free Palestinians feel to give their opinion about Hamas.

When I showed the clip of the man condemning Hamas for hiding in the hospital and among civilians who was cut off by the interviewer to DH, he said he thought the interviewer cut him off not to control the narrative but to protect him as if Hamas found out he'd said that sort of thing, the consequences could be dire for him and his family.

The thing is we don't really know, do we? Would I feel free to give my honest opinion of terrorists using me and my family as a human shield if they were still living nearby and in control of the country? After they'd paraded the dead body of a violently raped woman through the streets to be spat on? Probably not.

On the other hand, I've seen quite a lot of Israelis, living in Israel, condemning the settlements and Netanyahu.

Just from observation, I'd say Israelis feel more free and are more free to given their honest opinion. If I had to choose which regime to live under (in the same exact geographical area with the same conditions) it would be slam dunk the Israeli government rather than Hamas.

What you've written here ^^ and this "Will 2.5 million people be collateral damage? I pray to God they won’t be. I pray that a solution is found before that happens. " are why I find this debate so hard to follow.

These are human beings, not cows. You can't just demand they move from place to place to suit your whims. If you'd already moved from North to South, and now being asked to move somewhere else, with no food, water or fuel, you'd be fine?

And 2.5 million could be "collateral damage"?

It's up to Israel to coexist with the Palestinians, yes. (And vice versa) Both have a legitimate reason to feel that is their country. The Palestinians have nowhere to go. If the Israeli government kill 2.5 m palestinians to meet their aims, that would be a genocide. And I find it so hard that anyone Jewish could even contemplate that as a reasonable outcome of the current scenario.

@AdamRyan but no-one literally no-one has said that would be fine, certainly not Israel. This is a straw man argument at its finest. They're doing everything to avoid it.

They're trying to get people to evacuate. (Hamas is working against this, they had road blocks reported at one point)

They didn't break the ceasefire, Hamas did, before it ended.

They didn't start this conflict, Hamas did.

Hamas still holds many hostages.

Did anyone notice that Israel released about twice the number of Palestinians as Hamas did Israeli hostages?

One side is behaving far more reasonably. It's obvious. And yet the demonisation of Israel for defending itself continues.

Given the firepower Israel have and support from the US they could bomb Gaza flat if they wanted to, but they're not doing that. The same is not true of Hamas, if Hamas had the means, Israel would be a smoking crater now. And that should worry us all. I don't think they'd care if it killed their own people or many other people around the world either, they're not interested in preservation of life.

I was replying to this:
If I lived in a war zone and received notification that my house was about to be bombed I would find somewhere else to be. And it’s not up to Israel to moderate their behaviour to save the Palestinian people from themselves

And referencing this which was in the news:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67630489.amp

If someone says these sort of things then I have to assume they think it is fine for Gazans to be told to move repeatedly.

It was a response to a specific poster, not a straw man

Anyway, this is off topic of the OP. I just find it hard to hear pro-Israeli posters casually dismissing the deaths of potentially hundreds of thousands of people as necessary because they have the misfortune of living under a terrorist regime

And a terrorist regime that was originally propped up by Netanyahu because he didn't want a 2 state solution.

@AdamRyan the civilian population isn’t being moved on a whim, they’re being told to move to get them out of the way of the targeted bombs about to be dropped to neutralise Hamas targets.

No-one wants 2.5 million people to be killed.

Aid has been provided but it doesn’t reach the actual people in need. It goes to Hamas who seem to sell it.

What do you think should happen now? If you don’t want Palestinians killed (and I don’t for one second think that Israel is going to kill 2.5 million people nor do I want more civilians to die), what do you want Israel to actually do? Do you want them to stop bombing, bearing in mind they’re trying to destroy Hamas to stop another 7 Oct? Do you want them to withdraw back to Israel? Leave the hostages? Ask Hamas what they want then do exactly that? What?

You may think the Palestinians have nowhere to go, but what makes you think the Israelis do? Palestinians want all the land back, free of Jews. Where should the Israelis - Jewish and non-Jewish - go? Do you have another area of land they could try? I think the 7 Oct attack categorically showed that the Palestinians are in no way interested in co-existing with Israel.

People seem to think that Hamas can be reasoned with. This is a group of people who carried out the most barbaric acts, they burned people alive, mutilated people while they were still alive and took corpses back to Gaza to publicly humiliate. Which part of that makes anyone think they should be afforded the courtesy of being treated with anything even remotely resembling restraint and respectful tolerance?

I have not seen anyone doing this.

No-one on this thread has 'casually dismissed' the deaths of anyone. Far from it, the opposite in fact.

I'm not a military tactician so my opinion counts for little.

I think the Israelies should open the fences in places and set up refugee camps outside Gaza for people to flee to.

I think there should be more humanitarian pauses to get aid in.

And I think they should be a lot more targeted about what they are doing - more ground forces, less bombing. Because the bombing is not precision and means people won't have anywhere to live for the foreseeable, even if the fighting stops.

Telling civilians who are already displaced, may not be that mobile (elderly, disabled, pregnant, babies etc) to move to "safe zones" in a fenced in area with a very high population density is not going to work. Especially when there is no food/fuel/water.

Most importantly they have to get into some dialogue about what a country looks like that can accommodate Israelis and Palestinians. I can't see how that can happen right now but it has to for the violence to stop.

Nobody is casually dismissing any deaths.

The whole situation is absolutely horrible. If my posts come across as not caring then that is a flaw in my writing. I have seen so much hatred and vitriol against Israel that I feel compelled to write and don’t always have the space to include all the counter arguments. Even if I did, I’d say the voices on the pro-Palestine side are louder and more numerous.

It's up to Israel to coexist with the Palestinians

How are they going to coexist with Hamas?

Palestinians want all the land back, free of Jews.
Do Palestinians want that, or is that Hamas?
How would you feel if a Muslim poster said "Israel wants all the land back, free of Muslims"?

I can see the more extreme ends of both sides saying that