Rape and Hamas and the denial of rape.

[ThereAreNoSloesOnThere]

There have been a few threads on FWR about this before. I have lurked. We knew and know this is and was happening yet apparently it's okay if it is is happening to Jewish women or Israeli women.

I have long had a horrifying suspicion that the reason why so many of the women and girl hostages have continued to be held is until they are released with the evidential products of their rapes- the babies.

I fail completely to understand how this is being brushed aside and ignored.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13447359/Hamas-terrorists-taunt-young-Israeli-women-threat-rape-footage.html

women have been considered spoils of war for millennia. It’s bad. Extremely bad, specially for women and children. I pray for their safe return and the end of the slaughter.

supporting the call for ceasefire is supporting the return of hostages imho.

Would you consider Bibi could be the one to blame for prolonging these women’s suffering?

Now there will be narratives to distract and gather support for him, demonising further the enemy. Let him be accountable for the hells he has unleashed.

@The Electronic Intifada
Hamas filmed and publicised the rapes and other atrocities. And now they are debunking it?

Yup, have heard it all before. "I was just following orders, you cant hold me accountable for the 1000 people I shot in a Polish forest." Same mindset.

And some people are even supporting them.

How do you have a ceasefire with an organisation whose mission statement is literally genocidal, and which openly, and proudly, states it would re-enact October 7th over and over again?

You know women have been sexually abused in the tunnels too, and raped, and that children were given ketamine to keep them quiet and threatened with guns if they spoke. One woman said she was made to dress up in " doll clothes" whilst being raped.

When Owen Jones made a video basically questioning the 'evidence of rape' I literally went hot with rage.

Someone upthread mentioned Boko Haram. When the mass kidnapping happened there was a media campaign in the US and UK, "Bring Back Our Girls". Michelle Obama was the face of it for a while.

Whilst I think it's disgusting that the ongoing atrocities of Boko Haram have vanished from the media, at least there was some attempt to highlight it with a concerted campaign aimed at the general public, running independently of media news and commentary. That's not happened with the victims of 7/10, because in this instance Israeli = they asked for it. Or faked it. And by the way did you know that there were no Jews in the twin towers on 9/11? Yeah they all get a text message in hebrew telling them to stay at home that day. Plus, Israel is just like the Nazis. And speaking of the Nazis, the Holocaust was faked. There just isn't enough evidence of it. Jews control the financial system and the media. From the river to the sea (even though I don't know what river or what sea, or what any of it means.) Am I doing this right?

You've posted from a site called the Electronic Intifada. I was in Israel a fair amount during the Second Intifada before I moved here, as I had a lot of family here. I know what intifada is first hand, I won't be watching anything from a site that calls itself that.

That's like posting 'proof' that the holocaust didn't happen, from a site called the Electronic Final Solution.

So many people have been swept up into this conflict via social media. Before October 7th most of these people had next to no knowledege or awareness of the history of the conflict, and they still don't. It has become fashionable and trendy to be anti Israel. It always was in Leftist circles. I know that because i've been in and around them.

Now people only read propaganda that suggests Israel is inherently evil, and narratives about 'brave resisitance fighters'. I walked past an anti Israel student camp at my local university yesterday - and they had posters all around the fence which suggested that Israeli soldiers had been filmed with women's underwear in Gaza, referring to Israelis as " scum; but nowhere did they have any of the images of the burned, brutalised, destroyed bodies of Israeli women and children - for balance.

It suits these people to deny, and to buy into Hamas propoganda - because otherwise they would have to face the reality that this does not fit into the simplistic narrative they have been led to adopt. They want to see themselves as morally good and righteous people - on the side of the victims and oppressed peoples of the world - and unfortunately the disgusting, sickening crimes of October 7th would shatter this bubble; and might actually lead them to question the nature of Hamas - and what it represents.

They might then also have to look into the history of the PLO. -and discover that destruction of Israel has always been the aim. That the PLO conducted campaigns of terror and assassination in Jordan too - after having been given citizenship by that country; and that Egypt wants nothing to do with Hamas or the Palestinians for similar reasons.

It seems to me that huge swathes of these protesters don't care one iota for what happened to Jewish people and are supporters of this evil ideology. I think it's a mixture of gullibility, lack of critical thinking and people drunk on power of self righteousness. I've heard wet replies in answer to Oct 7th from people saying "but look what happened before..." justification. I think one day these people will be viewed in the same way that some germans enthusiastically supported the nazis.

I think that is a disingenuous argument. We know full well the fervour and zealousness of anti Israel protestors. Denial and minimisation is the order of the day because rape and brutalisation does not fit the desired narrative. I've nowhere ever seen anyone trying to deny or deflect from the rapes and brutalisations of women by Boko Haram, or the Yazidi women, by Isis, in such a way.

And during the Bosnian war I saw no-one excuse or minimise the rapes of the Bosnian women by the Serbs - in fact that particular atrocity sparked widspread campaigns against sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Would you consider Bibi could be the one to blame for prolonging these women’s suffering?

I'd consider the men who kidnapped and raped the women to be to blame.

Raping women is a choice. Rapists have full responsibility for their actions.

Perhaps you should post them. There is still disbelief that Hamas freedom fighters raped Israeli women. Not to mention the lot who have supported the Oct 7th attacks AND the rapes as 'de-colonization in action'.

Truly, the pictures are terrible. The pictures from the morgues; the pictures taken by those arriving at the scene, and some of the images taken by Hamas themselves. I don't think I should. Women with legs spread and with their head burned to a black stump; young teenage girls raped in their bedroom before being killed; numerous pictures of blackened corpses in bodily positions clearly suggestive of brutal and terrifying deaths; the images of women's bodies being paraded around the streets of Gaza - on the back of trucks, across the back of motorbikes, being dragged by ropes behind motorbikes.

I can imagine if i did - there would still be some who would deny it - or suggest they were made up.

Indeed - despite the video and photos of Shani Louk's body dumped in the back of a truck some people still tried to claim that she was being taken care of by the people that murdered her.

The reason why these crimes are being denied are the same as the reason why the girls in Rochdale or the victims in Cologne were denied - because the wish to ignore the problems of the impact of Islamic culture on women. It threatens the western liberal perception of Muslims as being oppressed groups. A fear of being called ‘islamophobic’ or racist towards immigrants.

@Sloejelly : It threatens the western liberal perception of Muslims as being oppressed groups.

At some point in the past, the left turned away from the working class and towards the colonialized peoples as the ones driving the revolution. How they ended up with the remnants of one of the biggest and longest living colonial empires as The Oppressed (the arab/islamic one) is unclear to me.

I think that turn towards 'International Socialism' happened inthe 1960's -and is why people such as Jeremy Corbyn seem to spend most of their time developing friendships and relationships with governments and terrorist organisations ( 'freedom fighters') around the world rather than focusing on bread and butter issues in the UK.

The Socialists joined forces with the Baathists ( Saddam Hussain was a Baathist) in their push for an International socialist order that transcended national boundaries; but the idea that Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood is going to run a democratically elected, secular Socialist state is a bit far fetched, even for the gullible.

The main opposition for Western Socilaists is to America and the concept of the West by extension - which is why we now see them side, effectively, with Iran, Russia, Hamas, etc anyone who is an enemy of the West and Western values is a friend of theirs.

This is the politics born out of Western privilege - which is the great irony.

You can criticise the reaction of the Israeli government to 7 Oct as aggressive, politically misguided, disproportionate etc, but it is a military response to a direct attack. It's not personal in the way Hamas operate; clearly enjoying parading captives/corpses, the sense of glee and excitement. That's what makes these particular rapes different, and why those ignoring/excusing them more contemptible to my mind.

@Waxingmoons
supporting the call for ceasefire is supporting the return of hostages imho.

It is also why the families of these young women released this footage. They did it to pressure Israel to go back to the negotiating table and secure their release. And it worked. Thousands of Israelis have been protesting how their own government and military seem to have forgotten about the hostages and they don’t seem to care about getting them out alive.

“Someone upthread mentioned Boko Haram. When the mass kidnapping happened there was a media campaign in the US and UK, "Bring Back Our Girls". Michelle Obama was the face of it for a while.”

That was me. But did you know that it was not one mass kidnapping? But has been going on regularly, ever since with no one caring. Did you know after that first mass kidnapping that the CIA found where the girls were being held in the jungle, but decided not to disclose that information or to set up any rescue attempts? Videos were issued where the terrorists paraded naked, pregnant girls by the bodies of dead girls and warned the world not to try and rescue any because they’d kill them all. So they didn’t rescue them. A few have escaped on their own years afterwards…

But you are mistaken if you think it was one mass kidnapping, it has been many and is still ongoing and no one has or is going after any of them to rescue them.

I’d like to think the world cares more now and is less misogynistic, but I am weary and disillusioned. I certainly have always cared and been angry, but it doesn’t make a difference.

I do recall the denial of rape of Muslim women during the Bosnian genocide. The focus was on the thousands of boys and men hauled off into the forest, shot, and their bodies broken into pieces and then scattered between different mass graves to conceal the scale of the atrocity. The attitude was very much that the women were “lucky” compared to the boys and men as they’d kept their lives.

The news was all focussed on the attacks on men and boys. There was some news on the siege of Sarajevo and snipers shooting people in the streets just trying to get water or food.

I think because 7/10 is fresh that some don’t remember how it was then for these other cases and remember only post outcry, post investigation, post trials. Acknowledgement can take years in most cases.

Yes the denial of rape on 7/10 and all 230 days after is still going on in some quarters. It is sick and wrong, but not unprecedented.

There is a great book called Our Bodies, their Battlefield and it starkly shows how many years it take for women to get any acknowledgment as to being raped and held captive in wars, and how elusive justice has been from the ICC.

I don’t think the ICC arrest warrants for the Hamas leaders even lists the war crime of rape. They should.

It's not comparable because October 7th triggered a war. That war is being fought to finish Hamas forever. It does not surprise me that the abuse of women and girls might be ongoing. Those poor beaten bloody girls are at the mercy of sexual psychopaths turned on by their helplessness and that is being given full attention by the Israelis. I don't blame them.

Sorry arrest warrant requests…I didn’t mean to imply warrants had been issued yet.

Are the kidnapping and rapes by Boko Haram being excused or outright denied? Are the girls being blamed for what is happening to them? Are there marches and protests by Boko Haram supporters going on in major cities across the west?

I’d like to think the world cares more now and is less misogynistic

Sadly this isn’t true. It seems the world is becoming more and more misogynistic.

I don’t think that is a reason for it not to be comparable to the weaponisation of rape in conflicts everywhere else.

The Israeli government were not giving the plight of these women taken hostage any attention- the footage was released by the families to make the Israeli government go back to the negotiating table they had walked away from because tens of thousands of Israeli protesters feel that the hostages are being forgotten about by their own government and military.

This is a big a big issue. One that has caused many a fall out between feminist groups.