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

Well no example is going to be a perfect match to another example on every tiny detail.

Yes they are being ignored. Yes they are being excused. Yes the girls that do escape are being blamed and ostracised. They have no chance of marriage or a family. No the only marches are by family trying to get the governments to do something.

I don’t think there are any Hamas supporter marches so not entirely sure why you wrote that last bit.

I agree that there has been a distinct lack of outrage about the events of October 7 generally.

I cannot imagine how it must be feel to be Jewish right now but frightening and depressing at the very least I’d imagine.

What would Boko Harem protestors be protesting?

I don’t think there are any Hamas supporter marches so not entirely sure why you wrote that last bit.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67422556

'Two men are being sought over an allegation of antisemitic chanting on Armistice Day.
Two are wanted over alleged pro-Hamas chanting in Trafalgar Square on 4 November.
Officers want to question a further six men after a demonstration in King Charles Street on 14 October.
The final person the force wants to identify is a man seen waving a placard bearing the words "I fully support Hamas" during a protest on Bond Street on 21 October.'

Me too. Unless you are a Jew.

"A screening tonight at Phoenix Cinema in North London (my lovely local indie) of a documentary about Nova music festival massacre on October 7th is desecrated.
How can a film about innocent young people butchered, raped and abducted be “Art Washing”?"

https://x.com/JonnyGeller/status/1793566038665376000

In addition to the graffiti at the Phoenix there's a protest organised for this evening when this film is due to be shown at the Phoenix in E. Finchley, one of the biggest Jewish neighbourhoods in London. A film which includes "extensive testimony of rape at a music festival". People that live in this area will have family or friends whose daughters or sisters were kidnapped, raped, mutilated or murdered on 7/10. Women that think of themselves as feminists will be among the protestors.

Those poor young women. I watched the footage. I'm not going to say I wish I hadn't, but it was upsetting. I think about them often, and hope they're still alive and they get to come home soon.

I said it in October under another username, but I went on pro-Palestine protests as a very left-wing teenager and settled into a comfortably ignorant position of both sides being bad and the conflict being impossible to solve. October 7th changed all of that.

This wasn't a tiny number of violent men. There were all the men doing the killing and kidnapping and raping. And then the far greater number lining the streets and cheering it on - which we then saw later with every hostage release. Crowds of aggressive men gleeful about what was being done to women and children. (No, not all Palestinian men, obviously, before anyone objects on those grounds - but an amount that really shocked me.)

The lack of response from big feminist organisations is telling, and I say that as someone who isn't Jewish and never really considered the issue of anti-Semitism in depth before. Now I see it.

I can understand all the criticisms of Netanyahu and the way the war has been waged. There are some awful things happening in Gaza now. But hearing Western university students chanting 'resistance is justified' about October 7th is absolutely chilling. Nothing justifies rape and torture.

I don’t know if anyone upthread has mentioned Christina Lamb’s book Our Bodies, Their War. That deals with the general situation but that is merely to amplify rather than deny the particularity of what was done specifically to women on October 7.
Playing the some women in some places/times/cultures deserve more or less than other women in different circumstances is just whataboutery

This.

People are protesting this? It's insane. Jews must not talk about what they've suffered? Women mustn't talk about the rape they've experienced?

Obscene. Absolutely obscene. Shame on anyone who protests this. Absolute shame.

There were posters on here aggressive denying that the rapes had happened.

In the days and weeks following the attack.

Aggressively denying

As upsetting us this was to watch we have only been shows a edited three minutes, the whole thing last about fifteen minutes, it appallingly, these men are animals, sorry that unfair to animals they are devils . They families have asked that the whole video should not be shown as it just horrific .

On that base, 7 were abducted alive, one killed in captivity (Noa Marciano), and one rescued early on (Ori Magadish).
The footage censors the bodies of these girls friends, who were murdered in front of them, and the violence that was done to them.

"Eli Albag, Liri’s father, told Channel 12 News that the original footage is over 13 minutes long. The IDF Spokesman’s Office is understood to have made the full footage available to the families and allowed them to decide what to show to the public.
“This is the most sensitive version… and still terribly harsh,” said Albag. “We are exposing ourselves and our daughters. We went back and forth over and over about whether to release it. Three of the mothers have not seen the footage, are not prepared to see the footage, cannot bear to see the girls [in the footage].”
“It’s been 229 days since then,” he said, “and we are living it minute by minute… I have no words to describe the horrors: At that base, 54 male and female soldiers were murdered. Those girls sat for two hours with 11 bodies of female soldiers and one male soldier in their line of sight.”
He asked: “What else can we say? Where else can we shout? What else can we do to wake the nation up?”"

(Times of Israel)

Many have forgotten the horror of the attack on East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971. Rape was industrialised, women and girls as young as 12, were kept in sheds and houses to be raped at will by Pakistani soldiers. Such is the shame of rape, and pregnancy from rape, that it was difficult to reintegrate these women into their societies. They had been defiled and no-one wanted them. It was intended genocide, btw, the intention being to get (West) Pakistan children on (East) Pakistan women. Rape is one of the ways to commit genocide. But it is the war crime that is ignored.

My late DH was a denier. But he eventually realised what had happened and changed his mind. He died in January fully aware of the horror perpetrated on 7th October. I miss him. I am glad he saw reason. A pity others continue in the lie that these horrors did not happen.

I'm sorry for your loss, Grammar.

Sorry for your loss grammarnut, hope you're ok.
I enjoy your posts.

https://www.screamsbeforesilence.com/

This is a documentary about only some of the atrocities of 7/10, it's harrowing.
There were weeks after 7/10 that Israel was accused of lying because they did not lay this horror before the world. UN women were silent for a long time before they acknowledged it.

People in the UK tore down and defaced posters of Israeli victims and marched the streets claiming it was 'resistance.'

What the hell is happening?

I’m so sorry for your loss, grammar. May his memory be a source of blessing to you and yours

The cinema was spray painted with graffiti, and no doubt they'll be back.

Yep, agreed. Spot the common link.

Part of the horror of October 7th, for me, was the unpredictability of it.

War is brutal, women have been the target of rape as a by product, some armies have used rape as an intentional weapon of genocide or terror. This is long standing.

The October 7th attack was the declaration of this war, if you like. The first skirmish. It seemed particularly shocking that a peaceful event, sleeping villages, were targeted during a time of relative peace. This was not a front line in an existing war.

I know that Israel has had to actively defend its existence since it was established. I know there were always risks of smaller terrorist attacks, hence the need for security and national service.

It's the equivalent of the IRA descending on villages and country fairs and rampaging through raping and kidnapping as they go, as opposed to the more usual bomb type attacks- awful as they were.

I don't think it's disingenuous at all.

As it happens, I think there is some differernt stuff going on with certain leftist activists on this issue. There is a different kind of denialism, not fundamentally about rape but about Hamas in particular, as well as a very wrongheaded understanding of oppression and politics.

But someone thinking that it is more about the things that mean people don't pay much attention to rape in general, or nothing that rape in war is so common as to be almost ubiquitous - that's a difference of opinion. It's neither making excuses for rape, nor minimizing it, and it's naturally going to make people feel awful, or cynical, to be accused of that.