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

@trampoline123 the age of consent in Israel is 16 years old.
In Gaza girls can legally marry from 15 years old.

What is the punishment in Gaza for 'collaboration' with Israel, and at what age would you be subject to it?

It can be as low as 14 if both 'consent'

A quick google say age 12. I'm not sure of all the laws in the world but I'd imagine the death penalty.

To clarify this, it can be 14 if the partner is close in age. So teenagers aren't being prosecuted for having consensual sex with each other.

Not sure what the scare quotes are for but if one person doesn't consent it's illegal at any age. Which brings us back to our thread topic. There is no justification for raping women. Israeli women or women from anywhere else, but this thread is about the former.

Yes. My apologies. Their voices need to be heard, many didn't survive to use their voices and I believe that some have taken their lives since.

In practice the age of consent in England is 14 if both having sex are 14 or 15 years old. The same as Israel. England legal guidance is not to prosecute in that situation.

Yes, this has gone off tangent quite a bit @TemporalMechanic and quite right.

@ThereAreNoSloesOnThere You are right though. I have seen so many comments demanding proof these women were raped.

A thread about the rape of Israelis turns into a thread about how horrible Israel are and reminders that Palestinians are rapes as well.

What a fucking surprise.

They ignore/deny it because they agree with it.

When Spain invaded the Netherlands in the fifteenth century (religious conflict) it is said that every merchant's wife was raped. Such was the reputation of Spanish soldiers that one of the fears when the Armada approached England in 1588 was that there would be mass rapes in London - put this way: 'our virgins deflowered before our sight'. For some reason, when doing a programme on Elizabeth I and the Armada, Lucy Worsley found this line funny.

I have just implied that I do. Certainly an 8 year old is a child. A thirteen-year-old is a teenager and above the age of criminal responsibility in the UK, as that is 10 years old, but a minor below the age of consent (16) so they merit special treatment. A seventeen-year-old is not a child, and a nor is a person of fifteen (though again, a minor and below the age of consent but not of criminal responsibility). I have not come across any reliable evidence that children imprisoned in Israel are raped and tortured - Hamas is not a reliable source. I do know what went on in Israel on Oct 7th, I saw the pictures of women with their trousers covered in blood. I saw young women being abducted from the Nova festival - you are naive if you do not know what their fate would be: rape, possibly gang rape, probably both over all the weeks they remain a hostage, if they live. I also know that Hamas is embedded within the civilian population of Gaza, and I saw that civilian population (at least the male section) cheering the brave men who had their feet on the naked body of a young woman they had taken from the Nova festival. She was dead.

Save the Children:

"Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system face physical and emotional abuse, with four out of five (86%) of them being beaten, and 69% strip-searched, according to new research by Save the Children. Nearly half (42%) are injured at the point of arrest, including gunshot wounds and broken bones. Some report violence of a sexual nature and some are transferred to court or between detention centres in small cages, the child rights organisation said."

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/new-research-reveals-ongoing-violence-on-palestinian-children--

United Nations Human Rights Office:

"The experts expressed serious concern about the arbitrary detention of hundreds of Palestinian women and girls, including human rights defenders, journalists and humanitarian workers, in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October. Many have reportedly been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, denied menstruation pads, food and medicine, and severely beaten. On at least one occasion, Palestinian women detained in Gaza were allegedly kept in a cage in the rain and cold, without food.

“We are particularly distressed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have also been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence,” the experts said. They also noted that photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances were also reportedly taken by the Israeli army and uploaded online."

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/israelopt-un-experts-appalled-reported-human-rights-violations-against

We can continue to swap evidence on this one forever. I am no friend to Israel's actions against people who oppose the setting up of a Jewish state, but anything Hamas says is unreliable and people of 18 are not children. Abuse, particularly of women, is a frequent event in third world prisons and I hate it with a hatred that burns. Both sides are guilty here, but Hamas is a terrorist organisation (currently holding hostages from Israel) and the Israeli state is not - though I question motives and separate the Jewish state from the Jewish people, many of whom are demonstrating about the war in Gaza because they fear for the hostages Hamas holds, and others have been opposing Netanyahu's policies e.g. of removing some rights from non-Jewish Israeli citizens. Nevertheless, what Hamas did on 7th Oct 2023 was vile, massacre, rape and mutilation, vicious and pre-planned (i.e. not rogue 'soldiers'). The way to fight Israel's mistreatment of young people in gaol is not to go on a rape and mutilation spree. Nor is it any way to achieve peace by firing rockets into another nation's airspace. Hamas will not agree to accept Israel and Israel won't accept the West Bank or Gaza continuing harassment on those grounds. I thank God it isn't my problem but that Israel mistreats prisoners is no excuse for Hamas firing nails into women's genitalia.

I'm not trying to swap evidence forever. You said "I have not come across any reliable evidence that children imprisoned in Israel are raped and tortured - Hamas is not a reliable source." I provided you with reliable evidence. People blindly in support of Israel will ignore it, of course. But it is there.

You collapse all of Palestinian resistance- which is an enormous and varied movement from 1948, sparked by Israel violently colonising and dispossessing Palestinians and continuing to violent and non violent resistance (such as the BDS movement) in response to ongoing oppression today- into the reprehensible actions by Hamas on 7 October. It's not reality. Whether you support Palestinian liberation (or equality between Israelis and Palestinians) does not come down to how you feel about October 7.

The events of 7th Oct are liable to colour any negotiations because they are vile. I accept what Save the Children says it has been told, of course. I do not support Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians. What makes you think I said I did? Palestine did not exist as a place before Israel was formed, it was a part of the Ottoman Empire and then under British rule by mandate after WWI. Be sure this current mess is not the fault of the UK, it is the fault of those who massacred Jews in the 1930s and 1940s; Israel was set up as redress for that horror, carved out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. The current mess is a result of Palestinians, who did not have a country apart from being Ottoman subjects, not accepting Israel. That is understandable, but the events of 7th Oct are not justified by it and will colour how one sees the assault on Gaza. If Hamas wants to stop innocent civilians dying it should come into the open, in uniform, and fight where all can see - not hide in tunnels under hospitals and shoot rockets from among the tents of the displaced.

The idea that Palestine (and therefore Palestinians) did not exist before Israel was formed, is just propaganda. If you spent time with any Palestinians (or non Israeli historians) you would know how laughable it is.

There are Palestinian folk songs older than the state of Israel which talk about Palestine. Palestinian embroidery, dancing, cooking, wedding traditions, dialect all existed for hundreds and hundreds of years as specifically Palestinian culture, unique to (and informed by) the land of Palestine, and continue to exist today.

Do you think every Palestinian is lying about this? Has secretly developed a regionally unique and distinct culture, recognised as "Palestinian" by neighbouring Arab countries, in just 70 years?

Sure, as with almost all Arab (and non western) nations, borders had not been specifically drawn to keep people out. And of course politically it was dominated by various empires. But to say this means it didn't exist is like saying Morocco didn't "exist" until it was recorded onto a map in France. Just because Palestine existed previously under the Ottoman Empire does not mean Palestinians do not deserve self determination any more than it means Iraqis don't.

(PS "I do not support Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians. What makes you think I said I did?" - I don't think you support it. I meant "people" in a general sense because there are always people on Mumsnet who find a way to disbelieve the reports of highly credible charities and human rights orgs).

I didn't say there was not a culture. After all, there is a distinct Jewish culture and before 1948 there had not been a Jewish state since 70 AD (I refuse to use CE because that is exactly the same message, counting the years since the birth of Jesus called the Christ, and equally Christian). Many Jews lived in the Ottoman Empire (they were welcomed there after the Spanish expelled all Jews after the Reconquista was completed in the 1490s) and they lived in what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, just like Palestinians, but just as there was no Jewish state neither was there a Palestinian one, they were regions of the Ottoman Empire. That does not mean they do not deserve self-determination, but so do the Jews, and the events of 7th Oct did not help the Palestinian cause one bit.

Thankyou both, I find your discussion informative. I knew that Palestinians and Jews both lived in the Ottoman Empire. What I hadn’t considered before is that these traditions and communities must have existed side-by-side for hundreds of years. I wonder how, when they seem not to be able to now? I have always considered the two (separate) state solution to be the way forward, but is this how it was structured historically, or is there a different historical precedent which could help us?

One pregnant woman was so scared on the eve of the Armada she gave birth prematurely. To Thomas Hobbes who would later say "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear". (He also lived through a horrific civil war) Completely off topic, but its interesting that the impacts of this sort of violence can massively impact how we see the world/political theories even though the fear/experiences that partly birthed it is largely forgotten (or in the case of Worsley considered amusing).

@Runor it was not peaceful. There were pogroms.

Ah, that makes more sense - thankyou

No; it is more than a culture.

There was a place that Palestinians knew/know as "biladna" (our country, our land); there was towns and villages with specific control of land by Palestinian land owners; there was knowledge by Syrian and Lebanese and Hashemi neighbours that this was Palestine and these people Palestinian. All original historical sources show this. Palestinian oral testimonies, of people still alive today, attest to this.

And how did this period, as you point out, where Palestinian Jews and Palestinians Arabs lived side by side end? With the deliberate violent dispossession of Palestinians by Zionists (soon to be Israelis) from their homes, their land, their country. Ethnic cleansing, massacring them in places (like Deir Yassine). Oppression and dispossession that lasts until today, on the mistaken yet explicit belief that all Arabs are the same, all Arab society is the same, so it doesn't really matter where they live, that as founder of Israel Ben Gurion said "the old will die and the young will forget".

How does propaganda keep this vision alive? By insisting, against all knowledge of Palestinians and their neighbours, that there never was a country to dispossess anyway.

Yes Yazzi, very interesting.... But unsurprisingly totally derailing this thread about the rape of Israeli women by Palestinians.