Despite claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that Hamas used rape as a weapon of war on 7 October.
That is the conclusion of months of investigation by Electronic Intifada, the Grayzone, Mondoweiss, YES! and other independent investigators, who have carefully assembled evidence undermining the credibility of key witnesses. They’ve also shown the ‘evidence’ supplied to be very weak.
An article that persuaded many people that there were mass rapes on 7 October was ‘“Screams Without Words”: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7’.
There are many problems with this New York Times piece. One of the worst is the opening story of Israeli Gal Abdush, killed with her husband Nagi on 7 October.
The NYT repeated as fact the police claim that Gal Abdush was raped, based on amateur video of her dead body.
However, Gal’s family say it is impossible that she was raped. Gal messaged her family at 6.51am. Nine minutes later, her husband Nagi rang his brother to say that Gal had been shot and was dying. He did not mention any sexual assault.
YES! magazine comments: ‘The [New York] Times never explains how Gal could be captured, raped, fatally shot, and burned to death in nine minutes while Nagi messaged his family and never mentioned any physical contact with Hamas forces.’
The NYT was forced to rely on flimsy ‘evidence’ like this because it was not able to find any 7 October rape victims in Israel, something NYT journalist Anat Schwartz admitted to an Israeli podcast on 3 January.
Schwartz approached Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centres, trauma recovery facilities and sex assault hotlines. She could not find a single complaint of sexual assault occurring on 7 October, the Intercept reported at the end of February.