{"id":255818,"date":"2024-02-26T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=255818"},"modified":"2024-02-26T04:30:06","modified_gmt":"2024-02-26T04:30:06","slug":"new-israeli-report-alleging-systematic-and-intentional-rape-by-hamas-relies-on-debunked-western-media-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/02\/new-israeli-report-alleging-systematic-and-intentional-rape-by-hamas-relies-on-debunked-western-media-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"New Israeli Report Alleging \u2018Systematic and Intentional Rape\u2019 by Hamas Relies on Debunked Western Media Reports"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hoax: The contents of the Israeli Association of Rape Crisis Center\u2019s paper alleging \u201csystematic\u201d Hamas rape derive largely from discredited second-hand testimonies and debunked media reports. Among its most heavily cited sources is a dubious NY Times article that triggered a staff revolt at the paper.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

22 Feb 2024<\/em> – Western media outlets are hyping a new report by the Israeli government-affiliated \u201cAssociation of Rape Crisis Centers\u201d (ARCC) which maintains that Hamas combatants carried out a campaign of \u201csystematic and intentional\u201d rape on October 7.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsraeli report finds evidence of \u2018systematic\u2019 rape and abuse during 7 October attack,\u201d a Guardian headline blared<\/a>. \u201cReport shows systematic rapes, murder of women in Israel on October 7,\u201d Germany\u2019s DPA screamed<\/a>. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post shrieked<\/a>, \u201cHamas terrorists forced families to watch loved ones get raped at gunpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the AP\u2019s acknowledgment that the report \u201cdid not specify the number of cases it had documented or identify any victims, even anonymously\u201d and that its authors \u201cdeclined to say whether they had spoken to victims,\u201d dozens of mainstream outlets have presented its findings as incontrovertible fact<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet a close examination of the ARCC report<\/a> reveals that the paper is short on new research, absent of hard evidence, and reliant instead on clips from factually-challenged articles by the same Western outlets promoting its publication. Among the paper\u2019s most frequently cited sources is an infamously shoddy New York Times report<\/a> by Jeffrey Gettleman purporting to detail \u201cHow Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following an internal staff uproar prompted by a series<\/a> of Grayzone expos\u00e9s<\/a> which highlighted major inconsistencies and demonstrable falsehoods by the paper\u2019s sources, the Times canceled<\/a> an episode of its \u201cDaily\u201d podcast about the article.<\/p>\n

Despite the controversy surrounding the Times\u2019 report, the ARCC cites it twelve times in its own paper, while sourcing testimony second-hand from many of the same discredited Israelis as the Times.<\/p>\n

The ARCC also relies substantially on testimony from ZAKA<\/a>, the ultra-Orthodox \u201crescue\u201d group which introduced false allegations that Hamas beheaded babies, cut fetuses from pregnant women, and had lunch in an Israeli family\u2019s home after killing and mutilating them. ZAKA has been lambasted in Israeli media for serially mishandling evidence from the October 7 attacks and even staging atrocity scenes for fundraising purposes.<\/p>\n

At least one quarter of citations in the ARCC\u2019s paper are drawn from the widely panned New York Times article and credibility-strained ZAKA volunteers. The rest of the paper relies on dubious self-proclaimed witnesses like the Israeli army reservist Shari Mendes, who falsely claimed that Hamas not only cut a fetus from a pregnant Israeli woman, but beheaded its mother.<\/p>\n

Discredited sources, debunked articles form backbone of new \u201cHamas rape\u201d report<\/h3>\n

In citing the NY Times to demonstrate systematic rape by Hamas on October 7, the ARCC points to \u201ca video posted on social media\u201d which shows \u201ca woman in a torn dress, without underwear, injured and with her face burned. Police investigators ruled that she had been raped.\u201d<\/p>\n

This section refers to Gal Abdush, a young woman killed on October 7 who features as a central character in the NY Times article. As The Grayzone reported<\/a>, Abdush\u2019s sister and brother-in-law both publicly denied that she was raped, with the former accusing the Times of manipulating her family into participating by misleading them about their editorial angle.<\/p>\n

The ARCC later cites a NY Times account of \u201can IDF paramedic\u201d who claimed to have entered a room in Kibbutz Beeri \u201cwhere the bodies of two girls were found, one of whom was found with her pants rolled down and the remains of semen on her back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Grayzone has exposed this source as well, revealing him as a reservist paramedic from Israeli Air Force Special Tactics rescue unit 669 who identifies himself to the media only as \u201cG,\u201d but whose real name is Guy Melamed<\/a>. As we explained, no girls were found on Kibbutz Beeri in a condition remotely similar to Melamed\u2019s description.<\/p>\n

The closest match to the paramedic\u2019s account were two teenage residents of Beeri, Yahel and Noiya Sharabi, who were killed on October 7. But according to the Times of Israel<\/a>, the girls\u2019 bodies were \u201cfound in an embrace\u201d with their mother, and not \u201calone, separated from the rest of the family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israeli media has also reported<\/a>, \u201cLianne and Yahel [Sharabi] could only be identified through DNA samples. Noiya was identified through her teeth only two days ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how was Melamed able to find semen on one of the girls, and bruises on the other, and view their states of undress, if their bodies had been burned beyond recognition? The only answer is that he fabricated the entire scenario.<\/p>\n

Before Melamed cooked up atrocities for the NY Times, which were later reheated by the ARCC, he appeared on a right-wing Indian news channel to invent an account<\/a> of discovering a dead baby discarded into a trash can by Hamas. Given that only one baby was killed on October 7 \u2013 a one year old accidentally shot by a Hamas militant \u2013 the paramedic\u2019s story could not have possibly been true.<\/p>\n

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The New York Times appears to have relied on the same credibility-deprived witness as CNN: a supposed paramedic from Israeli Air Force Special Tactics rescue unit 669 identified only as "G" by the latter network.<\/p>\n

In the Times, "G" claims (as he did to CNN) that he "had found the\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/ZAOHaL2xIm<\/a><\/p>\n

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 29, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n