After a lull, Israel’s allegations of sexual violence committed by
Hamas have returned to international headlines with a vengeance. As
the UN faces heightened pressure to condemn Hamas’s alleged sexual
violence, the sudden onslaught of media and international attention
nearly two months after October 7 begs the question, why now?

Indeed, narratives of sexual violence have not only resurged, but they
have done so with vim. Lurid stories of gang rape, mutilation, and
even necrophilia, have been disseminated by the media. This has
occurred despite there being no substantive developments in evidence
of sexual assaults from the Israeli occupation forces. Israel has
repeatedly failed to provide forensic evidence, concrete photographic
evidence, or victim testimonies to news organizations beyond
inferences made by Israel’s forensic teams. Indeed, the Times of
Israel alleges that the IOF will never provide forensic evidence
because “physical evidence of sexual assault was not collected from
corpses by Israel’s overtaxed morgue facilities,” and it is now,
reportedly, too late to collect conclusive evidence.

Presently, Israel’s case consists of one eyewitness testimony shown
privately to journalists by the Israeli police, witness testimonies of
“body collectors,” forensic teams, and army staff, photographs taken
at sites that suggest women may have been sexually assaulted, and
witness testimonies of Hamas fighters acquired from Shin Bet, whose
use of torture is notorious. Testimonies of victims will not be
shared; the police have not interviewed any surviving victims, and
according to May Golan, Israel’s Women’s Empowerment Minister, the
very few victims who survived are receiving psychiatric treatment and
are therefore, conveniently, unable to talk.

It’s a far cry from the persistent efforts of the Palestinians, forced
to film their murdered relatives, their burnt and mutilated children,
and their friends and families in their most vulnerable moments of
grief, all in a desperate attempt to show the world what is being
inflicted upon them. Perhaps that is what privilege looks like, where
the dignity of Israeli victims is preserved, and the dignity of
Palestinian victims must be discarded in a desperate voyeuristic
attempt to publicize their suffering, starkly aware that the survival
of the Palestinian people depends on this.

Israel’s secrecy remains deafening; the IOF exclusively screened a
47-minute compilation of “raw footage” to invited journalists, as
opposed to sharing the footage with news agencies to report on and
verify independently (Al Jazeera journalists, notably, were not
invited to attend). Amongst those invited, journalist Owen Jones saw
no “conclusive evidence” for torture, sexual violence, rape, or
beheadings. Furthermore, despite calling on the UN to condemn Hamas’s
acts of sexual violence, Israel refuses to cooperate with a UN
commission of inquiry into sexual violence committed by Hamas on the
ludicrous basis that the UN has “an anti-Israel bias.”

Nevertheless, despite deficient evidence, Israel has renewed its
allegations of acts of sexual violence committed by Hamas, only with a
new spin; they were now part of a systematic, concerted tactic of mass
rape, as alleged by Dr. Elkayam-Levy, head of “The Civil Commission on
October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children,” and a law
professor with a troubled history of human rights abuses and close
ties to the “National Security Council.” This narrative has been
parroted by the U.S. State Department, whose spokesperson, Matt
Miller, goes on to allege that “one of the reasons [Hamas] don’t want
to turn women over that they’ve been holding hostage, and the reason
this pause fell apart, is they don’t want those women to be able to
talk about what happened to them during their time in custody.”

Conversely, in the absence of concrete evidence of sexual assaults,
what can we know about how Hamas treats women? Arguably, the hostages
provide us the clearest evidence of Hamas’s comportment towards women,
as we have direct footage of their release. The Israeli government
has, rather absurdly, alleged that the hostages were tranquilized upon
their release, in an effort to explain their friendly goodbyes to
members of Hamas, which included handshakes, jokes, and smiles. The
majority of the hostages have not yet been publicly interviewed,
except Mia Leimberg, who emerged from captivity with her dog, Bella.
Hostages’ experiences vary; while Daniel Aloni’s viral letter thanked
Hamas for their treatment of her and her daughter, allegedly, at a
meeting between Israeli war cabinet members and released hostages, an
unnamed hostage recounted incidents of groping. However, the evidence
to which we have direct access, which includes footage of the hostages
being released and TikTok videos posted by the released hostages,
shows the hostages to be smiling and in reasonable condition.

The latest propaganda effort signifies a desperation in the Israeli
propaganda machine. Activists and journalists have rightly pointed out
how the Israeli government has weaponized sexual assault allegations,
deriving from ulterior motives rather than a place of genuine concern
for women and children given Israel’s own horrific track record on
rape and sexual abuse, and furthermore, its active censorship of human
rights groups investigating sexual assault abuses of Palestinian
children, which Josh Paul, former director at the U.S Department of
State, admitted to CNN.

The U.S. State Department’s toothless allegation that the ceasefire
ended because of Hamas’s barbaric desires towards women lacks
credibility. However, the manufacture and escalation of a
sensationalist media storm around October 7 allowed the Israeli
government to reassert its hegemony over narratives surrounding events
on that day. The wild descriptions of Hamas’s assaults re-center
Hamas, thereby detracting from emerging investigations by news
organizations that complicate the Israeli government’s account of a
ruthless Hamas-led attack and probe the IOF’s complicity in
slaughtering Israeli civilians, suggesting the IOF’s indiscriminate
assault upon Hamas may have also caused the death of Israeli citizens.

In addition, emphasizing the brutality and inhumanity of Hamas’s
attacks on October 7 increasingly serves to legitimize Israeli
revenge. Israel’s assault lacks any semblance of proportionality, as
the death toll exceeds 16,000, and widespread graphic videos document,
extensively and in detail, the annihilation of Palestinians, including
the incineration of infants and toddlers. Exaggerating the inhumanity
of the Hamas attacks suggests there is an equivalency of the Israeli
response; though not in scale, it purports to suggest Israel’s assault
is equal in nature and brutality, and therefore, revenge upon a
population of 2.2 million people is logical.

But it extends further than that. The reliance on lazy Orientalist
caricatures of Arab men as savage sexual predators is both cunning and
destructive. The implication that brutality and sexual depravity are
intrinsic characteristics of Arab men and Arab people suggests that
Palestinians are, inherently and irredeemably, an evil race, and their
total annihilation, therefore, is justifiable. Manufacturing consent
for a genocide works only when the genocide of a people is not
regarded as a loss, and the eradication of their culture, their
history, and their humanity is an act that renders the world a better
place. The stigmatization and dehumanization of indigenous men and men
of color is not new. It is an agenda that is all too familiar, and we
must resist it.

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/despite-lack-of-evidence-allegations-of-hamas-mass-rape-are-fueling-israeli-genocide-in-gaza/

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"