Setting the record straight

On June 11 The Times magazine featured a report asking: ‘Israel says Hamas weaponised rape. Does the evidence add up?’

The article caused an instant furore, not least by some of the women who spoke to the reporters and who claim to have been misquoted. The Times has failed to print their complaint or letters of complaint written by members of the public. 

The article, while posting as reporting, is one-sided and seems determined to fulfil an agenda of accusing Israelis of falsification. While journalism is always a question of editing to tell a story, we suggest complaints are sent to IPSO looking in particular at Clause 1 of the code which says: ‘The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images.’

Listed below are ten claims made in the report which have been debunked

1) CLAIM:

‘The political establishment has opened a fresh battle with the UN over what the Patten report didn’t say: that sexual violence was beyond reasonable doubt, systematic, widespread and ordered and perpetrated by Hamas.’

TRUTH:

The Patten report was narrow in scope and the investigation only lasted two weeks but the Israeli political establishment, which has good reason to not trust any UN body, was in general pleased with the report for saying there had been systematic and widespread sexual violence. Point 12 of the report’s executive summary says: ‘Based on the information gathered by the mission team from multiple and independent sources, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attacks in multiple locations across Gaza periphery including rape and gang rape in at least three locations.’

2) CLAIM:

‘The idea of the Arab male as an explicit sexual threat to Jewish women developed in tandem with the movement of Israeli politics to the right.’

TRUTH:

While there was a far right move to see rape as ‘sexual terrorism’ if perpetrated by an Arab man against a Jewish woman that does not mean that people were looking for rape on October 7. Rape has not, in general, played a part in the Arab-Israeli war since 1948 and it was partly because first responders were not expecting to find rape that more care was not taken to examine whether bodies had been subject to sexual assault and rape when their bodies were collected.  

3) CLAIM:

‘Talk of rape began circulating almost before the massacres themselves were over. Much of it came from what Patten would later call ‘non-professionals’ who supplied ‘inaccurate and unreliable forensic interpretations’ of what they found, creating an instant but flawed narrative about what had taken place.’

TRUTH:

Talk of rape began circulating early on because of images provided by Hamas on social media, specifically of the image of IDF soldier Naama Levy’s bloodied crotch on the back of her trousers as she was seen being bundled into a truck and the half naked body of Shani Louk which was paraded around the streets of Gaza on October 7 as the massacre continued. 

Patten noted how ‘the collection of forensic evidence was hindered by several factors’ in those early days but not for the reasons the article mentions. She listed them as: ‘i) the magnitude of the situation, characterised by a large number of casualties in dispersed crime scenes involving multiple perpetrators in a context of active combat situation ii) a context in which various forms of violence occurred with extensive brutality including post mortem mutilation and boob-trapping of corpses iii) the high number of bodies with destructive burn damage which made the identification of potential crimes of sexual violence impossible iv) the prioritisation of rescue operations and recovery, identification and burial of the deceased over the collection of forensic evidence. 

4) CLAIM:

Talking about first responders Zaka, they sum up the testimony of Orit Sulitzeanu saying she, ‘ ‘notes the volunteers lack of familiarity with the women’s bodies they were finding and their tendency to focus on injuries they believed pointed to sexual violence, such as smashed pelvises and gunshot wounds to sex organs, ignoring other injuries that muddied the picture.’

TRUTH: Sulitzeanu is one of three contributors to the piece (along with Dr Sarai Aharoni and Pro Ruth Halperin-Kaddari) who has said the published article ‘misrepresented our words’ saying it ‘aimed to discredit and gaslight the victims of heinous acts of sexual violence’. She and others have spoken in the past about how Zaka in general were not looking for incidents of sexual violence because that is not what they were expecting (and that was a failing), not that they were making it up. This is backed up by the Patten report which says they covered corpses ‘as a gesture of respect for the deceased’ and only took a limited a number of photos.

5) CLAIM:

The idea is introduced that Zaka was looking for examples of rape because of Jewish history by quoting Dr Sarai Aharoni who said: ‘the first framing of rape and sexual violence was automatically linked with European histories’. 

TRUTH:

She was not claiming that they saw something that was not there; only that it would have perpetuated a trauma that has lived on throughout Jewish history. 

6) CLAIM:

‘Critics argue that Israeli officials have regularly wielded the rape claim as a cudgel to silence critics of their assault on Gaza.’ 

TRUTH:

Critics have indeed claimed this but the assault on Gaza is because of the murders of 1200 people, the taking of 240 hostages and the persistent rockets from Gaza. The assault on Gaza would be happening whether or not there were rapes. 

7) CLAIM:

There are no survivors who are willing to talk.  

TRUTH:

The story fails to note that, as has been persistently said, including in the Patten report, there are few survivors because almost all the women who were raped were either dead or taken hostage. Others are too traumatised to speak and this is common in all instances of crimes of this nature. The Patten report notes: ‘While the number of survivors/ victims of sexual violence remains unknown, a small number of those who are undergoing treatment are reportedly experiencing severe mental distress and trauma.’

8) CLAIM:

[On the Patten report]‘The document calls out a number of fabricated and mistaken claims including those about the discovery of raped young women in Kibbutz Be’eri and the false story about the pregnant woman.’

TRUTH:

The document does not say any claims were ‘fabricated’ (a loaded term indicated they were deliberately deceptive) but says some were unfounded because of mistakes made. She does not rule out rape at Kibbutz Be’eri saying: ‘The mission team received credible information about bodies found naked and/or tied, and in one case gagged, in some of the kibbutz’s destroyed houses and their surroundings. While verification of sexual violence against these victims was not possible, circumstantial evidence, notably the pattern of female victims found undressed and bound – may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence.’ 

9) CLAIM:

‘On the one hand it [the Patten report] gives substantial and substantiated credence to the sexual assault claim; on the other it does not show them to be systematic.’

TRUTH:

The Patten report shows there is evidence of rape in three areas it investigated: at the Nova festival and its surroundings ‘there are reasonable ground to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped’; on Road 232 it found ‘a pattern of bound naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down’ and in nearby kibbutz Reim ‘the mission team further verified and incident of the rape of a woman outside of a bomb shelter’ and kibbutz Kfar Aza ‘simarly to other locations, female victims were found fully or partially naked to the waist down with their hands tied behind their backs and shot’. 

It also found that the hostages – women, men and children, had been ‘subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualised torture’. It said: ‘The mission team also found a pattern of victims, found fully or partially naked, bound and shot across multiple locations.’

All of these taken could be said to be systematic. 

10) CLAIM:

‘Patten asked that Israel investigate ‘credible allegations’ of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women and girls. 

TRUTH:

The report states: ‘no instances of rape were reported’ by Palestinian women’s organisations’. There had been threats of rape.