Thread by @MaxBlumenthal

While much of the NYT "mass Hamas rape" report relies on innuendo, it also purports to contain several credible eyewitness testimonies. One was delivered by a survivor of the Nova electronic music festival named Raz Cohen, who also happens to be an Israeli special forces vet who trains Congolese soldiers. Since his first interview on October 9, Cohen has altered his testimony several times.

Cohen told the NYT he personally witnessed a white van filled with Hamas militants pull up a mile from the Nova music festival, gather over a woman, and gang rape her: "I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.” He said they then butchered the woman with knives.

When Cohen was interviewed on October 9 about the attack on the music festival, however, he did not mention any act of sexual assault committed by Hamas militants. See here: And here:

A day later, Cohen began to introduce vague suggestions of sexual assault into his testimony, but did not indicate that he witnessed any such acts taking place.
“The terrorists captured women and hurt them in any way possible, and when they were done with them, they started butchering them in front of their friends,” Cohen told an Israeli publication:

Cohen was also interviewed by Canada's CBC on October 10, but was not quoted about witnessing any rape:
The same day, Cohen offered lurid new details to PBS, claiming that "the terrorists" not only slaughtered women after raping them on October 7, but engaged in necrophilia as well: “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed — and after they raped, they — they did that.”

Testimony he provided to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on October 11 differed slightly, and remained vague: "We see from there a lot of people and girls screaming and murdered by knives. And the girls, the terrorists rape them," he stated abruptly and without apparent emotion.

By this point, no Israeli media had reported that any rapes occurred on October 7.

Cohen quickly fell off the media's radar. He would not be heard from for over two months, when the Israeli government launched an international propaganda campaign accusing Hamas of mass rape in a transparent bid to maintain international support for its genocidal military assault on Gaza.

At this point, when the NY Times' Jeffrey @gettleman interviewed Cohen, likely reaching him with assistance from the Israeli government, the "IDF" special forces soldier summoned for the first time a vivid account of a shocking gang rape on October 7.

How and why did Cohen's story transform so dramatically over time, providing explosive new details at a moment of political urgency for the army in which he served? Was it plausible that a group of hardened Hamas commandoes suddenly paused their surprise attack, which was focused on taking as many captives as quickly as possible, stood in a circle and gang raped a woman, one after another, while Israeli forces mobilized to attack them? Why did Hamas militants use knives to kill their victims, as Cohen alleged, when they carried rifles and grenades? Why did he drop his earlier allegation of necrophilia when speaking to the Times? And why did he mention seeing "a lot of people and girls" being raped to the ABC on October 11, but alter his testimony to refer specifically to a single female victim when interviewed by the Times?

Perhaps most importantly, why did Cohen's friend, Shoam Gueta, who took shelter with him on October 7, not describe witnessing a gang rape when interviewed by the Times?

The Times must have been so determined to validate a propaganda campaign by the criminally mendacious Israeli government that it dispensed with all skepticism, and did not even bother vetting the supposed eyewitnesses. In the hours and days ahead, I will continue to dissect the dubious testimonies that form that basis of the paper's "investigation."
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A 24-year-old accountant only identified as "Sapir" is described by the NY Times as "one of the Israeli police’s key witnesses."

Yet one of Sapir's key claims undermines the rest of her unbelievably lurid testimony. According to the Times, "she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women."

There is no confirmed record of women being beheaded on October 7. None.

While Hellfire missiles from Israeli Apache helicopters and shells from Israeli tanks may have badly dismembered many of the Israelis and Palestinians they killed on October 7, no record exists of women being decapitated with knives.

Sapir goes on to allege that she witnessed one Hamas militant rape a woman while "the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road.”

This absurdly graphic recollection of Palestinian gunmen playing with severed breasts closely resembles an account furnished to the BBC by May Golan, the self-described "proud racist" who now serves as Israel's Minister of Women's Empowerment:

Why did the Times fail to corroborate Sapir's lurid claim of a triple beheading with official pathologist records? This seems like yet another clearcut case of journalistic malpractice in the service of an apartheid state currently engaged in the crime of genocide.

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.

In the Times, "G" claims (as he did to CNN) that he "had found the bodies of two teenage girls in a room in [Kibbutz] Be’eri. One was lying on her side, he said, boxer shorts ripped, bruises by her groin. The other was sprawled on the floor face down, he said, pajama pants pulled to her knees, bottom exposed, semen smeared on her back."

But as @Mondoweiss explained, "upon examining the names of all the girls killed in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7 to match the facts, no pair of Israeli teenagers meeting that description [by "G"] were found dead together."

The closest match to the teenage girls described by "G" is Yahel and Noiya Sharabi, who were 13 and 16, respectively. But according to Israeli media, their bodies were "found in an embrace" with their mother, and not in any condition like that described by "G":

Once again, the Times has been caught relying on a discredited witness whose identity remains unknown, who can not be questioned by the public, and who may have never visited the crime scene he described.mondoweiss.net/2023/12/cnn-re…
timesofisrael.com/lianne-noiya-y…

It gets worse. The NY Times' supposed paramedic witness, "G," was previously interviewed by the right-wing Republic TV of India. In that appearance, he described in a distinctive Brooklyn accent how his "teammate" found "a baby, perhaps not even more than a year old, with multiple points stabbed all over his body and tossed into the garbage."

This was clearly a lie because only one baby was recorded among the dead on October 7: Mila Cohen, who was accidentally shot, not stabbed, and who was not found in any garbage can.

Once again, the NY Times failed to vet its sources and wound up turning to a proven fabulist for evidence.

An update on NY Times/CNN star witness Raz Cohen: I've located the complete October 9 i24 broadcast containing his first interview. It features his interviewer, Ariel Oseran, providing a second-hand summary of comments Cohen supplied to him after bolting the interview for "emotional support" at Barzalai Hospital in Ashkelon. According to Oseran, while hiding from infiltrators from Gaza, Cohen claimed to have listened to the sounds of Palestinian infiltrators "raping Israeli women, dead, alive, some injured. He told me he could hear this."

(Oseran's recounting of Cohen's comments begin at 28:35 here: )

Oseran emphasized that Cohen "said he chose not to look, but he could hear them laughing constantly." He also noted Cohen's insistence that "these were regular Gazans" who were not carrying guns, and not Hamas militants.

While this seems to contradict my initial finding that Cohen never mentioned witnessing rape in his October 9 interviews, it also contradicts the NY Times December 28 "Screams Without Words" investigation in which he serves as a key witness.

In that article, the lead author, Jeffrey Gettleman writes, Cohen "said he then *saw* five men, wearing civilian clothes, all carrying knives and one carrying a hammer, dragging a woman across the ground."

Cohen is then quoted stating, "They start raping her. I *saw* the men standing in a half circle around her."

According to i24's Oseran, however, Cohen "chose not to look" at the attacks being committed in his proximity, and drew his conclusions based purely on the sounds he said he heard.

The full contents of Cohen's 10/9 i24 interview therefore raise further issues about his credibility, and that of the NY Times as well. It also undercuts the Times' headline explicitly accusing Hamas of having "weaponized sexual violence," as Cohen insists those he heard – but did not see – carrying out sexual attacks were unarmed riff-raff, not Hamas commandos.facebook.com/i24NEWSEN/vide…

An update on NY Times' Air Force Special Rescue Unit 669 witness, who appears as "Sgt G" or "G" in other media outlets, spinning out discredited October 7 atrocities in a New York City accent:

A veteran of Unit 669 has published a book, "From Zero to One Hundred," about his army rescue experiences under the name "Guy M":
Guy M's father, a self-proclaimed "fundraising sensei" named Sagi Melamed, promoted the book in a Times of Israel op-ed:
Guy Melamed's Linkedin bio details 6 years of experience as an Airborne Combat Paramedic Non Commissioned Officer in the Israeli Air Force:
Guy Melamed appeared as an Israeli Air Force Unit 669 member during a 2017 event with then-Israeli UN Ambassador Dani Danon:
Melamed delivered another talk about his 669 experiences in NYC last year (see photo below).

So is Guy Melamed the "Sgt G" who concocted the story of a murdered baby found in the trash on October 7? And is he also the NY Times' source, whose testimony was contradicted by physical evidence?pashoshim.com/products/from-…
blogs.timesofisrael.com/its-a-best-sel…
linkedin.com/in/guy-melamed…
afu669.org/israeli-air-fo…

October 7 witness "Guy M" – who appears to be Guy Melamed – also happens to be a member of the Spy Legends international speaker's bureau founded by a Mossad veteran. The company's site states his name was "censored by a special government committee"
. spylegends.com/team/guy-m