Thread by @HonestReporting

Claiming to be a “report on eight months of claim & counter-claim” about the sexual violence against Israelis on Oct 7, @thetimes foreign correspondent @scribblercat & @gabrielle_siviais' story is nothing more than a muddle of victim-blaming & bias. 🧵
thetimes.com/magazines/the-…

The piece claims the atrocities, specifically the sexual assaults & rapes, are Israel’s most “contentious” assertion of what occurred on Oct 7.

The writers evidently don’t believe sexual violence occurred & they'll try their hardest to convince readers not to believe it either.

Much of the piece discusses the UN report by Pramila Patten, which we are told came during a “furious row” in which they suggest allegations of antisemitism were weaponized — and not the fact that it seemed that Jewish women were the only group not believed about sexual assault.

The piece then attempts to suggest there is a kind of overblown fear about rape among “Jewish Israelis” who associate it with the pogroms of Eastern Europe. The piece grossly suggests that it is Arab men who are victims of prejudice as a result of the pogroms.

What the piece doesn’t mention is that Arabs also perpetrated a few pogroms against Jews of their own, like the 1921 Jaffa riots and the 1929 Hebron Massacre, in which Jewish women and girls were raped and children bludgeoned to death.
honestreporting.com/unprovoked-car…

The piece's primary contention is that the reports of rape mostly came from “ultra-orthodox” Zaka volunteers who supplied “inaccurate and unreliable forensic interpretations” of what they saw when taking away victims’ bodies.

Such testimonies included women found naked, some women discovered with injured genitals, and semen found on the bodies of victims.

The piece ignores other evidence of sexual violence, including video of the aftermath & victims’ contorted bodies, instead focusing on isolated early incidents of false info shared on social media, even when they were promptly retracted. It ignores how common this is during wars.

The authors say “police have not interviewed a single survivor” of rape on Oct 7. As the UN report made clear, every rape victim was murdered or abducted to Gaza, where they may still be enduring sexual violence. This is only reluctantly acknowledged toward the end of the piece.

Meanwhile, Israel is cast as trying to suppress the truth at every turn, digging in its heels when it comes to a full investigation. It's ironic the very rush to disprove the worst of Hamas atrocities by many in the international community somewhat explains Israel’s reticence.

Notable is @scribblercat's history of animus toward Israel. Well before Oct 7, she called Israel an “apartheid state,” shared her “solidarity with the Palestinian people” & also accused people of using “antisemitism” charges to silence the truth.
honestreporting.com/the-times-of-l…