Thread by @orenbarsky

Just one day after the New York Times proudly ran an antisemitic blood libel by a journalist with a highly questionable track record,

a civilian commission published a comprehensive report detailing the sexual violence committed by Hamas against October 7 victims and Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

The contrast could not be sharper.

While the NYT piece leaned on virtually no hard evidence beyond a few posts from online grifters of dubious credibility,

this report is based on a two-year independent investigation that reviewed more than:

- 10,000 photos and video clips,

- over 1,800 hours of visual material,

- and more than 430 testimonies from survivors, eyewitnesses, released hostages, and victims’ families.

Its conclusion is unequivocal: the sexual and gender-based violence carried out by Hamas on October 7 and throughout captivity was not random or isolated.

It was systematic, organized, and deliberate.

The commission also states that all findings were cross-checked against both open and confidential sources, alongside physical visits to the attack sites themselves for verification and documentation.

But you probably won’t hear much about this report.

Not in the NYT, and not in most major international outlets — because large parts of the global media have long since gone morally and professionally bankrupt.

So that’s where I come in.

I’m going to break down the report’s findings, compare them to the NYT piece,

and also try to explain why the NYT operates the way it does — and why serious journalism no longer seems to be its priority.

Link to the commission’s website and the full report at the end of the thread.

👇🧵

What did the report find?

Based on the vast body of evidence and testimony collected over the past two years,Cthe report identifies 13 recurring patterns of sexual and gender-based violence

which, according to the commission, appeared across multiple attack sites and among different victims — pointing not to isolated incidents, but to a systematic method of operation.

The patterns include:

• Rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual assault.

• Sexual torture, including intentional burning and mutilation.

• Deliberate shootings to the head, face, and genital areas.

• Killings and executions carried out alongside or following sexual violence.

• Postmortem sexual abuse, humiliation, and desecration of bodies.

• Forced nudity and public exposure of victims.

• Handcuffing, binding, and restraining victims.

• Public parading and display of women and children.

• The abduction of mothers and children.

• The weaponization of family bonds to intensify humiliation and terror (“Kinocidal Violence”).

• Filming, documenting, and distributing the atrocities on social media as a form of psychological warfare.

• Threats of forced marriage.

• Rape and sexual violence against boys and men.

As the report argues, the repetition of these patterns across numerous locations and cases points not to randomness, but to deliberate and organized methods of violence — tactics the Hamas terrorists were trained and instructed to carry out.

You hearing any of this from @nytimes ?

One of the most disturbing findings in the report is a concept the monsters of Hamas forced into our reality:

Kinocide — Kinocidal Sexual Violence.

The idea is horrifying in its simplicity:

not only were individuals targeted on October 7, but the family itself became a deliberate target of terror.

According to the report, the violence was designed to maximize trauma through the most intimate human bonds imaginable — parents and children, siblings, spouses.

The commission defines it as:

“The deliberate and systematic torture of families and weaponization of familial bonds through the destruction and exploitation of family relationships in order to maximize suffering.”

And the examples described in the report are almost impossible to process.

It documents cases in which family members were allegedly forced to witness sexual assaults, humiliation, executions, abuse, and forced nudity inflicted on their loved ones.

According to the commission, the presence of relatives was not incidental — it was itself part of the method of terror.

The report also claims that in at least one documented case, family members were coerced into performing sexual acts on one another under threat and force — what the commission describes as an extreme form of the “weaponization of familial bonds,” where the family relationship itself becomes an instrument of torture.

The kidnappings, too, are described not merely as hostage-taking operations, but as acts designed to psychologically destroy entire families:

children separated from parents, mothers abducted alongside their children, relatives forced to watch one another being taken away, and footage of those abductions circulated directly to families themselves.

And then there’s perhaps the most grotesque element of all:

the use of media as a tool of psychological torture.

According to the report, videos and images were sent directly to relatives, uploaded through victims’ own social media accounts, and in some cases families learned of their loved ones’ deaths online in real time.

The violence did not end with the murders or kidnappings — it continued digitally, extending the trauma far beyond the attack itself.

The broader argument of the chapter is chilling:

on October 7, the family home, the bond between parent and child, and the most intimate spaces of human life became part of the battlefield itself.

The report even argues that international law should evolve to recognize not only violence against individual victims, but also the deliberate destruction of families as a collective human target.

It also discusses what it calls “multigenerational trauma” — the idea that violence inflicted within and through the family unit does not end with the immediate victims, but reverberates psychologically and socially for generations.

In short, the report portrays Hamas as engaging in a form of terror whose cruelty was not only physical, but deeply psychological — aimed not just at killing people, but at shattering the most basic human bonds that hold societies together.

Hamas represents one of the most depraved and monstrous forms of evil humanity has seen.

And let’s not forget: Hamas is a Palestinian organization, one that continues to receive support and justification from many people in the West who still see themselves — or present themselves — as liberals.

So what is the report actually trying to achieve?

This is a good moment to remember how quickly the court in The Hague rushed to pursue proceedings against Israel, issue arrest warrants against Israelis,

and how eagerly various countries lined up to join the campaign — especially those happy to benefit from Qatari money and influence.

And yet, after more than two years, even figures involved in those proceedings have effectively admitted that no serious evidentiary foundation was ever assembled for many of the sweeping allegations being made.

Which is exactly what makes this report so significant.

According to the commission, the purpose of the report is not merely to document the events of October 7, but to build a comprehensive legal, historical, and evidentiary record that could one day support prosecutions for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conflict-related sexual violence.

The report repeatedly emphasizes that one of its core goals is to prevent denial, distortion, and erasure of what happened — especially in light of the skepticism, politicization, and attempts to undermine the testimonies of victims and survivors.

At the heart of the report is the argument that the sexual violence committed by Hamas was not some random byproduct of war or chaos, but a systematic, deliberate, and organized component of the terror itself.

Beyond that, the report seeks to expand the international legal conversation around collective trauma, the targeting of families, and what the commission defines as “Kinocide” — the deliberate destruction of the family as a social and emotional unit.

In other words, this is what real investigative work looks like.

It takes time. It requires gathering testimony, cross-checking sources, analyzing thousands of hours of footage, identifying patterns, and building conclusions carefully and methodically.

And that brings us back once again to the New York Times — and to the growing gap between journalism that seeks truth and media institutions that increasingly prioritize narratives, and sensationalism.

Because in the end, it is far easier to publish lies than to investigate reality and arrive at the truth.

So why would the NYT — arguably the most powerful media brand in the world — choose to publish such a vile blood libel without any verified evidence behind it?

And maybe an even better question is: why does it continue giving a platform to a journalist who has already been embroiled in past controversies involving unreliable sources and false reporting?

The answer, in my view, is that the NYT stopped being a newspaper a long time ago.

It has become a members-only club for a several millions of paying subscribers who largely belong to the same political and ideological camp.

A camp that has increasingly embraced anti-Western, anti-American ideological frameworks rooted in various strands of radical leftist thought.

Frameworks that, in recent years, have formed an alliance with another deeply anti-Western movement: political Islam and Muslim Brotherhood-style Islamism.

What many now call the “Red-Green Alliance.”

And within that alliance, antisemitism has reemerged as the lowest common denominator connecting two otherwise very different ideological worlds.

Which is why, when it comes to geopolitical coverage and Israel in particular, the NYT no longer seems primarily interested in pursuing objective truth.

Its real priority is giving its audience the narratives and moral framing they already expect and want to consume.

At that point, it stops being journalism and starts becoming ideological affirmation for a closed social tribe.

And in this case, a particularly toxic one.

Now, beyond the legal dimension, this report is also a moral and human fight against silence, denial, and the erasure of the victims.

Many of those who suffered were murdered, can no longer testify, or are still living with unimaginable trauma, which is why the authors argue there is a responsibility to “restore their voices” and preserve their stories for future generations.

Throughout the report, one idea comes up again and again: recognition matters.

Not just legally, but morally. Especially for victims of sexual violence, who so often face skepticism, denial, or attempts to silence them.

In the face of efforts to cast doubt on testimonies or erase these atrocities from public memory, they felt a moral obligation to document, preserve, and present the evidence in a way that would make historical erasure impossible.

In that sense, the report is not just an investigative document — it is also an act of testimony, remembrance, and recognition for the victims, their families, and the communities that were shattered.

A moral obligation @nytimes abandoned a long time ago — for all the reasons already mentioned.

With its publication today, the report was distributed to hundreds of international bodies and institutions, including UN agencies, human rights organizations, research institutes, legal experts, diplomats, parliaments, and policymakers around the world.

Now let’s see what their response will be — if there is one at all.

If you want to read the report yourself or learn more about the organization behind it, here’s the link to their website:

civilc.org/silenced-no-mo…

You can also support their work if you choose to.

For transparency’s sake: I’ve never spoken with them personally and have absolutely no connection or interest here beyond the importance of the report itself.

I hope people choose to read, share, and spread this report.

It will probably never come close to reaching the hundreds of millions of people exposed to @nytimes lies — but we should still do everything we can to help the truth reach as many people as possible.

FUCK HAMAS.