Don’t Believe Some Women

Today I saw this article from the Washington Post that documents the Israeli efforts to gather evidence of the rapes committed on October 7th.

Footage showed several women stripped of their clothing. One video showed a woman, her hands zip-tied behind her back, with blood on the crotch of her pants. Later came testimony from witnesses and first responders. One witness described in graphic detail a gang rape at the Nova rave site near Re’im. An Israeli reserve combat paramedic told The Post that he found the bodies of teenage girls with signs of sexual assault.

We have seen footage of the carnage and death. Each time a report of some new horror is reported, the story ends up being the same. One example was the report that Hamas fighters had beheaded infants. Step one: Israel reports on a horror. Step two: these claims are denied by the legions of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish internet trolls claiming that the IDF is lying or exaggerating. Step three: the media reports that not every infant was beheaded, or there isn't evidence that the beheading was the cause of death, bolstering the claims of the trolls. Step four: the evidence continues to show that the initial claims were true, but now everything is so muddled (and who can one believe in a world where our media and government lied repeatedly to us about so much) that people just chalk it up to propaganda.

This article, while not great, does lay out the difficulties that Israel faces in gathering evidence while fighting this war and trying to treat the victims who survived with care and respect.

The mission to identify and document rape and gender-based violence has been a grassroots effort, focusing on providing care to witnesses and survivors while also recognizing what specialists say is the possibility that most or all of the victims were killed.

As I finished this article, which amazed me that the Post event printed, I figured that we would see in the comments the beginning of some pushback. I was not wrong. Perhaps the one that takes the cake was this:

As both a Jewish woman and a survivor of sexual assault, it's incredibly frustrating to see people weaponize allegations of rape to further dehumanize Muslims and justify Israel's indiscriminate slaughter of innocent Palestinians. No, we don't need to believe all women. That’s an absurd demand. People do lie. In fact, there’s a long history of rape claims being falsely leveled against enemies to rally support for failing wars. What we should do is listen to all women. And from what I can tell, there's not a single woman who has come forward claiming Hamas raped her. All we have is second- and third-hand eyewitness accounts, none of which can be substantiated with forensic evidence.

This is just part of the larger comment. It is the internet and it's possible that this person is lying, but perhaps not as well.

Here is another example, this time from a man:

Washington Post is going too far with publishing this far fetched article. It is nothing but a propaganda and justification for the atrocity committed against the Palestinian people. I never believed the beheading and burning of 40 babies and it was proven to be a lie. What happened on Oct. 7 was horrific. And what happened in Gaza is Genocide.

And this gem:

What I am about to say will come off as extremely cold, and I don’t want it to be because I abhor the October 7 attacks and deaths and mutilations and continue to witness the helplessness of Palestinian people in running from the bombings of their homes, and the day after day of deaths. But here’s the very cold part: This article insinuates that women were found dead with their legs spread, and other positions, and insinuate rape. There are tests for semen that investigators have had over seven weeks to test for. No where in this article does it say that any rape kits were used in examining these women. Why not? If you have that evidence, why are you not producing it? Rape is a horrible, unspeakable war crime. Period. I fault the reporter, and the editors for not asking these questions in this article. (Or if they did, why did they leave it out?) There is all kinds of misinformation out there…on both sides. Produce the evidence of ANY insinuation. Visual evidence is not enough. Scientific evidence should produce the truth.

Because, here in the US, we have a backlog of rape kits that are not tested because...well, that's another topic entirely, but Israel, which suffered the worst attack in their history, should have already taken evidence via rape kits and tested them. The term useful idiot doesn't even begin to describe this person.

This is a small sample of over 6,800 comments on this article. There is pushback against this type of comment and many thanking the Post for reporting on this, but we are seeing the same pattern happen again.