Screams Without Words

I got a lot of pushback when I suggested that the accounts of Hamas using rape as a weapon of war might be lies. Hamas is a terrorist organization! Of course they were systemically raping people in their October 7th attack! Except of course, now we know that there was an active effort to lie about this. Basically every story that was exploded into the front pages was discredited. The big one - which this post is named after - was written by someone who approvingly liked some outright genocidal posts on social media. Where multiple people she interviewed said that they were misrepresented and interviewed under false pretenses.

The Israeli prosecutor who had charge of investigating these cases eventually conceded "we don’t have any complainants. What was presented in the media compared to what will eventually come together will be entirely different…"

As far as I know, there are zero substantiated cases of rape committed by Hamas on October 7th. Zero.

That's not necessarily evidence that Hamas terrorists did not commit rapes in the attack - but it is absolutely evidence that the accusations widespread use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war were bullshit. Also I would like to note - it is immensely more evidence than should be required. If we go by past behaviour, the assumption should be that the IDF is lying. They are shameless in their lying - they make Republican politicians look like an honest men. No really, they are that bad. Just awful, terrible purveyors of bullshit. 

Also too - it actually is believable that the Hamas fighters did not commit any rapes or sexual assaults. Now I said the IDF lies all the time, but that does not mean that Hamas is strictly honest. They are a terrorist organization, they deliberately targeted civilians, it is completely unsurprising that they too would lie and peddle bullshit stories to cover up their war crimes. Only thing is - the explanation for why their fighters didn't rape anyone actually makes Hamas look worse. And that was why I felt it was believable.

Hamas noted two items. First, their fighters are religious nutjob "holy warriors" on what was likely going to be a suicide mission. This was the blaze of glory they were going to go down in - and they are religious fundamentalist extremists - so they wouldn't sin by committing haram acts at that moment. This is hardly a flattering description - so it does ring true. Now it is also true that a lot of people claiming to be deeply religious also do a lot of systemic sexual abuse - but very few of them are the kind so committed to the cause that they go on suicide missions to slaughter civilians. Regardless, this is the less strong explanation for why Hamas did not rape on October 7th.

The second thing the Hamas spokesperson said was that their fighters knew they were on a clock - that the overwhelming response from the Israeli military was on its way and that they only had a short window to kill as many Israelis as they could. So they didn't commit rape because that would take away from their murdering time. Which, holy shit - this "excuse" kinda makes them seem even worse.

Anyways, this is still not complete exoneration. The explanations as to why Hamas would not have raped during their terror attack are believable and match the evidence so far - which is that there is no credible evidence of rape. But it still remains possible - perhaps the only rape victims were also murdered. A lot of people were murdered that day. But really, this is the extent we have to go to in order to substantiate a belief that Hamas committed rape.

OTOH, we do have criminal charges about rape and the use of sexual assault as torture on Palestinian prisoners held by Israel at Sde Teiman. IOW, if we use as a standard - the number of criminal charges for rape laid by the Israeli criminal justice system - the IDF is still worse than Hamas.