Content Warning: Graphic descriptions of sexual assault
A two-month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.
Relying on video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors, The Times identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated.
Four witnesses described in graphic detail seeing women raped and killed at two different places along Route 232, the same highway where Ms. Abdush’s half-naked body was found sprawled on the road at a third location.
And The Times interviewed several soldiers and volunteer medics who together described finding more than 30 bodies of women and girls in and around the rave site and in two kibbutzim in a similar state as Ms. Abdush’s — legs spread, clothes torn off, signs of abuse in their genital areas.
I haven’t read anything about what hamas thought would happen after the October 7th attack. Did they think Israel would do nothing because hamas had hostages?
Or were they trying to prompt a huge response? Certainly the abhorrent despicable acts perpetrated against women that were detailed in the article are something no one would ignore. Similar to Bucha in Ukraine, the horror won’t make people surrender, just the opposite.
Obvious answer is they wanted Israel to invade Gaza.
They had no significant chance of beating them so why push for an invasion?
Propaganda, division and pulling other arab countries into a larger war.
Basically they Hamas wanted their own people to suffer…crazy
Don’t forget that the Hamas leaders are living in luxury as billionaires in Qatar. If the Israeli response kills a few thousand Palestinians, then Hamas’ leaders will shrug their shoulders and say “sounds like good PR” while lounging in a hot tub.
Their whole goal was got get Israel to look bad for killing people, it’s also why they don’t make efforts to separate the civilians from their militants.
They certainly wanted to provoke a huge reaction – starting a war and derailing normalization of relations with other states in the ME. They were probably a bit like the dog that caught the car. It’s doubtful they thought they would be as successful as they were. They were likely hoping the hostages would temper Israel’s response. They probably didn’t anticipate the success and brutality of the attack making the hostages less of a factor in Israel’s decision-making.
I believe they are like most closed-minded religious fanatics, forethought doesn’t exist. They live in the moment because they’re ready to be with their god any time so any act is forgivable after death. The same can be said about Israel and the scale of its reaction and ability to slaughter children and civilians. Any act is forgivable if done for their god.
One clear thing about this entire catastrophe is that both Hamas and the IDF are absolutely uncaring about the fate of the Palestinian people.
This is what some people who cheer on Hamas don’t seem to understand. Hamas was elected into power, yes, but they claimed to be moderates. Even so, they won a plurality, not a majority. Then, they cancelled all future elections and revealed themselves to be extremists.
The aid that goes to the Gaza Strip is either seized by the leaders of Hamas (who are billionaires living in luxury in Qatar) or are used to buy weapons to attack Israel. Very little actually goes to the Palestinian people.
Even if we set anything Israel-related aside, Hamas needs to go for the well being of the Palestinian people. At the very least, there should be free, fair, and regular elections so the government does what the people want instead of just what some billionaires in Qatar (who don’t need to deal with the consequences) want.
Unfortunately for Palestinians, many Israelis do care
I haven’t been able to find a good answer to that either.
One of the speculations that I’ve heard kicked around is that they were trying to do something that would light a fuse, but there was no follow up. Hamas isn’t a bunch of student rebels out of Les Miserables, throwing caution to the wind but not having done the actual groundwork. It was a small attack that happened to have what I suspect was a far larger impact than they imagined. They obviously were doing prep work for the attack itself, if the stories we’re reading are to be believed, but it was a modest-sized incursion without coordination with either the West Bank or Lebanon assets. I think it was a terrorist attack - and I am not someone who throws that word around lightly - but I don’t think that they thought it was going to be this big of a hit.
I think it’s analogous to 9/11 where OBL wasn’t expecting the whole towers falling thing, and while trying to provoke a response, the US over-response exceeded his expectations. I don’t know if Hamas will survive this as an organization, but it’s really affected the global perception of Israel.
No it was not a small attack. It was light infantry against a full miltary but not small. It was planned and they stockpiled weapons and material to last months. What they were not expecting was to walk over the IDF military on the border (none of the videos released by the IDF show Hamas doing this). They were not expecting to get throught the defences so easily to get to the settlements. Remember most of the population of Gaza was ethnically cleansed from the land that these settlements are built on.
They are still fighting. The IDF is using tanks in urban warfare (this is a big tactical no no), so Hamas have the IDF where they want them. Even 2 months into the fighting we still see daily videos of IDF tanks (USD 3 million) being destroyed by rocket launchers (USD 200).
Strategically the Palestinians were being thrown under a bus by the rest of the Arabs so this attack put Hamas in control. It also destroyed the image of Israeli comptence which is a huge propaganda win.
If you look at the prisoner exchanges and the interviews afterwards you see the Israeli prisoners were treated well in captivity and the release was well managed and competent. This especially does not align with the story in the NY Times here. The release of the Palestinian prisoners was chaotic (tear gas was used in some places) and the prsioners were tortured and released with broken bones in some cases.
Although some of those kidnapped from Israel were given adequate food, clothing, bedding, and other necessities (what I assume you mean by “treated well”), others were subjected to psychological torture, denied lifesaving medicine and basic medical treatment, and assaulted, including children.
All of them were taken from their homes at gunpoint, some of them pulled from under the bodies of their murdered families, some of them non-fatally shot or seriously injured. Some of them have no homes or families to return to. The hostage release appeared orderly because Hamas threatened to harm their other family still held hostage if they said anything bad, and because Israel and Egypt worked together from Oct. 8 to carefully plan the safe and orderly transfer. Hamas in the West Bank and the PA had basically no plan to receive the released Palestinian prisoners, so there was chaos.
The whole “hostages were treated well” is such a weird talking point to me.
Weren’t some hostages also drugged so they’d be “happy and smiling” for the cameras when released? I heard that, but don’t know the authenticity.
Edit: I found many news sources that said they were. I know some folks don’t trust anything Israel says so take reports like this with a grain of salt. Still, it’s been confirmed that many of the hostages were drugged while in captivity. Especially the kids - to keep them quiet. (Anyone with little kids knows they can be loud while scared and this must have been extremely scary. As a father, the reaction of “drug the little kids” makes me angry.)
I am convinced the goal was to provoke a strong response from Israel. The reason is they knew the strong response from Israel would be disproportional and would damage relations between Israel and the rest of the ME.
Israel was approaching normalized relations with most of the major Arab nations around it, most importantly SA. Normalized relations with Israel would likely mean significantly less political and economical support coming to Hamas. Without outside resources Hamas is neutered.
So, seeing the real possibility of a large reduction in their economic and political power in the horizon they took desperate action to stop it, knowing full well the outcome.
Hamas wanted a response. Similar to how Al’Quada wanted a response from the US after the World Trade Center attacks. They knew Israel would bring the smoke after an attack like that.
More importantly Russia and Iran wanted a response to stir up the Middle East.
Israel and Saudi were in negotiations to become allies which would have swung the balance of power away from Iran.
Russia just wanted a distraction to take the US focus away from Ukraine.
The tools on this site that root for Hamas or the Houthis are just pawns caught up in the propaganda.
You’re only going to get speculation on these forums.
The only way to know for sure what Hamas expected is to speak directly to their leaders.
Sick fucks.
why can’t MFs just live next to other people’s without wanting to kill and rape the “Other”???
Money doesn’t want them to.
Sadly, this is the reason too many people overlook. It’s not the only reason. A full listing of the reasons and their history would fill a book, but just focusing on the money aspect:
Hamas gets funding and weapons from Iran. Iran wants instability there and encourages the “wipe out Israel, kill all the Jews mentality.”
On the other side, evangelical Christians in the US support people like the settlers in the West Bank. In the case of the evangelicals, it’s because they need Israel to be controlled by Jews for Jesus to return, but they also need Israel to suffer a big attack. Peace in the Middle East would, in their twisted view, hurt Jesus’ chances of returning. As an aside, they think that Jesus will toss all the Jews into hell once he comes back so them “supporting Israel” is definitely not “pro-Jews.” It’s merely delayed anti-semitism.
Remove these two elements and the fire would still rage there, but these groups see the fire and decide to toss some gasoline on top of it.
But the hexbears told me this didn’t happen
And also it was a false flag
And also they deserved it
Wtf…
Why do we need a written article “How Hamas Weaponized…yadda yadda yadda”?
The answer is simple. They used their dicks and weapons and raped people. This article is purely for shock clicks.
No it’s not. So many Hamas apologists refute that Hamas uses rape and torture as a tool. Strong articles with solid evidence like this put a lie to their propaganda.
I’m just curious, where is the ‘solid evidence’ you speak of?
I have no doubt Hamas committed rapes, but so far I’ve only seen testimony to go off of.
Unfortunately, testimonies aren’t very reliable (especially in times of war), so I was wondering if you are seeing more ‘solid evidence’ than people’s testimonies.
Edit: He just downvoted me in a minute but provided no further evidence, so we can assume that testimonies are the only ‘solid evidence’ he’s referring to.
Women are all liars!!! Why don’t you go back to the red pill or whatever misogynist shithole you crawled out of. The evidence is detailed in the article which you refuse to read.
Can you specify what evidence you’re referring to so I know exactly what you’re talking about?
You can also leave the insults at home, especially if you can’t provide evidence beyond testimony.
Edit: Just another downvote with no specification. We can safely assume that he has no ‘solid evidence’, only testimony. Of course he gets mad when pressed on it because he’s a stooge for propaganda.
I still think Hamas committed rapes, but I won’t take Israeli testimony at face-value because of their history of fabricating lies about their enemies. Same reason I don’t take Russian or Nazi testimony at face-value.
Take a look.
You won’t look but there’s plenty of pics of women raped and tortured of Oct 7. You’re a strong pro-hamas guy - seen you trolling and you know this already. Shame on you
Now make a set for the Palestinian Jews raped by the Russian invaders that kicked off this mess. How about a set for the moment Gaza became a concentration camp? What about a set for the villages torn down for space for Tel Aviv or the settlements? How about a set from a few weeks ago where more Palestinians were kicked out of Hebron? How about a set of the people raped by that Mossad creation: Jeffery Epstein. 200 people is “your 911”? How gross are you to ignore the millions dead and dislaced by your people’s actions.
How about you figure out why the descendants of your favorite story characters are absolutely livid of how they have been treated on their own land.
Well I, for one, think Israel should sign a peace treaty with these guys immediately and leave them in control of a small country. It’s the only ethical course of action.
Prepare for the downvotes from the Hamas/Palestine-did-nothing-wrong brigade.
Are there a lot of Hamas supporters here? Let alone “did nothing wrong” people?
No, only people against the occupation and against the genocide currently happening in Gaza. Pro-zionists like to paint everyone critical of Israel’s atrocities as terrorism supporters and as antisemites. But nobody is saying October 7th wasn’t horrible. Nobody is saying rape isn’t horrible. Resistance to this brutal occupation is always going to be nasty. The Palestinians have no peaceful means to resolve the conflict. That doesn’t make terrorism OK but it was inevitable given how Israel is oppressing the Palestinians
There are a decent number of tankies screeching about how Israel made them gangrape children with their colonization.
I’m willing to listen to an argument that any level of violence is justified to fight against a superior occupation force, but the sexual violence just shows what Hamas, and all fundamentalists for that matter, really are, and it isn’t “freedom fighters.”
Maybe it’s because I blocked tankie shit, but I never see these comments. Do you have an example of straight up Hamas did nothing wrong or is this another example of criticism of Israel’s ethnic cleansing being intentionally confused with antisemitism and terrorism apologia? Because I see that all the damn time
Removed by mod
Israel’s actions have a role in the origin story of the Oct 7th attacks (and the existence of a violent resistance in general). Of course it isn’t as simple as “Israel made them do it”, but it isn’t as simple as “Hamas just did it because they’re monsters” either.
The whole situation in the Middle East is a Gordian Knot of epic proportions. There’s a ton of generational trauma among both people. Both sides have valid claims against the other. Normally, I hate “both sides-ism,” but the overall Middle East situation definitely calls for it.
It’s also, sadly, why peace is so hard to achieve. If it was as simple as “give this side A and that side B,” it would have been over long ago. There are elements on both sides that refuse to stop until the other side is completely killed off. Meanwhile, most people would just want peace but are caught in the middle and are scared. And those of us in America know what kind of politicians thrive on fear and hatred. If you need a hint, watch Newsmax or OAN for as long as your brain will tolerate it.
It’s not just rape but the mutilation. Here’s one instance of mutilation and torture from the article:
The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.
She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast.
“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,” Sapir said.
Yes, Israel has their history of atrocity to with events like the Sabra and Shatila Massacre. But with barbarism like this, I think Israel has justification and obligation to respond with military force. They are not responding with justifiable military measure and will also need to be held to account.
Respond with military force is not bombing the ever loving fuck out of the whole area, making almost all 2 million inhabitants homeless and causing a famine and water crisis. And there are examples of individual IDF atrocities just as well, such as shooting unarmed civilians waving a makeshift white flag. And we only learned about that one because they turned out to be Israeli civilians rather than subhuman Palestinian civilians
Again, nobody is saying Israel doesnt have a right to defend itself. It just doesn’t have the right to kill indiscriminately, take people’s homes, deny them basic human rights and level Gaza every couple of years.
Yes. That is why I said the Israel response employed is not justifiable.
So then why the euphemism? By “I think they went a teeny bit too far” do you mean this is an offensive war aimed at driving the Gazans into Egypt?
This is not a defensive action. This is not border security. This is not an anti-terrorism operation. Call it what it is: This is ethnic cleansing.
It is cyclical and retaliatory.
Looking at the world through the lens of media is a concept as old as humanity itself. The edgier shows will have The Hero feel horror at the realization that their army is going to do bad stuff to a sacked city and depict them heroically protecting one family or person to show that they are above it all.
The reality is that doing so is a good way to have your army revolt against you right then and there. Fragging is for more than just the incompetent Lieutenant who is going to get the hero killed.
And that is what is happening here. Same as it happens in every war (just ask any Chinese or Korean person about their mixed feelings on the US and Russia liberating their grandparents from the horrors of Imperial Japan and how white people have never been able to tell Asians apart…). An atrocity happened. Vengeance is needed. And maybe the locals are “siding with the enemy” either vocally or by just not assisting in stopping them.
And that is even worse in this situation. Because the communities and people attacked were the ones who lived nearest to the prison walls and/or who outright advocated for peaceful resolutions. Knowing that your sister, who wanted nothing more than a peaceful resolution to the unjust imprisonment of a people, was brutally raped and murdered by those same people? That fundamentally shuts off your ability to listen to “both sides” and starts making it really hard to acknowledge that the residential building that you KNOW a terrorist leader is hiding in isn’t actively protecting said leader.
So the soldiers and even leadership who understand how fucked this all is? They literally cannot do anything because it will just result in them having to realize how little control they have over their soldiers at this point and potentially being deemed “a traitor” while they are in a position where it would be trivial to say a terrorist popped out and killed them. Same with the rank and file who want to speak out against the violence or even the people relaying the orders for artillery and missiles.
At this point, everyone more or less understands that if you kill one “terrorist” you likely have made two more between collateral damage and just taking someone’s loved one away from them. But the same applies to both sides. It is just that, ever increasingly, one side has enough munitions to level a large city and the other depends on human shields to protect them.
I understand that bombing the shit out of them is not the ideal solution. But what on earth should be done when such a barbaric and vicious enemy is aslo hiding deep within civilian population. How the hell do you manage to separate them?
I’ve seen some comments that amounted to Oct. 7th denialism, that claims of sexual assault are lies, etc.
Well, I’m not going to claim they’re lies. However, Israel has shown repeatedly they aren’t to be trusted either. It’s a real sad state of affairs that we have to wait for independent 3rd party verification to really have a clue about what’s going on.
I posted this in world news. Lots of downvotes and what aboutism that acts like Hamas didn’t do this. https://p.lemmy.world/post/lemmy.world/10065818
Nope. Lots of upvotes, while the whataboutism posts are down voted into the negatives.
There are quite a few that believe what Israel is doing is genocide, and that what Hamas did was justified by Israel’s actions.
What Israel is doing is genocide. But I haven’t seen people saying Hamas was justified in their most heinous acts.
I don’t doubt there are war crimes being committed, but I don’t think I buy that it’s genocide. Genocide requires systemic intent, otherwise isn’t basically everything genocide?
If you haven’t seen systemic intent, you either haven’t paid attention or your news sources are very biased. That’s literally why Israel has been getting so much heat from other countries.
Genocide requires systemic intent
Announcing that over 1 million people have to flee south within 24 hours is already a humanitarian crisis, but then they bombed the evacuation routes, refugee camps, hospitals, indiscriminately leveled entire blocks, killed a record number of journalists, pushed the line farther south, and generally repeated all of the above. Not systematic enough?
There is undoubtedly systemic intent. You don’t just accidentally bomb entire neighborhoods and refugee camps and hospitals and homes and schools. You certainly don’t accidentally shoot videos of celebrating the destruction of said neighborhoods and then post it on Telegram for everyone to link and share. You don’t abduct civilians from another location to use as hostages.
Yes, unfortunately. They always say ‘I’m not an antisemite, I’m just anti-Zionist’, but in practice their beliefs are indistinguishable.
I have never seen anti-zionism beliefs similar to antisemitism. In fact, if someone mentions anti-zionism, it’s an indicator that they’re talking specifically about the governmental practices of Israel.
People equating anti-zionism to antisemitism are usually being antisemitic themselves by tying Israel’s actions to all Jews.
Nazis have always substituted ‘Israelis’ or ‘Zionists’ for ‘Jews’ when they need to hide in public. The fact that you think you’ve never seen it only indicates that you aren’t very good at detecting it. It also means that you’re carving out an enormous space for Nazis to operate here with your approval that requires almost no effort.
That’s a really convenient excuse to disregard anyone critical of Israel as nazis. Sorry, but I’m not going to condemn someone of being a Nazi just because. Nazis also really like the American flag for some reason too. But I don’t assume everyone with an American flag is a Nazi.
The vast majority of people who are anti-zionist are not Nazis. I hope you realize that because otherwise you’re going to have a really hateful, skewed world view.
Did I say “anyone critical of Israel”?
I said that Nazis have always done that. When Nazis do it, they aren’t being “critical of Israel,” they’re still Nazis doing Nazi shit. I’m telling you that the world is more complicated than you’re allowing, and you’re insisting that I must represent one of only two possible simplistic realities. I’m sorry the world is more complicated than you’d like.
If the only thing you’re doing in assessing whether something is criticism or racism is seeing whether it’s framed as about Jews or Israelis, you’re carving out space for Nazis to operate here. It is trivial to repackage antisemitism as anti-Zionism. Racist blood libel is still racist blood libel when you change the labels. Insisting that any statement is non-racist if it references Israel gives cover to Nazis. You’re not doing enough. Anti-racists who are also critical of the Israeli government should be horrified at the thought of Nazis being allowed to launder racist bullshit through their liberation movements.
I think your inferring a lot of shit I didn’t say and I think you’re assuming a lot about me.
One can be anti-zionistic and not be a Nazi. That doesn’t mean that I’m blind to bad faith discourse. But I’m also not going to condemn people with reckless abandon. In the same way that most who believe in Israel’s right to exist don’t approve of Israel’s genocide. But some do. And some will even go so far as accuse any criticism of Israel as antisemitism. And that feels a lot like what you’re doing. I don’t know if that’s your intention, but that’s really what it sounds like.
“Insisting that any statement is non-racist if it references Israel gives cover to Nazis.”
THIS sounds like a really convenient excuse to disregard “anyone critical of Israel.”
I’m going to assume the best out of you, and assume you don’t mean it that way. But I think you should take your own advice. Because you’re giving a lot of space for Islamophobes to operate.
I definitely have on here. There are a lot of people that say they’re anti-Zionist that then go on to blame all Jews. Or say the ones in New York are the good Jews.
So you disproved your own claims? That’s a novel debate tactic. Not sure it’s going to work out though.
I’m not sure which claim you’re referring to.
I believe you.
Anti Zionism is Antisemitism. Full stop. I’ve seen self hating Jews even try to curry favor by agreeing with the bigots but ultimately if you don’t have Israel, you’ve got millions of dead Jews and 10/7 just reinforces that for anyone who has half of a brain.
Conflating Hamas support with Palestine support? That’s a paddlin.
Lots of downvotes but little engagement. They are here LoL. Beyond pathetic, these green headed trolls.
Seriously the Hamas ball fondlers on here don’t care about anything they do.
Who is fondling Hamas balls? Literally everything I see online is condemning Hamas. Palestine =/= Hamas.
Obviously anything not ball fondling Isreal is just hamas supporters /s
Hahahaha good one 😂
