Israel-Palestine Mega Fact Check!

This is most likely false, though it is impossible to entirely disprove. There has yet to be convincing evidence that rape or other forms of sexual assault committed on October 7^th were systematically planned or executed.

Despite claims to the contrary, Israel has not produced the name of even one victim, not even the initials of a single victim, whether alive or dead. If rape was widespread, shouldn’t this information be easily available?

And despite the abundant photographic and video footage of the October 7^th attacks, no visual evidence of rape—not even anonymized, censored evidence—has been offered. While this definitely does not mean that no rape or sexual assault has occurred, it does call into question just how widespread it could have been if none of the above evidence has been produced.

In the days following Hamas’s massacre, senior Israeli officials insisted they had photos or videos of rapes and beheaded babies, but refused to share them—not even heavily edited and censored versions.

Some argued that it would be disrespectful to release such evidence. However, there was no problem for the world to see the footage of IDF soldiers allegedly raping Palestinians. Since Israel’s claim of mass rape were central in justifying their heavy-handed retaliation in Gaza, any visual evidence, appropriately edited and censored, would go a long way towards solidifying Israel’s case and dispelling any doubt that critics may have.

The IDF said that it found papers with Arab-to-Hebrew translations of various phrases, including “put your hands up and spread your legs”, “take your clothes off”, and “take your pants off.” The former is something police officers typically use when arresting suspects. But the latter two phrases certainly could have been used to facilitate rape.

One would reasonably assume that if the militants had planned to weaponize rape against Israelis, that the captured Israeli hostages would present the perfect opportunity to commit such crimes. However, of all the released hostages interviewed so far, all but one have confirmed they were not raped. One captor, who play-arm-wrestled with hostage Agam Goldstein-Almog, insisted on putting a towel between their hands since he was not allowed to touch them. Most released hostages have said they’d generally been treated well. Only one hostage, Amit Soussana, said she was raped by her captor, but added that he showed remorse and begged for forgiveness.

Interestingly, two female hostages made nearly identical claims of being “raped by their captor’s eyes.” I had never heard of anyone raping someone with their eyes, and now two hostages make this very claim.

Summing it up, as said Madeleine Rees, general secretary of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom: “To show that it [rape] was widespread and systematic, we would need a lot more evidence than has come to light to date and a lot more corroborative evidence than is being put out there.”