Congo
Israel and media ‘Hamas rape’ claims collapse under scrutiny
‘Eye-witness’ accounts contradict evidence – and earlier claims of the eye-witnesses – as yet another atrocity propaganda campaign falls apart. Warning: potential triggering or distressing content
The outraged reaction of the family of an alleged ‘Hamas rape’ victim to a newspaper’s con is just one of the ways in which the ‘Hamas rape’ narrative now being pushed hard by the Israeli regime and its apologists has fallen apart hard – like every other piece of atrocity propaganda Israel has tried to use so far to justify its genocide in Gaza.
The New York Times has published an article claiming to have evidence of the weaponisation of rape by Hamas during the 7 October raid, but the centrepiece of its claims was supposed ‘evidence’ that Israeli woman Gal Abdush was raped and murdered by Hamas fighters, quoting extensively from an interview with her family.
But her family has furiously insisted that there is no evidence that Ms Abdush was raped – and slammed the paper for misleading and manipulating them by telling them the interview was for a memorial about her and her husband and not mentioning anything about rape.
Speak Up, which fights violence against women, condemned the NYT investigation as ‘disgraceful’ ‘weaponisation’ of sexual violence for propaganda
The family – who appear to be hardline right-wingers perfectly prepared to propagate the already-discredited Israeli lines about beheadings and dismemberments, and therefore not inclined to discredit the rape report out of support for Palestinians – responded after the article was published. They pointed out, among other things, that there were only a few minutes passed between one message from their sister’s husband that they were at the Gaza border and another saying she had been shot – no time for the rape claimed by Israeli authorities and the NYT:
Gal Abdush’s family’s statement (translation by David Sheen and Electronic Intifada)
In fact, the family’s comment – though they don’t seem to have joined the dots – suggests that Ms Abdush and her husband were killed by Israeli forces determined, under the ‘Hannibal directive‘ of killing potential hostages rather than allowing them to be taken, since ‘at the border’ the Hamas fighters would only have been interested in getting them into captivity – and Hamas had no weapons capable of leaving bodies ‘totally burned’, while Israeli planes and helicopter gunships armed with missiles did and it is now well known in Israel, if ignored by UK and US media, that IDF forces killed Israelis in their determination to eliminate Hamas fighters holding them.
Another element of the atrocity propaganda to collapse are the lurid tales from supposed eye-witnesses who claimed that Hamas fighters – while trying to flee with their captives or fight Israeli troops – stopped to rape and dismember a woman and play catch with her body parts.
The ‘eyewitnesses’ have changed their stories. One was interviewed earlier and neglected to mention the claims of beheadings and games; another – coincidentally an Israeli ‘security consultant’ – had earlier admitted that he saw nothing because he was hiding with his head down the whole time, yet now claims he saw the same as the other witness.
Haaretz, 8 Nov 2023
Not only that, but Israeli lists of victims and their means of death do not claim to have found people at the site in question who had been beheaded or mutilated.
Another ‘eyewitness’ to a different supposed rape, Raz Cohen, happens to have recently been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, training DRC soldiers. While he claims to have seen the rape and to be haunted by the victim’s ‘screams without words’, shortly after the Hamas raid he filmed himself talking about the incident and published it on TikTok – where he seems upbeat and doesn’t mention any of the claims now attributed to him. Journalist Max Blumenthal analysed the changes in Cohen’s testimony:
While much of the NYT “mass Hamas rape” report relies on innuendo, it also purports to contain several credible eyewitness testimonies. One was delivered by a survivor of the Nova electronic music festival named Raz Cohen, who also happens to be an Israeli special forces vet who trains Congolese soldiers. Since his first interview on October 9, Cohen has altered his testimony several times.
Cohen told the NYT he personally witnessed a white van filled with Hamas militants pull up a mile from the Nova music festival, gather over a woman, and gang rape her: “I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.” He said they then butchered the woman with knives.
When Cohen was interviewed on October 9 about the attack on the music festival, however, he did not mention any act of sexual assault committed by Hamas militants. See here: https://twitter.com/i24NEWS_EN/sta… And here: http://tiktok.com/@lior.shapira9…
A day later, Cohen began to introduce vague suggestions of sexual assault into his testimony, but did not indicate that he witnessed any such acts taking place. “The terrorists captured women and hurt them in any way possible, and when they were done with them, they started butchering them in front of their friends,” Cohen told an Israeli publication: http://ashkelnayes.co.il/%D7%97%D7%A8%D…
Cohen was also interviewed by Canada’s CBC on October 10, but was not quoted about witnessing any rape: http://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/20…
The same day, Cohen offered lurid new details to PBS, claiming that “the terrorists” not only slaughtered women after raping them on October 7, but engaged in necrophilia as well: “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed — and after they raped, they — they did that.” http://pbs.org/newshour/show/…
Testimony he provided to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on October 11 differed slightly, and remained vague: “We see from there a lot of people and girls screaming and murdered by knives. And the girls, the terrorists rape them,” he stated abruptly and without apparent emotion. http://tiktok.com/@abcnewsaus/vi…
By this point, no Israeli media had reported that any rapes occurred on October 7. Cohen quickly fell off the media’s radar. He would not be heard from for over two months, when the Israeli government launched an international propaganda campaign accusing Hamas of mass rape in a transparent bid to maintain international support for its genocidal military assault on Gaza.
At this point, when the NY Times’ Jeffrey @gettleman interviewed Cohen, likely reaching him with assistance from the Israeli government, the “IDF” special forces soldier summoned for the first time a vivid account of a shocking gang rape on October 7.
How and why did Cohen’s story transform so dramatically over time, providing explosive new details at a moment of political urgency for the army in which he served? Was it plausible that a group of hardened Hamas commandoes suddenly paused their surprise attack, which was focused on taking as many captives as quickly as possible, stood in a circle and gang raped a woman, one after another, while Israeli forces mobilized to attack them?
Why did Hamas militants use knives to kill their victims, as Cohen alleged, when they carried rifles and grenades? Why did he drop his earlier allegation of necrophilia when speaking to the Times? And why did he mention seeing “a lot of people and girls” being raped to the ABC on October 11, but alter his testimony to refer specifically to a single female victim when interviewed by the Times?
Perhaps most importantly, why did Cohen’s friend, Shoam Gueta, who took shelter with him on October 7, not describe witnessing a gang rape when interviewed by the Times?
In his very first interview, with a US news station only two days after the Hamas raid, Cohen appeared mostly relaxed – and didn’t mention anyone being raped, as this clip aired recently on Grayzone shows:
Other Israeli mouthpieces have tried to bypass the eyewitnesses altogether, claiming it would be wrong to expect eyewitnesses to come forward and that ‘the corpses tell the story’. But they don’t, because the bodies were buried without evidence being taken, using Jewish burial practices to justify the failure to collect evidence – just as the huge number of cars incinerated by weapons Hamas does not possess were scrapped and buried without collecting evidence. Not one piece of actual evidence appears to have been put forward by Israel, yet the atrocity propaganda continues to be repeated by the so-called ‘mainstream’.
Yet again, Israel’s attempts to demonise Palestinian resistance to justify genocide have fallen apart under scrutiny – scrutiny that the so-called ‘mainstream’ press and broadcasters are simply not doing, or even reporting facts that media in Israel have already acknowledged, such as the mass killing of Israelis during the raid by Israeli media.
For full analysis and more video highlighting the collapse of yet another Israeli atrocity propaganda narrative, watch this video by Electronic Intifada and this by Grayzone.
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Government funding pro-Israel ‘charity’ to fight support for Palestinians in schools
‘Solutions not Sides’ literally ‘both-sidesing’ Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing – but has been linked to pro-Israel lobby and receives most funding from UK government and lobby groups
The UK government and pro-Israel lobby groups are funding a UK-registered charity to indoctrinate schoolchildren against recognition of Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
‘Solutions not Sides’ (SNS) has received increasing amounts of cash to carry out literal ‘bothsidesing’ of the grossly asymmetrical situation in Palestine, treating Israel’s occupation, apartheid, oppression and now mass-murder of Palestinians as equivalent to Palestinian resistance.
The charity’s website claims to run a ‘non-partisan programme’ to ‘prepare students to make a positive, solutions-focused contribution to debates on Israel-Palestine’. However, its ‘Mission & Values’ page states that it opposes ‘advocacy’ and ‘partisan solidarity'(!) a value that rules out support for the Boycott Divestment and sanctions campaign, rejects ‘blame culture’ and believes that:
both sides bear responsibility for bringing about a resolution to the conflict.
Israel is currently engaged in mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians and is making plans for the deportation of Gazan Palestinians to Egypt, the Congo and other African destinations. It faces allegations brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa of what experts consider to be a ‘textbook case’ of genocide. The victims of war crimes clearly do not ‘bear responsibility’ for ending the crimes – and minimising Israel’s guilt for its illegal actions and Palestinian suffering while treating Palestinians’ acts of resistance as equivalent is inherently partisan. In this context, the group’s claim to be fighting Islamophobia as well as antisemitism looks like mere window dressing.
According to Palestine is still the issue and 5Pillars, SNS has its origins in – and receives around thirty percent of its funding from – ‘One Voice’, a billionaire-funded pro-Israel lobby group. SNS has been backed by pro-Israel groups, as well as figures well-known from their eager participation in smears of the left.
An attempt by Palestine Declassified to visit the SNS office to obtain comment on analysis of SNS’s activities found that no one was based at the charity’s registered address. It did not respond to the programme’s requests for comment.
Campaigners are asking teachers and parents to complain to schools urgently if this group is brought in.
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Israel planning to transfer Palestinians to Congo
Ethnic cleansing plans outed further but still ignored by western ‘mainstream’ media
Image: ActionAid
Israel is negotiating with Congo – it is unclear from reports which of the two neighbouring Congos – and other African nations to transfer the Palestinian people, according to reports in the Times of Israel and its sister site Zman Israel.
Both the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) regularly see serious human rights violations, including massacres. A 2022 US Department of State report on human rights in the Republic, which is commonly known as Congo Brazzaville after its capital city to distinguish it from its neighbour – states that:
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners or detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference
and more.
In the DRC, human rights groups have noted massacres and other human rights violations. Amnesty International said in 2022 that the DRC:
continued to experience serious human rights violations, including mass killings in the context of armed conflict and inter-communal violence, a crackdown on dissent and ill-treatment of detainees. People from regions affected by armed conflict, including eastern DRC, were particularly affected amid mass displacement and a deepening humanitarian crisis. The authorities continued to show a lack of political will to hold the perpetrators of human rights violations to account. The right to education was violated.
The Times quoted a ‘senior’ security cabinet source and comments by Israeli minister Gila Gamliel:
Israeli officials have held clandestine talks with the African nation of Congo and several others for the potential acceptance of Gaza emigrants.
“Congo will be willing to take in migrants, and we’re in talks with others,” a senior source in the security cabinet tells [journalist] Shalom Yerushalmi.
Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.”
The UK government has disgraced itself by continued attempts to transfer desperate refugees to Rwanda, attempts continually blocked by the courts – but the Israeli regime was the first to do it, sending around 4,000 Black refugees fleeing war in Eritrea and Sudan to Rwanda between 2013 and 2018 before discontinuing what it called ‘voluntary’ departure – similar to the ‘voluntary emigration’ euphemism it uses for its ethnic cleansing plan, alongside ‘humanitarian migration’.
Israel has an appalling record toward Black people, even Black Jews – and last year threatened to deport them, too. The SAGE Race & Class Journal notes that:
Ethiopian Jews who have been brought into Israel in several mass transfer operations, have found themselves relegated to an underclass. They are not only racially discriminated against in housing, employment, education, the army and even in the practice of their religion, but have also been unwittingly used to bolster illegal settlements.
Now, as well as the already-outed plan to force huge numbers of Palestinians out of Gaza into the Egyptian desert, Israel is actively working on plans to force more out of the Middle East altogether and into Africa. The Israeli regime’s war crimes continue to pile up.
Despite the similarities with the UK’s racist government, at the time of writing the UK’s so-called ‘mainstream’ media have not reported Israel’s plan – as has been the case with much of Israel’s racism and criminality.
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