by George Hetling
On March 4, 2024, Pramila Patten, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, released a 23-page report detailing her office’s mission report of the alleged sexual violence conducted by Hamas in Israel. In this recent step in the propaganda war over the question of Palestine, imperialist officials and news outlets are united to spread debunked claims that Palestinian Resistance fighters engaged in rape on a “systematic” and “mass” scale during the October 7 Al-Aqsa Flood.
The UN report is contradictory, saying at one time that there is “clear and convincing” evidence of sexual violence against Israeli hostages, before finally admitting, buried among other conclusions, that “In the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified.” All evidence given is circumstantial, with some discredited entirely.
The UN found no Israeli victims of sexual violence. Meanwhile, Patten’s office found many Palestinian victims of sexual violence, who freely accused Israeli security forces and settlers. According to the UN, the report is “not investigative in nature.” Patten continues to echo the Zionist rhetoric while all but ignoring the clear situation on the ground: that it is the Palestinians experiencing mass sexual violence at the hands of the reactionary Zionist entity.
US politicians and monopoly media sources further distort the situation. They ignore all evidence against the Israeli state. Instead they quote Israeli officials alongside Patten, painting the darkest possible picture of the Palestinian resistance.
The original source of this distortion by US media outlets was the New York Times’ scandal-mongering genocide propaganda article, “Screams Without Words,” which they released on December 28. The article features an interview with the family of the “woman in the black dress”; the only supposed victim who was documented with photographic evidence. The family has since denounced and dismissed the fraudulent claims, including saying that the New York Times reporters misled them as to the nature of their article.
A day after the UN report, the New York Times released a slanderous opinion piece as a follow-up, labeling the claims against the misinformation as “The New Rape Denialism.” The article portrays Israel as a hapless victim without international support, whines that the UN is “never sympathetic to the [Zionist] state” and criticizes the progressive masses of the world for being skeptical of the genocidal Israeli state.
Investigative editorials published by news outlets Yes!, Electronic Intifada, and Counter-Punch have now thoroughly debunked every claim of sexual violence. The recently released Al Jazeera documentary October 7 reveals many of the outlandish claims against the resistance fighters to be fabricated. Indeed, all twelve sources used in the “mass rape” claims have been found to be fabrications. Many have been directly caught changing their story as they retell it in their media tour. Changing such important details as the numbers of both perpetrators and victims. Others have severely contradicted each other.
The Palestinian liberation movement continues to successfully fight against the Zionist regime, and people around the world continue to mobilize in their support. The claims from the Zionist state have lost much of their credibility. The state continues to grow ever more unpopular and the US is slowly losing the propaganda war on the subject of Israel and Zionism.
