Farrukh Abadi
Last week (01/08), Israeli news outlet Haaretz reported that Israel blocked a UN probe into alleged sexual violence inflicted by Hamas militants during October 7 and toward prisoners of war. The rejection comes after UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, requested to also investigate allegations against Israeli soldiers committing sexual abuse against Palestinians.
This comes as a former lead prosecutor in Israel’s Southern District Prosecutor’s Office revealed earlier this month that no sexual assault or rape allegations have been filed by Israelis in connection to October 7. As Lebanese news outlet Al-Mayadeen reports, “The Israeli regime is concerned that the UN probe would not only prove the claims as false but would also make way for proving the allegations of sexual violence perpetrated against Palestinians in Israeli detention facilities.”
If Israel does not go through with the request, Patten warned that Israel could be added to the UN’s blacklist for entities that commit sexual violence in conflicts. Similar to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for top Israeli officials indicted on war crimes, such action mainly serves as a propaganda victory by providing further international legitimacy around what Palestinians have already proven rather than taking any meaningful action to curb it.
A previous UN investigation led by Patten last year claimed “clear and convincing” evidence of sexual violence by Palestinians against Israeli prisoners of war, despite later admitting in the same report that “In the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified.” While the UN found no Israeli victims of sexual violence, Patten’s office found many Palestinians who openly accused Israeli security forces and settlers of sexual violence.
The UN report also disproved many claims politicians and monopoly media outlets in the US, Israel, and a number of other countries repeated since Operation al-Aqsa Flood in an attempt to delegitimize the Palestinian counteroffensive.
The New York Times played a pivotal role in propagating these false claims with its genocide-apologia article, “Screams Without Words,” released in December 2023, which claimed that “terrorists” committed a “pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women” on October 7. The article has since been widely criticized for its credibility, including in a letter signed by over 50 tenured journalism professors at top universities in the US requesting “a thorough and full independent review of the reporting, editing and publishing processes for this story”. Relatives of those the NYT reported on in the story have since denounced the article, suggesting family members were pressured and spoke under false pretenses. The Intercept reported that the article did not make it to NYT’s own podcast after failing its fact-checking process.
Nearly two decades earlier, NYT was also criticized for its articles leading up to the US invasion of Iraq for heavily relying on questionable sources to justify the invasion that would leave over one million Iraqis dead. A year into the invasion, having accomplished their task of drumming up public support for the genocidal war, NYT editorsreleased a note acknowledging the shaky foundation of a number of their articles.
Photo: Ofer prison, West Bank. Photo: Christopher Michel / Wikimedia Commons
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