Times to investigate complaint over article questioning evidence of systematic Hamas rapes

However, writing on social media on Monday the Israelis appeared to contradict that key contention, saying: “The use of sexual violence as a weapon of war was a significant part of the October 7 attack.”

While the article acknowledged there was some evidence of sexual assault that took place on October 7 it said that there was not enough evidence to say it was systematic or sanctioned by Hamas officials.

The Times said it was “aware of a complaint” about the article and was “investigating”.

Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, who served for 12 years on a UN committee overseeing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and now heads Dinah Project 7/10, which collects evidence to support prosecutions for sexual violence committed on October 7, said: “Much of what we said was omitted, and only selective excerpts were used.”

The piece, written by Catherine Philp and Gabriella Weiniger, took in interviews with Halperin-Kaddari along with Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director at the Association of Rape Crises Centres in Israel (ARCCI) and Dr Sarai Aharoni, Head of the Gender Studies Programme, Ben Gurion University.

In a joint statement after the article was published the women wrote: “Since October 7 we have been working actively to amplify the voices of sexual assault victims, especially in forums where such voices are often ignored. In this context, we agreed to be interviewed about the sexual violence that occurred on October 7.
Saying they were “ shocked and disappointed” by the article, they added: “It is our duty to ensure that the full extent of what happened is acknowledged. The use of sexual violence as a weapon of war was a significant part of the October 7 attack. Denying the evidence of such violence has become a disturbing aspect of the global pro-Palestinian discourse, adversely affecting the wellbeing of sexual violence survivors of the massacre, as well as survivors everywhere.”

Early on the article points to the “only woman” to testify about her own sexual abuse, released hostage, Amit Soussana.

It said that she spoke to foreign media about how she was forced at gunpoint to strip and commit a sex act on her male captor during her six weeks in captivity in Gaza.

However the piece then appears to suggest that Israel sought to publicise instances of rape to make it easier to defend its military response in Gaza and quotes Aharoni saying “that is a horrible decision to have to make”.

The article then goes on to suggest Aharoni thinks “historical memories” of abuse of Jewish women are the reason so many initial reports of October 7 focused on them.

It quotes Aharoni as saying that examples of abuse of Jewish women through the ages “have become a cultural inheritance for the Jewish people, particularly those without a secular education, a fact that would come to play a role in the reporting of what happened on October 7”.

The writers then go on to say that “the idea of the Arab male as an explicit sexual threat to Jewish women developed in tandem with the movement of Israeli politics to the right” and used a quote by Aharoni to support this.

The article also focused on early reports of sexual violence and some instances of misreporting based on accounts shared on social media.

It also used quotes from Sulitzeanu, the executive director of ARCCI, to argue that religious volunteers’ lack of familiarity with the bodies of the dead women were among the reasons for the misreported examples of abuse.

The piece suggested first responders such as Zaka had a “tendency to focus on injuries they believed pointed to sexual violence, such as smashed pelvises and gunshot wounds to sex organs, ignoring other injuries that muddied the picture.”

However the article did not offer any other explanation as to why sex organs of women would have gunshot wounds.

It also failed to mention the widely reported accounts of violence and abuse of women documented by Israeli Defence Forces reservist Shari Mendes who has said that she personally dealt with the mutilated bodies of women on October 8.

In a interview with Sky’s Yalda Hakim, four months ago, Mendes described what she and her team thought “seems like a systematic genital mutilation of women”.

In the interview Mendes, who is not a forensic expert but has dealt with preserving bodies for burial, described seeing women who had been “shot so many times in the head” that it appeared to her to be evidence of a “purposeful obliteration of women's faces.”

She said she saw and dealt with women with very “bloodied underwear” and “women shot in the crotch, the genitals”.

She said her team saw “women shot in the breasts.” She also described some bodies coming in “booby trapped” with explosives.

In March the UN envoy focusing on sexual violence in conflict found evidence that Hamas’s October 7 terror attack on Israel involved rape and sexual violence including against dead women.

A report by the UN representative Pramila Patten detailed two incidents from witnesses involving the rape of women's corpses.

The Times article mentioned the report, but also asserted “Israeli authorities were unable to provide much of the evidence that political leaders had insisted existed.”

The article stated: “In all the Hamas video footage Patten’s team had watched and all the photographs they had seen, there were no depictions of rape.”

The Times said it “hired a leading Israeli dark-web researcher to look for evidence of those images, including footage deleted from public sources. None could be found.”

However, the piece says Patten’s report said there was “clear and convincing” information to show conflict-related sexual violence was carried out by terrorists including acts of rape and gang rape.

Claudia Mendoza, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, said: “The Times chose its words carefully, but it is fuelling the denial narrative and conspiracy theories that try to sanitise October 7 and play down Hamas’ crimes.”