The Israeli government rapidly deployed a multipronged propaganda strategy to win unprecedented support from the U.S. and other Western governments for a sweeping war against the entire population of Gaza. To oppose Israel’s war is antisemitic; to question its assertions about the events of October 7 is akin to Holocaust denial; to protest the mass killing of Palestinian civilians is to do the bidding of Hamas.
From the earliest moments following the October 7 attacks, Israel charged that women had been raped by Hamas fighters, though it was often an allegation made in sequence alongside other alleged atrocities. But in mid-November, those assertions began evolving into a sustained public blitz, accusing Hamas of instituting a plan to “systematically rape women.” Israel government spokesperson Eylon Levy spoke “Hamas rapist machine.”
To date, there has been no credible evidence presented publicly that such a campaign took place, and Hamas has vehemently denied that its fighters committed any acts of rape or sexual assault. The fact that Israel has not produced forensic evidence for individual rapes does not prove that no such deeds took place. Rape investigations are often complex, particularly when the crime occurs amid a chaotic scene of mass violence. Sexual violence is common in warfare, and it often takes years for the full story of such crimes to emerge.
There was no Holocaust survivor killed at Kibbutz Be’eri that day. There were no mass beheadings of babies, no group executions in a nursery, no children hung from clotheslines, and no infants placed in ovens. No pregnant woman had her stomach cut open and the fetus knifed in front of her and her other children. These stories are entirely fictional, a set of audacious lies weaponized to generate the type of collective rage used to justify the unjustifiable.
One of the first things I learned in the military was about dehumanization of targets. It’s really hard to get someone to shoot a person if they aren’t a sociopath. It’s surprisingly easy to get someone to shoot “vermin that are attacking our women and children”. This works on a larger scale too. It’s how genocides happen.
From the earliest moments following the October 7 attacks, Israel charged that women had been raped by Hamas fighters,
To date, there has been no credible evidence presented publicly that such a campaign took place
it’s Joever my Zionist lemmings. You can’t use the “that’s Russian propaganda” defense anymore.
The propaganda is here, too. I wonder if any of the usual agents will be in here later on. Or when their handlers will notice that it’s not effective here at all. Like it’s so ineffective here I’m starting to wonder if they are actually effective anti-Israel propagandists because of how weak their arguments often are.
