Two prominent pro-Israel lobby groups are holding private briefings in New York City to coach elected officials and well-known figures on how to influence public opinion in favor of the Israeli military’s rampage in Gaza, The Grayzone can reveal. These PR sessions, convened by the UJA-Federation and Jewish Community Relations Council, rely on data collected by Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican pollster and pundit.
The Luntz-tested presentations on the war in Gaza urge politicians to avoid trumpeting America’s supposedly shared democratic values with Israel, and focus instead on deploying “The Language of War with Hamas.” According to this framing, they must deploy incendiary language painting Hamas as a “brutal and savage…organization of hate” which has “raped women,” while insisting Israel is engaged in “a war for humanity.”
In one focus group, Luntz asked participants to state which alleged act by Hamas on October 7 “bothers you more.” After being presented with a laundry list of alleged atrocities, a majority declared that they were most upset by the claim that Hamas “raped civilians” – 19 percent than those who expressed outrage that Hamas supposedly “exterminated civilians.”
Data like this apparently influenced the Israeli government to launch an obsessive but still unsuccessful campaign to prove that Hamas carried out sexual assault on a systematic basis on October 7. Initiated at Israel’s United Nations mission in December 2023 with speeches by neoliberal tech oligarch Sheryl Sandberg and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and speaking fees from Israel lobby organizations, Tel Aviv’s propaganda blitz has yet to produce a single self-identified victim of sexual assault by Hamas. A March 5 report by UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence Pramila Patten did not contain one direct testimony of sexual assault on October 7. What’s more, Patten’s team said they found “no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence.”
Hamas does rape people. Kills them too. Forces children to fight for them, labor for them and be human shields for them. Any act of brutality you can imagine they have done it and worse. Why is this such a difficult fact to accept?
Yeah, I’m a bit confused on this too. I don’t support the actions of Israel or the IDF but Hamas aren’t angels either. It seems like both sides of this are conflating Hamas and the Palestinian people.
There is still no evidence of Hamas raping anyone. The UN report is just the NYT article copy pasted.
Israel refused to let the UN do forensic investigations on the bodies. They said that the UN had to believe them at their word else they are anti Semitic.
The report was made by a UN office which just writes down stories to make victims feel validated. It was not Investigative.
That UN employee (Pramilla) also refused to appoint Hamas or anyone else as a rapist. Which is why israel is currently really mad at her and she’s somehow still anti Semitic for not groveling hard enough. This is because there is zero video, photo of forensic evidence of rape happening on Oct7.
But our media made sure to put it in the headlines like israel wants. In reality not a shred of evidence was found for any rape happening.