Examining the use of sexual torture by Israel and Hamas
The debate over sexual torture by Israel and Hamas has become another propaganda battlefield, but the central moral question remains: what happens when a state accused of war crimes tries to control the story instead of facing accountability?
The hysterical response to well researched and legitimate journalism detailing the systematic sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners as part of an Israeli tactic to use sexual torture as a means to psychologically break Palestinian doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers – anyone with a profession, would be funny if the entire revelation isn’t so sick!
Oh, you’re going to sue a Newspaper for telling the Truth?
Here is a very measured and reasonable response to Netanyahu…
Israel’s report on October 7th sexual abuse is chaired & commissioned by Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who spread ‘Pregnant women stomach cut open by Hamas who took out fetus with umbilical cord & left it to die’ story to international media, who lapped it up.
New report draws on a wholly… pic.twitter.com/Qk5SXmmxFX
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) May 18, 2026
…
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE is one of the best new generation of Australian polemists in the footsteps of Pilger. Her criticism of Israel’s foreign policy is brutal and righteous.
Her take on Israel’s threat is a must read…
Israel is now saying it will sue The New York Times as Zionists continue their days-long freakout over the outlet’s reporting on the systemic rape of Palestinian captives in Israeli prisons.
Israel apologists aren’t shrieking about the New York Times report because they believe Israel was lied about, they’re shrieking because they’d assumed it’s the Times’ job to administer propaganda for Israel. It’s not about “blood libel”, it’s about narrative control.
We know this is true because there’s not actually any new information in Nicholas Kristof’s report; every significant point in the article had already been reported by other less-influential media outlets and human rights groups. We didn’t see this kind of outcry with all the other mountains of reports on the sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners that have been coming out over the years. We only saw it when a more influential news media outlet reported on it.
This shows that their real objection isn’t so much about the actual contents of the article as it is about the information influencing a larger number of people than the earlier reports did. It’s not about the facts, it’s about the numbers. It’s about making sure the largest possible number of westerners think nice thoughts about the state of Israel.
Everyone you see blubbering about journalistic integrity and sloppy reporting today is just admitting that they’re a propagandist. They’re admitting that it is their job to manipulate the way the public thinks about Israel, and that they believe it should be every mainstream news outlet’s job too.
And what’s so funny about this hysterical meltdown is that the New York Times actually has been wildly biased in favor of Israel. Its slanted reporting, unequal word choices and passive-language headlines have been well-documented. All that’s changed is that Israel’s abuses became so obvious and undeniable that its editors could no longer justify spiking a well-sourced report about them.
Israel propagandists are used to the New York Times carrying water for their beloved apartheid state, so they view this as not just a propaganda concern, but as a betrayal as well.
…preach!
Funny how in the wake of this expose of Israel systematically raping Palestinian prisoners and using dogs to do it, suddenly there was a story in CNN claiming Hamas sexually assaulted their hostages…
Israel, Hamas and the politics of sexual torture claims
Hamas militants and their allies raped, assaulted and sexually tortured their victims during and after the 7 October 2023 terror attack on southern Israel “to maximize pain and suffering,” a landmark new report has concluded.
Shared first with CNN, the report presents the most comprehensive body of evidence yet of sexual and gender-based violence against women, men and children, which it describes as “systematic, widespread, and integral to” the assault.
CNN
…couple of things.
1 – EVEN IF THIS IS TRUE, there is a world of difference between what a militia will do to hostages vs what a First World ‘democracy’ should do to prisoners!
2 – I doubt the veracity of the Israeli claims…
…and thirdly, back to Caitlin…
The mass media have been rapidly churning out articles about alleged sexual abuse by Hamas in the wake of the New York Times report, which is some mighty interesting timing to say the least.
Israel announced it’s quintupling its propaganda budget and now we’re seeing the news cycle actively manipulated to advance Israeli information interests, and we’re just expected to clap along and pretend we’re seeing real news stories about real things.
When trauma becomes justification for brutality
…I just think that Israel’s fear from the cultural memory of the Holocaust have twisted them the way abusing a child can twist that child into becoming an abuser.
They have embarked upon a level of malevolent violence that they self justify.
They must be called out on such terrible tactics and must be held accountable.
This has nothing to do with antisemitism, this has everything to do with horror at their disproportionate barbarity.
When your war crimes are so extreme they technically breach genocide thresholds, you have lost any moral high ground.
What Israel are doing, have done and continue to do is the very worst of us as a species made ironic because that’s what the Nazis did to them.
It is a never-ending loop of suffering and misery that we have an obligation as citizens of the world to witness and continue to draw attention to.
“There is no doubt that Israel has enacted a terrible price for October 7. Over 70,000 dead, 20,000 of those children. Famine and disease stalk the Gaza Strip.” Sarah Vine
https://www.dailymail.com/columnists/article-15812433/SARAH-VINE-sadistic-sexual-violence-unleashed-Hamas-evil.html?
Following the publication by the New York Times of the evidence of the torture and rape of Palesinians in Israeli prisons, in an editorial published in the Right-wing Daily Mail, Sarah Vine a columnist for the Daily Mail admits above, that “there is no doubt” that Israel has committed mass murder against Palestinians in response to the October 7 attack.
Sarah Vine is not a genocide denier, quite the contrary Sarah Vine justifies it..
Israel’s genocide committed against civilians especially children are so well documented that Sarah Vine is left only with justifying it..
Nothing, but nothing, no matter how horrific, justifies genocide, not even genocide, justifies genocide.
Genocide is a crime so vile so hideously enormous that it can not be hidden, not forever, not despite all the best efforts of the perpetrators to hide it, eventually, inevitably the genocide will be revealed in all its horror to the disgust of the whole world.
Genocide is a crime that cannot be brushed under the carpet.
When the World Court eventually gets to hear the case brought against israel by South Africa, Israeli lawyers for the defence may try, as Sarah Vine does to justify their country’s actions, by recounting the horrors of October 7, But it will not detract from the facts of the crime that they have committed. The above evidence that Sarah Vine admits to, plus all the forensic detail of mass graves, and the survivors testimony, plus the admissions of the Israeli officials themselves will be enough to convict.
No human organisation, or state, that has been found with the damning evidence of having committed genocide, especially if that evidence has been forensically examined in a court as the evidence against Israel eventually will be, can get away with it.
A warning from history
The Ottoman Empire committed genocide against the Armenian population in Turkey.
The Ottoman Empire is no more.
German Nazi Empire committed genocide against the Jewish people of Europe.
The German Nazi Empire is no more.
The British Empire committed genocide in India.
The British Empire is no more.
Yugoslav Serbs committed genocide against Bosnian Muslims.
Yugoslavia is no more.
Moral collapse leads to the material collapse, Israel’s moral collapse will inevitably be followed by its material collapse.
From Al Jazeera:
“Israel will find itself diminished and no longer the secure regional hegemon if it maintains its current path, analysts and observers from within Israel and its diaspora have warned.
All signs, they say, from the ratcheting levels of political polarisation within the country, the loss of investor confidence at both home and abroad and the fundamentals of demographic change, make the collapse of the current iteration of the Israeli state almost inevitable in the coming decades.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/30/is-israels-current-path-setting-it-on-course-for-collapse
This process may have already started:
Many Israelis have duel passports, and will leave, the demographic will change, and Israel as we know it, will be no more.
Immigrants to Israel known in Hebrew as ‘Olim’, especially those from Western nations like the United States, Canada, the UK, and France, often retain their birth citizenship, 200,000+ Israelis alone, hold dual American citizenship. Many Israelis born in Israel have claimed duel citizenships by descent, (e.g., Poland, Germany, Romania, and other EU countries) to gain freedom of travel within the European Union.
Since the start of the genocide, emigration from Israel (referred to in Hebrew as yerida) has surged to historic highs. Approximately 82,000 Israelis left the country in 2024 alone, leaving Israel with a sharply negative migration balance – more long-term emigrants are leaving, than new immigrants are arriving.