Why is the same western media obsessively reheating five-month-old allegations against Hamas so reluctant to focus on Israel’s current, horrifying atrocities?
March 15, 2024
Source: Middle East Eye
Palestinian men rounded up and stripped by Israeli forces in Gaza before being taken to an undisclosed location (Screengrab/X)
Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of their children. Doctors beaten. Babies murdered. Sexual assault weaponised.
No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the five months since 7 October – quite separate from the carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a famine induced by Israel’s obstruction of aid.
Last week, an investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz disclosed that some 27 Palestinians seized off Gaza’s streets over the past five months are known to have died during interrogations inside Israel.
Some were denied medical treatment. But most are likely to have been tortured to death.
Three months ago, a Haaretz editorial warned that Israeli jails “must not become execution facilities for Palestinians”.
Israeli TV channels have been excitedly taking viewers on tours of detention centres, showing the appalling conditions Palestinians are kept in, as well as the psychological and physical abuse they are subjected to.
An Israeli judge recently called the makeshift cages in which Palestinians are held “unsuitable for humans”.
Remember, a large proportion of the 4,000 or so Palestinians taken hostage by Israel since 7 October – probably the vast majority – are civilians, like the men and boys paraded through Gaza’s streets or held in a stadium stripped of clothing before being dragged off to a dark cell in Israel.
Source: Middle East Eye
Palestinian men rounded up and stripped by Israeli forces in Gaza before being taken to an undisclosed location (Screengrab/X)
Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of their children. Doctors beaten. Babies murdered. Sexual assault weaponised.
No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the five months since 7 October – quite separate from the carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a famine induced by Israel’s obstruction of aid.
Last week, an investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz disclosed that some 27 Palestinians seized off Gaza’s streets over the past five months are known to have died during interrogations inside Israel.
Some were denied medical treatment. But most are likely to have been tortured to death.
Three months ago, a Haaretz editorial warned that Israeli jails “must not become execution facilities for Palestinians”.
Israeli TV channels have been excitedly taking viewers on tours of detention centres, showing the appalling conditions Palestinians are kept in, as well as the psychological and physical abuse they are subjected to.
An Israeli judge recently called the makeshift cages in which Palestinians are held “unsuitable for humans”.
Remember, a large proportion of the 4,000 or so Palestinians taken hostage by Israel since 7 October – probably the vast majority – are civilians, like the men and boys paraded through Gaza’s streets or held in a stadium stripped of clothing before being dragged off to a dark cell in Israel.
Women abused
According to Israeli media, many dozens of Palestinian women – including pregnant women – have been seized too, but in their case off camera.
Presumably, Israel has wished to avoid undermining its careful messaging that only Hamas weaponises violence against women.
But according to United Nations legal experts, Palestinian women are suffering the most degrading forms of abuse at the hands of the Israeli military.
The experts observed that Palestinian women and girls in detention were reportedly being subjected to “multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers.
“At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence.”
Soldiers are also believed to have taken photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances and then uploaded them online.
Palestinian women and girls in Gaza are also reported by their families to have gone missing after contact with the Israeli army.
“There are disturbing reports of at least one female infant forcibly transferred by the Israeli army into Israel, and of children being separated from their parents, whose whereabouts remain unknown,” they said.
Beatings, waterboarding
A separate report by the UN last week revealed that 21 of its staff – humanitarian aid workers – had been snatched by Israel. They were then tortured to extract confessions, most likely false, of involvement in Hamas’ 7 October attack. Their torture included beatings, waterboarding and threats to family members.
Those confessions were cited by western allies as the grounds – in fact, the only known grounds – for cutting off funding to the UN relief agency Unrwa, the last lifeline for Gaza’s starving population. It was these claims, extracted through torture, that helped Israel rationalise its imposing of a famine on Gaza.
Of the 1,000 detainees subsequently released, 29 were children, one as young as six, and 80 women. Some were reported to have cancer and chronic illnesses such as Alzheimer’s.
According to the UN investigation, Palestinians reported severe punishment beatings, being caged with attack dogs, and suffering sexual assault. Physical evidence – such as broken ribs, dislocated shoulders, bite marks, and burns – was still visible many weeks later.
Executions, human shields
These horrors, of course, are not just taking place in cells and interrogation rooms inside Israel. Gaza is being subjected to astonishing levels of brutality and sadism from Israeli troops – quite aside from the carpet bombing and enforced starvation of civilians.
Israeli snipers have fired into Gaza’s hospitals, killing medical staff and patients there.
The Israeli military has used Palestinians as human shields, including one man sent into a hospital, his hands bound, to announce an Israeli order to evacuate the premises. Israeli forces executed him on his return.
Those trying to follow such evacuation orders, waving white flags, have been shot at.
Medical facilities have been repeatedly invaded by the Israeli military in stark violation of international law. Those who could not be evacuated, such as premature babies, have been left to die unattended, even while Israeli soldiers were occupying the building.
This week, the BBC interviewed medical staff who reported being tortured, savagely beaten and having attack dogs set on them inside the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis after Israeli soldiers stormed it.
One, Dr Ahmed Abu Sabha, had his hands broken. He told the BBC: “They put me on a chair and it was like a gallows. I heard sounds of ropes, so I thought I was going to be executed.”
At another stage, he and other detainees were beaten in the back of a truck, while only in their underwear. They were taken to a gravel pit, where they were made to kneel blindfolded. They believed they were about to be executed.
During his eight days as hostage, Sabha was never questioned.
Dozens more medics are believed missing, presumed to still be in Israeli detention.
Photographs published by the BBC also show patients in the grounds of Nasser hospital in beds with their hands bound tightly above their heads.
Those who died were left to decompose by Israeli soldiers. A doctor there, Dr Hatim Rabaa, told the BBC: “Patients were screaming, ‘Please remove them [the corpses] from here’. I was telling them, ‘It isn’t in my hands’.”
Other examples of murderous cruelty are documented daily. Unarmed Palestinians, including those waving white flags, have been shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Palestinian parents have been executed in cold blood in front of their children. There have been repeated episodes of Israeli forces gunning down en masse desperate Palestinians trying to reach aid, as happened yet again this week. And even Israeli hostages trying to escape their captors have been killed by the very Israeli soldiers they were trying to surrender to.
These are just some of the cases of Israeli sadism and barbarity that have surfaced briefly in western media coverage, soon to be forgotten.
Wiping Gaza off the map
The stomach-turning double standards are impossible to ignore.
The western establishment media has been chock full of the most lurid allegations of savagery directed against Hamas, sometimes with little or no supporting evidence. Claims that Hamas beheaded babies or put them in ovens – emblazoned on front pages – were later found to be nonsense.
Accusations against Hamas have been endlessly reheated to paint a picture of a supremely dangerous and bestial militant group, in turn rationalising the carpet bombing and starvation of Gaza’s population to “eradicate” it as a terrorist organisation.
But equally barbarous atrocities committed by Israel – not in the heat of battle, but in cold blood – are treated as unfortunate, isolated incidents that cannot be connected, that paint no picture, that reveal nothing of import about the military that carried them out.
If Hamas’ crimes were so savage and sadistic they still need to be reported months after they took place, why does the establishment media never feel the need to express equal horror and indignation at the acts of cruelty and sadism being inflicted by Israel on Gaza – not five months ago, but right now?
This is part of a pattern of behaviour by the western media that leads to only one possible deduction: Israel’s five-month-long attack on Gaza is not being reported. Rather, it is being selectively narrated – and for the most obscene of purposes.
Through consistent and glaring failures in their coverage, establishment media – including supposedly liberal outlets, from the BBC and CNN to the Guardian and New York Times – have smoothed the way for Israel to carry out mass slaughter in Gaza, what the World Court has assessed as plausibly a genocide.
The role of the media has not been to keep us, their audiences, informed about one of the greatest crimes in living memory. It has been to buy time for US President Joe Biden to keep arming his most useful of client states in the oil-rich Middle East, and to do so without damaging his prospects for re-election in November’s US presidential vote.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin was a madman and a barbarous war criminal for invading Ukraine, as every western media outlet agrees, what does that make Israeli officials, when every one of them supports far worse atrocities in Gaza, directed overwhelmingly at civilians?
And more to the point, what does that make Biden and the US political class for materially backing Israel to the hilt: sending bombs, vetoing demands for a ceasefire at the United Nations, and freezing desperately needed aid?
Worrying about the optics, the president expresses his discomfort, but he carries on helping Israel regardless.
While western politicians and commentators worry about some imaginary existential threat those brief events of five months ago pose to the nuclear-armed state of Israel, Israel is quite literally wiping Gaza off the map day by day, quite undisturbed.
Hamas ‘started it’
There have been two, largely implicit defences for this glaring imbalance in western priorities. Neither stands up to even the most cursory scrutiny.
One is the argument that Hamas “started it” – insinuated in the endless claim that, in destroying Gaza, Israel has been “responding” or “retaliating” to the violence of 7 October.
This is a justification for killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and starving two million more that should never have been let out of the playground. But worse, it is patent nonsense. Hamas did not initiate anything on 7 October, except for handing Israel a pretext to wreck Gaza.
The enclave has been under a crushing siege for 17 years, in which its land, sea and air were patrolled constantly by Israel. Its population was denied the essentials of life. They had no freedom of movement apart from inside their cage.
Long before the current Israeli-induced famine, Israel’s trade restrictions had ensured high levels of malnutrition among Gaza’s children. Most exhibited too the scars of deep psychological trauma from constant and massive attacks by Israel on Gaza.
Biden crows about building a “temporary pier” – weeks or months down the road – to bring aid into Gaza that is desperately needed now. But there is a reason the enclave lacks a seaport and airport. Israel bombed the only airport back in 2001, long before Hamas took charge of Gaza. It has been attacking and killing fishermen trawling just off Gaza’s coast for years.
Israel has refused to allow Gaza to connect to the world – and break free of Israeli control – ever since.
Hamas started nothing on 7 October. It was simply a new, and particularly gruesome phase in what has been decades of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s belligerent occupation of Gaza.
Bogus narrative
The other implicit defence of western establishments constantly stressing Hamas’ barbarism over Israel’s is that the nature of those atrocities is said to be categorically different – in the apples and pears sense.
Hamas supposedly demonstrated a degree of sadism in its killing spree on 7 October inside Israel that marks it out from Israel’s far larger killing spree in Gaza.
That has been the basis for every media interview that requires guests to “condemn” Hamas before they are allowed to express concern about the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. No one is asked to condemn Israel.
It is the basis too for permitting Israeli spokespeople to claim unchallenged that Israel targets only Hamas, not civilians, even while some three-quarters of Gaza’s dead are women and children.
On the BBC’s evening news at the weekend, presenter Clive Myrie made precisely this preposterous assertion as he intoned that since 7 October, “Israel launched a relentless bombing campaign targeting members of Hamas.”
But the latest revelations of the 27 reported deaths in Israeli torture centres and the testimonies of beaten medics from Nasser Hospital confirm how bogus this entire narrative framing by the western media is – one intended to mislead and misinform audiences.
Israel claims it is targeting Hamas, but its actions tell an entirely different story. Famine will kill off the sick and vulnerable long before it does Hamas fighters.
The truth is, Israel is not primarily eradicating Hamas. It is eradicating Gaza. Its crimes are at least as cruel and savage as anything Hamas did on 7 October – and its atrocities have been carried out on a far larger scale and for far longer.
Western establishments and their media have been waging a giant campaign of misdirection for the past five months, as they have against Palestinians over previous years and decades. Western publics have been encouraged to look in the wrong direction.
Until that changes, the men, women and children of Gaza will continue to pay the heaviest of prices at the hands of a vengeful, sadistic Israeli military.
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Jonathan Cook
British writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His books are Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto, 2006); Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto, 2008); and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed, 2008).
Jonathan Cook
British writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His books are Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto, 2006); Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto, 2008); and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed, 2008).
Pramila Patten’s Rape Fantasies
By Norman Finkelstein
March 14, 2024
Source: Norman Finkelstein Substack
Source: sanjitbakshi - united nations flag. Flickr.
A Critical Analysis of the UN Report on Sexual Violence during the 7 October Attack
I. The Mission
1. The United Nations has published numerous reports on the Israel-Palestine conflict. In general, stringent standards of evidence and law have been applied. (See for example the voluminous reports on, respectively, Israel’s 2008-9 assault on Gaza, and Israel’s 2018 repression of the Great March of Return in Gaza.) But, succumbing to U.S.-Israeli pressure, the UN has on occasion also whitewashed Israel. (See for example the report commissioned by the Secretary-General regarding Israel’s 2010 assault on a humanitarian convoy headed for Gaza, and the report on Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza.)
2. A new report, commissioned by the Secretary-General, has just been released (“Mission Report: Official visit of the Office of the SRSG-SVC to Israel and the Occupied West Bank, 29 January-14 February 2024”). The primary author of the report is Pramila Patten, the “UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict.” The subject-matter of this report is sexual violence committed by Gaza-based Palestinians on 7 October 2023. Especially in light of the incendiary subject-matter, it is a skimpy document running to a mere 17 pages. The UN report on violence during the 2018 Great March of Return clocked in at a hefty 250 pages.
3. The Patten mission’s mandate perplexes. Its initial press release (24 January 2024) states that its purpose was to “gather, analyze and verify relevant information regarding allegations of” sexual violence. But it also emphatically states that, although it included a small team of technical experts, the “mission is neither intended nor mandated to be investigative in nature.” If, on the one hand, the mission was mandated to “gather, analyze and verify” evidence of sexual violence, and refers in the report to its “findings” and to having “verified” alleged instances of sexual violence; yet, on the other hand, the mission emphatically declares that it wasn’t “investigative in nature”—then what exactly was it? The press release further states that the mission “aims to give voice to survivors, witnesses, recently released hostages” of sexual violence. But if it wasn’t an investigative body, it’s cause for wonder how it would even know whose “voice” to give voice to. Isn’t this putting the cart before the horse?
4. The report renders discrete judgments that even a bona fide investigative body normally wouldn’t be competent to make. It teases out legal delineations—“reasonable grounds to believe” versus “clear and convincing information” (also: “a finding of fact”)—rarely found in reports issued by the UN (or human rights groups). The standard practice is to identify possible (“reasonable grounds to believe”) breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law and then call for a formal investigation. But the Patten mission, although confessedly something less than an investigative body, makes judgments that go well beyond those of a typical investigative body to the point of near-certainty (“a finding of fact”) befitting the final verdict in a court of law. What’s yet more odd, the Patten mission renders these fine determinations even as it acknowledges severe constraints imposed by limited evidence and time.
5. If it wasn’t a bona fide investigative body; if sufficient evidence was hard to come by; if it was pressed for time to complete its mission—if all this is true, then it’s unclear why the Patten mission reached any conclusions, be they tentative or certain. Why this rush to judgment? And if this non-investigative body also wasn’t in a position to “give voice” to the victims of sexual violence before said victimhood was at least tentatively established by an official investigative body, it’s hard to make out what was the point of this mission. It’s not as if Israel hasn’t already made on its own, and via overwhelmingly sympathetic media abroad, its very best evidentiary case a thousand times over.
6. In this regard it can’t but be wondered why Israel extended the “invitation” to Pramila Patten in the first place and why the Patten mission “benefited from the full cooperation of the Government of Israel.” This was unprecedented, a first. In the past as well as in the instant case, Israel has consistently and categorically refused to cooperate with formal UN investigations. If the evidence Israel has assembled is so robust—the Patten mission concluded that hostages were almost certainly raped—what did it have to fear from an official UN investigation carried out by competent and experienced personnel? The stock reply is: the UN is biased against Israel. But the Patten mission was itself mandated by the UN. If Israel invited Patten’s UN mission, but has firmly barred entry to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Commission of Inquiry, surely there must be a reason. Alas, Patten never explores—let alone answers—this tantalizing question. II. The Evidence
7. The Patten mission visited Israel for a little over two weeks. It met with various national ministries, intelligence agencies, and senior government officials; visited “with the support of the Israeli authorities” the sites of the attacks on 7 October; viewed photographic and video evidence overwhelmingly curated by the Israeli government or available in open sources; interviewed survivors of 7 October, released hostages, and first-responders. In other words, on one side it was an Israeli full-court press, and on the opposite side, it was the sort of tour “Friends of the Soviet Union” used to go on in Stalin’s day and “Friends of the People’s Republic of China” in Mao’s day. If any dissent, even a peep, from the official “narrative” was uttered by the mission’s Israeli interlocutors, if the mission stumbled on some irreconcilable finding that incensed its Israeli interlocutors—the report makes no mention of it. Put otherwise, if the mission didn’t question let alone undermine the current Israeli “narrative,” then it’s small wonder that they got on swimmingly.
8. The report states that “the national authorities faced numerous challenges in the collection of evidence and pursuit of their investigations.” Consequently, Israel is said to have possessed and could only make available “very limited forensic” evidence, while “a high number of bodies with destructive burn damage … made the identification of potential crimes of sexual violence impossible.” In addition, the mission met with only “a small number of survivors and/or witnesses … who provided information on instances of sexual violence.” The “very limited” to “small” to “impossible” evidence did not, however, deter the non-investigative mission from drawing fine legal discriminations, not to mention a near-definitive “finding of fact.”
9. The report further states that “While the mission team was able to meet with some released hostages as well as with some survivors and witnesses of the attacks, it did not meet with any survivor-victim of sexual violence from 7 October despite concerted efforts encouraging them to come forward (emphasis added). Doesn’t it give pause that, more than three months after the attack, none of the alleged victims of—according to the Israeli government and the New York Times—rampant, systematic sexual violence on 7 October stepped forward to testify before the mission? Not one. The report endeavors to paper over this glaring lacuna by pointing up “the lack of trust by survivors” in the United Nations. But in the instant case, it was the Israeli government itself that orchestrated this UN mission’s visit. It’s hard to fathom that in a country celebrated for its tribal closing of ranks in the face of external danger, and—not incidentally—in a culture known for its libertine sexual frankness, not a single victim of not just rape but sexual violence of any type was willing, and couldn’t be coaxed, to testify before a Government-blessed mission at such an existential moment in the nation’s history. III. The Findings
10. The Patten mission that was not “investigative in nature” nonetheless concludes that “there are reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual violence, “including rape and gang rape,” occurred. It bases its findings on these pieces of evidence:
· “[F]ully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down were recovered—mostly women—with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head…. Although circumstantial, such a pattern of undressing and restraining of victims may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence.” It may be indicative; it also may not be. The mission itself concedes—albeit buried at the tail end of the report—that “in the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified,” and “no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence was found in open sources,” and “no discernible pattern of genital mutilation could be established.” It takes time for the magnitude of this admission to sink in. Consider further this detail: “The mission team … reviewed over 5,000 photos, around 50 hours and several audio files of footage of the attacks, provided partly by various state agencies and through an independent online review of various open sources, to identify potential instances and indications of conflict-related sexual violence. The content encompassed the actual attacks and their immediate aftermath, captured through militants’ bodycams and dashcams, individual cellphones, CCTV, and traffic surveillance cameras.” Fully 5,000 photos and 50 hours of footage, from every conceivable angle and by every conceivable electronic device—yet the mission was unable to isolate a single direct image of sexual violence, even as no less than gang rapes were allegedly occurring in open space. If the report was properly packaged and publicized, the title would read: “October 7: No Direct Material Evidence of Rape.”
· “Based on the examination of available information, including credible statements by eyewitnesses, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of rape, including gang rape, occurred in and around the Nova [music] festival site. Credible information was obtained regarding multiple incidents whereby victims were subjected to rape and then killed.” (The report also makes fleeting mention without passing judgment on alleged acts of necrophilia.) The report does not specify how many of these credible eyewitnesses it interviewed. And crucially, it does not quantify even roughly how many instances of sexual violence are alleged to have occurred: “multiple” can denote “more than once” or “manifold” (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Fifth Edition). Surely it makes a difference whether the Patten mission is attesting to 2, 20, 200, or 2,000 instances of “rape and/or gang rape.” Why then the sloppy—indeed, professionally irresponsible—vagueness?
· “There are reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred on and around Road 232. Credible information based on corroborating witness accounts describes an incident involving the rape of two women.”
· “There are reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred in kibbutz Re’im, including rape. This included the rape of a woman outside of a bomb shelter at the entrance of kibbutz Re’im, which was corroborated by witness testimonies and digital material.”
In sum, the non-investigative investigative Patten mission, basing itself on an unspecified number of “credible” witnesses, found “reasonable grounds” to conclude or “verified” that “multiple”—which, for all one knows, might mean two—instances of rape occurred at the music festival and another three instances of rape occurred on a road and in a kibbutz. Two plus three equals five. Appalling, no doubt, but also a far cry from allegations by Israel and its media stenographers that Hamas carried out “systematic” and “widespread” rape as a “weapon” of war.
11. The report goes on to state that “[a]t least two of the allegations of sexual violence [at kibbutz Be’eri] previously reported were determined by the mission team to be unfounded, due to either new superseding information or inconsistency in the information gathered.” It further notes alleged instances of sexual violence at other locales “which could not be verified.” The report does not state whether Israel publicly withdrew the allegations of sexual violence that it itself now privately concedes to have been false. Surely that piece of information would be of crucial importance in assessing other allegations propagated by Israel that “could not be verified.” In fact, the Israeli government has not publicly retracted all its “unfounded” allegations. It is also cause for wonder why the mission benignly characterizes the false claims of sexual violence as innocent mistakes by Israel and doesn’t entertain the possibility of calculated disinformation that was subsequently exposed. Was the “beheaded babies” horror tale also an accounting error?
12. The report states that, “[b]ased on the first-hand accounts of released hostages, the mission team received clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment occurred against some women and children during their time in captivity and has reasonable grounds to believe that this violence may be ongoing.” Of all the findings of this non-investigative investigative body, this is surely the most explosive. The stakes couldn’t be higher: it provides a plausible pretext for Israel to urgently proceed on its offensive even as Gazan children starve—Israeli women and children held in captivity are still being raped and sexually tortured! Yet, the report dispatches this charge unequivocally validated by the mission in all of one sentence. Whereas “clear and convincing information” crosses the highest threshold, the mission doesn’t disclose the evidentiary basis for its conclusive finding. The report states that it is “[b]ased on the first-hand accounts of released hostages,” but this wording obscures whether or not the mission actually met with them, and it is left to the imagination why these “first-hand accounts” standing on their own would, or could, be dispositive. If hostage rape victims held in captivity for months did in fact meet with the mission, then it baffles why not a single one of the 7 October rape victims who weren’t held hostage stepped forward. The report ascertains that “some” of the hostages were raped; but what prevented the mission from specifying exactly how many? It purports “reasonable grounds to believe” that the rape and sexual torture are ongoing; but how can it possibly know this? If Israel possessed any evidence that the hostages still in captivity were being raped, surely it would have broadcast it far and wide. The non-investigative Patten mission would appear to be not only investigative but, to boot, clairvoyant. It gets curiouser and curiouser. Hamas has indignantly denied the rape charge, while this charge has played a salient role in demonizing Hamas. If while in captivity the released hostages had been personally raped or could bear personal witness to Hamas’s sexual savagery, then why didn’t Hamas simply kill them instead of setting them free: who would know? The mission states that it adhered to a “survivor/victim-centered” approach. It would appear that this approach required total suspension of the critical faculty.
13. The Patten mission states that it was “unable to establish the prevalence” of sexual violence “during and after the 7 October attacks,” and that a “comprehensive assessment … would require a fully-fledged investigation by competent bodies with adequate time and capacity.” But truth be told: if it wasn’t a “competent” investigative body, then it was “unable to establish” anything. Further, its vague quantification, as well as its repeated references to “circumstantial” evidence that “may be indicative” and to allegations that “couldn’t be verified,” certainly gave credence to the official Israeli “narrative” that the sexual violence was widespread.IV. Final Observations
14. The report concedes that “the information gathered by the mission team was in a large part sourced from Israeli national institutions,” while the report’s findings carry bare minimum weight as the “mission is neither intended nor mandated to be investigative in nature.” The only discernible purposes of Patten’s tawdry mission reduce to, first, acting as yet another purveyor, vehicle, conduit, and conveyance of the “evidence” Israel has been propagating since 7 October, and, second, lending the UN’s authoritative imprimatur to this “evidence.” The analysis presented here began with the puzzle, What exactly is the Patten mission? That question can now be tentatively answered. It is neither an investigative nor a quasi- investigative body. On the contrary, it is a stage production directed by the UN bureaucracy to appease Israel and its powerful backer in Washington. How and why Ms. Patten came to play the starring role in this theatrical extravaganza are of secondary importance.
15. The Patten mission “benefitted from the full cooperation of the Government of Israel.” Yet, it couldn’t locate a single victim of sexual violence or a single piece of direct evidence, be it forensic or digital, of sexual violence on 7 October. It therefore beggars belief that rampant sexual violence occurred on that day. The allegation that Hamas systematically utilized rape as a weapon of war can be safely deposited in the same dumpster as the debunked allegation that Hamas built a mammoth command-and-control center beneath al-Shifa hospital.
16. The report describes “three cumulative waves of attacks” from Gaza on 7 October: first, “Hamas commandos”; then, sundry “paramilitary organizations … that joined the ongoing operation”; and finally, unaffiliated, random “armed and unarmed individuals.” The report further states that “it did not gather information and/or draw conclusions on attribution of alleged violations to specific armed groups.” The available evidence is entirely consistent with the postulate that, if rapes did occur on 7 October—and most likely they did—these were isolated incidents perpetrated in the main by Gaza riff-raff and hooligans who entered Israel in the third wave. It is this writer’s considered opinion—admittedly speculative in nature but nonetheless grounded in the known details of the 7 October attack, its modus operandi, and the predispositions of its perpetrators—that this is the most plausible scenario.
[The quoted passages in this article are culled from both the Executive Summary and the body of the Patten mission report.]
Norman Finkelstein received his PhD from the Princeton University Politics Department in 1987. He is the author of many books that have been translated into 60 foreign editions, including THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering, GAZA: An inquest into its martyrdom, and most recently, I ACCUSE! Herewith a proof beyond reasonable doubt that ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda whitewashed Israel. He is currently writing a book tentatively titled, I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It: Politically Incorrect Thoughts on Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom In the year 2020, Norman Finkelstein was named the fifth most influential political scientist in the world.
By Norman Finkelstein
March 14, 2024
Source: Norman Finkelstein Substack
Source: sanjitbakshi - united nations flag. Flickr.
A Critical Analysis of the UN Report on Sexual Violence during the 7 October Attack
I. The Mission
1. The United Nations has published numerous reports on the Israel-Palestine conflict. In general, stringent standards of evidence and law have been applied. (See for example the voluminous reports on, respectively, Israel’s 2008-9 assault on Gaza, and Israel’s 2018 repression of the Great March of Return in Gaza.) But, succumbing to U.S.-Israeli pressure, the UN has on occasion also whitewashed Israel. (See for example the report commissioned by the Secretary-General regarding Israel’s 2010 assault on a humanitarian convoy headed for Gaza, and the report on Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza.)
2. A new report, commissioned by the Secretary-General, has just been released (“Mission Report: Official visit of the Office of the SRSG-SVC to Israel and the Occupied West Bank, 29 January-14 February 2024”). The primary author of the report is Pramila Patten, the “UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict.” The subject-matter of this report is sexual violence committed by Gaza-based Palestinians on 7 October 2023. Especially in light of the incendiary subject-matter, it is a skimpy document running to a mere 17 pages. The UN report on violence during the 2018 Great March of Return clocked in at a hefty 250 pages.
3. The Patten mission’s mandate perplexes. Its initial press release (24 January 2024) states that its purpose was to “gather, analyze and verify relevant information regarding allegations of” sexual violence. But it also emphatically states that, although it included a small team of technical experts, the “mission is neither intended nor mandated to be investigative in nature.” If, on the one hand, the mission was mandated to “gather, analyze and verify” evidence of sexual violence, and refers in the report to its “findings” and to having “verified” alleged instances of sexual violence; yet, on the other hand, the mission emphatically declares that it wasn’t “investigative in nature”—then what exactly was it? The press release further states that the mission “aims to give voice to survivors, witnesses, recently released hostages” of sexual violence. But if it wasn’t an investigative body, it’s cause for wonder how it would even know whose “voice” to give voice to. Isn’t this putting the cart before the horse?
4. The report renders discrete judgments that even a bona fide investigative body normally wouldn’t be competent to make. It teases out legal delineations—“reasonable grounds to believe” versus “clear and convincing information” (also: “a finding of fact”)—rarely found in reports issued by the UN (or human rights groups). The standard practice is to identify possible (“reasonable grounds to believe”) breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law and then call for a formal investigation. But the Patten mission, although confessedly something less than an investigative body, makes judgments that go well beyond those of a typical investigative body to the point of near-certainty (“a finding of fact”) befitting the final verdict in a court of law. What’s yet more odd, the Patten mission renders these fine determinations even as it acknowledges severe constraints imposed by limited evidence and time.
5. If it wasn’t a bona fide investigative body; if sufficient evidence was hard to come by; if it was pressed for time to complete its mission—if all this is true, then it’s unclear why the Patten mission reached any conclusions, be they tentative or certain. Why this rush to judgment? And if this non-investigative body also wasn’t in a position to “give voice” to the victims of sexual violence before said victimhood was at least tentatively established by an official investigative body, it’s hard to make out what was the point of this mission. It’s not as if Israel hasn’t already made on its own, and via overwhelmingly sympathetic media abroad, its very best evidentiary case a thousand times over.
6. In this regard it can’t but be wondered why Israel extended the “invitation” to Pramila Patten in the first place and why the Patten mission “benefited from the full cooperation of the Government of Israel.” This was unprecedented, a first. In the past as well as in the instant case, Israel has consistently and categorically refused to cooperate with formal UN investigations. If the evidence Israel has assembled is so robust—the Patten mission concluded that hostages were almost certainly raped—what did it have to fear from an official UN investigation carried out by competent and experienced personnel? The stock reply is: the UN is biased against Israel. But the Patten mission was itself mandated by the UN. If Israel invited Patten’s UN mission, but has firmly barred entry to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the International Commission of Inquiry, surely there must be a reason. Alas, Patten never explores—let alone answers—this tantalizing question. II. The Evidence
7. The Patten mission visited Israel for a little over two weeks. It met with various national ministries, intelligence agencies, and senior government officials; visited “with the support of the Israeli authorities” the sites of the attacks on 7 October; viewed photographic and video evidence overwhelmingly curated by the Israeli government or available in open sources; interviewed survivors of 7 October, released hostages, and first-responders. In other words, on one side it was an Israeli full-court press, and on the opposite side, it was the sort of tour “Friends of the Soviet Union” used to go on in Stalin’s day and “Friends of the People’s Republic of China” in Mao’s day. If any dissent, even a peep, from the official “narrative” was uttered by the mission’s Israeli interlocutors, if the mission stumbled on some irreconcilable finding that incensed its Israeli interlocutors—the report makes no mention of it. Put otherwise, if the mission didn’t question let alone undermine the current Israeli “narrative,” then it’s small wonder that they got on swimmingly.
8. The report states that “the national authorities faced numerous challenges in the collection of evidence and pursuit of their investigations.” Consequently, Israel is said to have possessed and could only make available “very limited forensic” evidence, while “a high number of bodies with destructive burn damage … made the identification of potential crimes of sexual violence impossible.” In addition, the mission met with only “a small number of survivors and/or witnesses … who provided information on instances of sexual violence.” The “very limited” to “small” to “impossible” evidence did not, however, deter the non-investigative mission from drawing fine legal discriminations, not to mention a near-definitive “finding of fact.”
9. The report further states that “While the mission team was able to meet with some released hostages as well as with some survivors and witnesses of the attacks, it did not meet with any survivor-victim of sexual violence from 7 October despite concerted efforts encouraging them to come forward (emphasis added). Doesn’t it give pause that, more than three months after the attack, none of the alleged victims of—according to the Israeli government and the New York Times—rampant, systematic sexual violence on 7 October stepped forward to testify before the mission? Not one. The report endeavors to paper over this glaring lacuna by pointing up “the lack of trust by survivors” in the United Nations. But in the instant case, it was the Israeli government itself that orchestrated this UN mission’s visit. It’s hard to fathom that in a country celebrated for its tribal closing of ranks in the face of external danger, and—not incidentally—in a culture known for its libertine sexual frankness, not a single victim of not just rape but sexual violence of any type was willing, and couldn’t be coaxed, to testify before a Government-blessed mission at such an existential moment in the nation’s history. III. The Findings
10. The Patten mission that was not “investigative in nature” nonetheless concludes that “there are reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual violence, “including rape and gang rape,” occurred. It bases its findings on these pieces of evidence:
· “[F]ully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down were recovered—mostly women—with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head…. Although circumstantial, such a pattern of undressing and restraining of victims may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence.” It may be indicative; it also may not be. The mission itself concedes—albeit buried at the tail end of the report—that “in the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified,” and “no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence was found in open sources,” and “no discernible pattern of genital mutilation could be established.” It takes time for the magnitude of this admission to sink in. Consider further this detail: “The mission team … reviewed over 5,000 photos, around 50 hours and several audio files of footage of the attacks, provided partly by various state agencies and through an independent online review of various open sources, to identify potential instances and indications of conflict-related sexual violence. The content encompassed the actual attacks and their immediate aftermath, captured through militants’ bodycams and dashcams, individual cellphones, CCTV, and traffic surveillance cameras.” Fully 5,000 photos and 50 hours of footage, from every conceivable angle and by every conceivable electronic device—yet the mission was unable to isolate a single direct image of sexual violence, even as no less than gang rapes were allegedly occurring in open space. If the report was properly packaged and publicized, the title would read: “October 7: No Direct Material Evidence of Rape.”
· “Based on the examination of available information, including credible statements by eyewitnesses, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of rape, including gang rape, occurred in and around the Nova [music] festival site. Credible information was obtained regarding multiple incidents whereby victims were subjected to rape and then killed.” (The report also makes fleeting mention without passing judgment on alleged acts of necrophilia.) The report does not specify how many of these credible eyewitnesses it interviewed. And crucially, it does not quantify even roughly how many instances of sexual violence are alleged to have occurred: “multiple” can denote “more than once” or “manifold” (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Fifth Edition). Surely it makes a difference whether the Patten mission is attesting to 2, 20, 200, or 2,000 instances of “rape and/or gang rape.” Why then the sloppy—indeed, professionally irresponsible—vagueness?
· “There are reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred on and around Road 232. Credible information based on corroborating witness accounts describes an incident involving the rape of two women.”
· “There are reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence occurred in kibbutz Re’im, including rape. This included the rape of a woman outside of a bomb shelter at the entrance of kibbutz Re’im, which was corroborated by witness testimonies and digital material.”
In sum, the non-investigative investigative Patten mission, basing itself on an unspecified number of “credible” witnesses, found “reasonable grounds” to conclude or “verified” that “multiple”—which, for all one knows, might mean two—instances of rape occurred at the music festival and another three instances of rape occurred on a road and in a kibbutz. Two plus three equals five. Appalling, no doubt, but also a far cry from allegations by Israel and its media stenographers that Hamas carried out “systematic” and “widespread” rape as a “weapon” of war.
11. The report goes on to state that “[a]t least two of the allegations of sexual violence [at kibbutz Be’eri] previously reported were determined by the mission team to be unfounded, due to either new superseding information or inconsistency in the information gathered.” It further notes alleged instances of sexual violence at other locales “which could not be verified.” The report does not state whether Israel publicly withdrew the allegations of sexual violence that it itself now privately concedes to have been false. Surely that piece of information would be of crucial importance in assessing other allegations propagated by Israel that “could not be verified.” In fact, the Israeli government has not publicly retracted all its “unfounded” allegations. It is also cause for wonder why the mission benignly characterizes the false claims of sexual violence as innocent mistakes by Israel and doesn’t entertain the possibility of calculated disinformation that was subsequently exposed. Was the “beheaded babies” horror tale also an accounting error?
12. The report states that, “[b]ased on the first-hand accounts of released hostages, the mission team received clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment occurred against some women and children during their time in captivity and has reasonable grounds to believe that this violence may be ongoing.” Of all the findings of this non-investigative investigative body, this is surely the most explosive. The stakes couldn’t be higher: it provides a plausible pretext for Israel to urgently proceed on its offensive even as Gazan children starve—Israeli women and children held in captivity are still being raped and sexually tortured! Yet, the report dispatches this charge unequivocally validated by the mission in all of one sentence. Whereas “clear and convincing information” crosses the highest threshold, the mission doesn’t disclose the evidentiary basis for its conclusive finding. The report states that it is “[b]ased on the first-hand accounts of released hostages,” but this wording obscures whether or not the mission actually met with them, and it is left to the imagination why these “first-hand accounts” standing on their own would, or could, be dispositive. If hostage rape victims held in captivity for months did in fact meet with the mission, then it baffles why not a single one of the 7 October rape victims who weren’t held hostage stepped forward. The report ascertains that “some” of the hostages were raped; but what prevented the mission from specifying exactly how many? It purports “reasonable grounds to believe” that the rape and sexual torture are ongoing; but how can it possibly know this? If Israel possessed any evidence that the hostages still in captivity were being raped, surely it would have broadcast it far and wide. The non-investigative Patten mission would appear to be not only investigative but, to boot, clairvoyant. It gets curiouser and curiouser. Hamas has indignantly denied the rape charge, while this charge has played a salient role in demonizing Hamas. If while in captivity the released hostages had been personally raped or could bear personal witness to Hamas’s sexual savagery, then why didn’t Hamas simply kill them instead of setting them free: who would know? The mission states that it adhered to a “survivor/victim-centered” approach. It would appear that this approach required total suspension of the critical faculty.
13. The Patten mission states that it was “unable to establish the prevalence” of sexual violence “during and after the 7 October attacks,” and that a “comprehensive assessment … would require a fully-fledged investigation by competent bodies with adequate time and capacity.” But truth be told: if it wasn’t a “competent” investigative body, then it was “unable to establish” anything. Further, its vague quantification, as well as its repeated references to “circumstantial” evidence that “may be indicative” and to allegations that “couldn’t be verified,” certainly gave credence to the official Israeli “narrative” that the sexual violence was widespread.IV. Final Observations
14. The report concedes that “the information gathered by the mission team was in a large part sourced from Israeli national institutions,” while the report’s findings carry bare minimum weight as the “mission is neither intended nor mandated to be investigative in nature.” The only discernible purposes of Patten’s tawdry mission reduce to, first, acting as yet another purveyor, vehicle, conduit, and conveyance of the “evidence” Israel has been propagating since 7 October, and, second, lending the UN’s authoritative imprimatur to this “evidence.” The analysis presented here began with the puzzle, What exactly is the Patten mission? That question can now be tentatively answered. It is neither an investigative nor a quasi- investigative body. On the contrary, it is a stage production directed by the UN bureaucracy to appease Israel and its powerful backer in Washington. How and why Ms. Patten came to play the starring role in this theatrical extravaganza are of secondary importance.
15. The Patten mission “benefitted from the full cooperation of the Government of Israel.” Yet, it couldn’t locate a single victim of sexual violence or a single piece of direct evidence, be it forensic or digital, of sexual violence on 7 October. It therefore beggars belief that rampant sexual violence occurred on that day. The allegation that Hamas systematically utilized rape as a weapon of war can be safely deposited in the same dumpster as the debunked allegation that Hamas built a mammoth command-and-control center beneath al-Shifa hospital.
16. The report describes “three cumulative waves of attacks” from Gaza on 7 October: first, “Hamas commandos”; then, sundry “paramilitary organizations … that joined the ongoing operation”; and finally, unaffiliated, random “armed and unarmed individuals.” The report further states that “it did not gather information and/or draw conclusions on attribution of alleged violations to specific armed groups.” The available evidence is entirely consistent with the postulate that, if rapes did occur on 7 October—and most likely they did—these were isolated incidents perpetrated in the main by Gaza riff-raff and hooligans who entered Israel in the third wave. It is this writer’s considered opinion—admittedly speculative in nature but nonetheless grounded in the known details of the 7 October attack, its modus operandi, and the predispositions of its perpetrators—that this is the most plausible scenario.
[The quoted passages in this article are culled from both the Executive Summary and the body of the Patten mission report.]
Norman Finkelstein received his PhD from the Princeton University Politics Department in 1987. He is the author of many books that have been translated into 60 foreign editions, including THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering, GAZA: An inquest into its martyrdom, and most recently, I ACCUSE! Herewith a proof beyond reasonable doubt that ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda whitewashed Israel. He is currently writing a book tentatively titled, I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It: Politically Incorrect Thoughts on Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom In the year 2020, Norman Finkelstein was named the fifth most influential political scientist in the world.
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