Source: Ha’aretz

By Linday Dayan

You can pick apart every witness’ testimony, handwave every video of stripped bodies and tell everyone who’ll listen that Hamas just wouldn’t do that. But it won’t erase what the victims endured in their last moments, nor will it free Palestine.

Do you ever read something and think, “Oh no, some really terrible people are going to be really happy about this?”

On Thursday, the Israel Police made a call to the public, via the media, to come forward with information about sexual assaults carried out during the Hamas massacre on October 7. They are having difficulty identifying the bodies of victims in eyewitness accounts of rape. And although they have much documentation of murder scenes that show signs of sexual assault, and the testimony of morgue workers, first responders, police and soldiers who found the dead, they do not have enough witness reports.

They are not saying they don’t have enough evidence that Hamas and members of other Gazan factions used rape as a weapon of war during their onslaught – the police have repeated that the testimony thus far has been sound. A large-scale independent investigation from The New York Times reached the same conclusion, as did Physicians for Human Rights, which has a proven track record of speaking out against the Israeli government’s rights abuses.

There is a heartbreakingly large pool of evidence: the infamous video of 19-year-old hostage Naama Levy, dragged into a jeep full of armed men by the hair, the crotch of her sweatpants stained with blood. The bodies of women, stripped of their underwear, scattered around the Nova rave site. Reports from responders who found the bodies of women whose genitals were pierced by foreign objects, bodies stripped naked and bound.

Some conspirators would say – and have said, and won’t stop saying – that this is part of an Israeli plot to weaken the Palestinian cause or justify the brutal bombing of Gaza. They demand to see forensic evidence from bodies already interred, cross-examinations of living survivors and videos of acts of rape. With any less, they won’t begin to entertain the idea that this was not cooked up by the Israelis. And even if they were given this, it would still surely not be enough.

Yet if recent history has taught us anything about Israel, it is that the country that had five elections in less than four years absolutely cannot pull off conspiracies of that magnitude. A government that could not prevent October 7 could not have planted all the evidence that Hamas left behind.

The people who could excuse Hamas of being murderers but draw the line at them being rapists are already convinced. Journalist Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone has been vociferously trying to discount witness statements (“This person who witnessed the most traumatic thing a human can experience was slow to share the full details of that living nightmare” is a key talking point). Briahna Joy Gray, the former Bernie Sanders press secretary who has denied Hamas’ atrocities, is trying to find someone to “debate” against Blumenthal about whether this sexual violence occurred. Surprisingly, she has not had any takers.

Denying what is in front of our eyes will not bring glory to the Palestinian people, and accepting what has clearly transpired will not make the deaths of innocent Gazans less appalling. You can pick apart every witness’ testimony, handwave every video of stripped bodies and tell everyone who’ll listen that Hamas just wouldn’t do that. But it won’t erase what the victims endured in their last moments, nor will it free Palestine.