Yossi Schwartz ISL (the section of the RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 09.12.2023
Already on October 16 Human Rights Watch wrote: While some videos Israel presents are genuine, “shared alongside those videos were falsehoods, too, both subtle and blatant. Some misinformation claiming to be from Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere appears intentional: doctored footage, manipulated video, false translations, realistic footage from video games and more. But much seems to be shared unintentionally by journalists, officials and concerned citizens alike. This includes footage from previous conflicts, incorrect geolocation, and false context” [1]
“A country like Israel should have the means to do rigorous testing to confirm if people were sexually assaulted in a more systematic way, said Nidhi Kapur, a specialist on sexual abuse in situations of armed conflict. Forensic testing should have been a priority to build a full picture of the attack, said Kapur, who has worked in the region. “In a conflict you first take care of the survivors, you don’t count bodies” [2]
Israel presented Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy as human right activist and expert on rape to prove by his words that Hamas raped the Israeli women. But, as revealed by Mondoweiss, “rape expert” Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy is a “non-credible witness with undisclosed ties to the Israeli government”. An anonymous source from Mondoweiss criticized CNN for introducing Elkayam-Levy as “a human rights expert” and added: “In her interview, which opens the CNN report, Elkayam-Levy presents nothing but justifications for the absence of evidence and facts. While she claims to speak under the auspices of the ‘civil committee’, CNN hid the tight connections between her and the National Security Council of the Israeli Prime Minister. Elkayam-Levy is also the founder and director of the ‘Dvora Institute’, which works as a close advisory body to the Israeli prime minister’s ‘National Security Council’. The advisory committee for the Dvora Institute includes a former director of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and three former officials in the National Security Council.
The investigating reporter Blumenthal continued digging, and was able to tell us that Elkayam-Levy had used photographs of rape victims and spoken in a shaky voice as if to prove the authenticity of the rape allegations. I admit that had it not been for Blumenthal’s investigative work I would have fallen for this Zionist-fuelled trickery. To her eternal shame, Elkayam-Levy, either knowingly or in ignorance, presented an old image of dead female Kurdish fighters as women sexually assaulted at the Nova music festival on 7 October.The image was originally published on the anonymous Hamas-Massacre website promoted by the Israeli government, but it was quickly removed without explanation after Blumenthal demonstrated that it was first published on this Japanese site (warning: graphic image) back in 2022.” [3]
The Zionist investigators say: “The search for answers and any pursuit of justice is complicated by various factors. Many victims were killed and were buried in the clothes they were wearing when they died, in line with Jewish burial law, before investigators could examine them. Although police have arrested and detained hundreds of suspects, linking them to specific crimes will be challenging as a result. All the women who were murdered and may have suffered sexual violence cannot tell us,” Hila Neubach, director of legal affairs at the Association for Rape Crisis Centres in Israel, told Reuters. “Witnesses perhaps too did not survive.”
Several weeks later police published video footage of witness accounts, with interviews translated from Hebrew with English subtitle. One unnamed witness of the Nova festival attack said she saw gunmen gang rape one woman and cut off the breast of another and throw it on the street. Later, police added, she saw a gunman shoot the woman in the head while raping her. Reuters could not independently verify the accounts and police declined to name the witnesses or make her available to the news agency.” [4]
Hamas, which is rarely shy about its activities, admitted to taking hostages and, indeed, much to the irritation of Israel, released some of them to the International Red Cross Society as part of highly visible exchange deals. Before a world audience of millions, the captives emerged smiling and thanked their captors. Later on, Israel made up stories about the torture of the captured Israelis. We also know, because of Israeli eyewitness accounts, that when the Israel Defense Forces finally responded to the Hamas attack, some of the approaching Israeli tanks and Apache attack helicopters targeted their own civilians as well as Hamas fighters, killing many by so-called friendly fire. This explains the devastation of houses in the kibbutzim, for which Hamas fighters armed with light weapons could not have been responsible. Likewise, the charred remains of vehicles and bodies. However, the official narrative that Hamas “killed 1,200 people” has not been questioned by the Israeli or Western media.
Now Israel fabricates a new movie to prove how horrible the fighters of Hamas are. A movie produced from 200,000 clips putting together chosen pictures from different clips. This sort of evidence is not accepted by courts. The king’s road for submitting a recording as evidence is through the submission of the recording reel itself, or the digital media in which the recording was made, together with an affidavit of the recording operator attesting to the identity of the recorder, the way the recording was made (including the type of device and whether it was active for the entire duration of the conversation), the date, the identity of the participants in the recorded conversation and how the recording was saved as time passed. As a general rule, a transcript should also be attached to this, which will serve as an aid, and will record what was said in the recording. Of course, the transcript should be professional and reliable in itself, and accurately reflect everything that was said in the recording. (See TA 60129-12-12 Allenby 99 Ltd. et al. v. Asaf Nakadai et al. (dated June 13, 2016); Tamash 50090/08 Peloni et al. v. Ezbon of the deceased et al. dated 12.1.2013); Case 869/81 Shanir v. The State of Israel, Case No. 6(4) 169 (1984); Case No. 323/84 Shariki v. The State of Israel, Case No. 3(3) 505 (1985); N. Zalmatzen
Such a fabrication points to the nature of Israel lies as it can create an impression that Hamas burned houses and bodies while in reality it was the Israeli army. It can create the impression of rapes while there is no forensic evidence.
The American imperialists that have a long record of killing people in the semi colonies go farther in slandering Hamas. United States National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said that Hamas held Israeli hostages could be victims of sexual abuse when speaking with reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
“It is a sick truth of this particular group that they use sexual violence as a weapon and a tool,” he said in repose to a question about the 138 hostages still held in Gaza, including 20 women and children.“Sadly, I think it’s safe to assume that they are still using sexual violence as a weapon, but I can’t speak to specific instances,” he said” [5]
For total cease fire now!
Crash the lies machine of the Zionist apartheid state!
Down with American imperialists!
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/11/real-or-fake-verifying-video-evidence-israel-and-palestine
[2] https://tucson.com/news/nation-world/new-signs-emerge-of-widespread-sexual-crimes-by-hamas-as-netanyahu-alleges-global-indifference/article_bcc90675-07b1-5c8e-9cd3-ac7b264a6200.html
[3] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231205-israels-fake-news-factory-implodes-over-7-october-rape-story/
[4] https://tucson.com/news/nation-world/new-signs-emerge-of-widespread-sexual-crimes-by-hamas-as-netanyahu-alleges-global-indifference/article_bcc90675-07b1-5c8e-9cd3-ac7b264a6200.html
[5] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-7770