‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7
‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7
Content Warning: Graphic descriptions of sexual assault
A two-month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.
Relying on video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors, The Times identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated.
Four witnesses described in graphic detail seeing women raped and killed at two different places along Route 232, the same highway where Ms. Abdush’s half-naked body was found sprawled on the road at a third location.
And The Times interviewed several soldiers and volunteer medics who together described finding more than 30 bodies of women and girls in and around the rave site and in two kibbutzim in a similar state as Ms. Abdush’s — legs spread, clothes torn off, signs of abuse in their genital areas.
I haven't read anything about what hamas thought would happen after the October 7th attack. Did they think Israel would do nothing because hamas had hostages?
Or were they trying to prompt a huge response? Certainly the abhorrent despicable acts perpetrated against women that were detailed in the article are something no one would ignore. Similar to Bucha in Ukraine, the horror won't make people surrender, just the opposite.
Obvious answer is they wanted Israel to invade Gaza.
They had no significant chance of beating them so why push for an invasion?
Propaganda, division and pulling other arab countries into a larger war.
Basically they Hamas wanted their own people to suffer....crazy
Don't forget that the Hamas leaders are living in luxury as billionaires in Qatar. If the Israeli response kills a few thousand Palestinians, then Hamas' leaders will shrug their shoulders and say "sounds like good PR" while lounging in a hot tub.
Their whole goal was got get Israel to look bad for killing people, it's also why they don't make efforts to separate the civilians from their militants.
They certainly wanted to provoke a huge reaction -- starting a war and derailing normalization of relations with other states in the ME. They were probably a bit like the dog that caught the car. It's doubtful they thought they would be as successful as they were. They were likely hoping the hostages would temper Israel's response. They probably didn't anticipate the success and brutality of the attack making the hostages less of a factor in Israel's decision-making.
I believe they are like most closed-minded religious fanatics, forethought doesn't exist. They live in the moment because they're ready to be with their god any time so any act is forgivable after death. The same can be said about Israel and the scale of its reaction and ability to slaughter children and civilians. Any act is forgivable if done for their god.
One clear thing about this entire catastrophe is that both Hamas and the IDF are absolutely uncaring about the fate of the Palestinian people.
This is what some people who cheer on Hamas don't seem to understand. Hamas was elected into power, yes, but they claimed to be moderates. Even so, they won a plurality, not a majority. Then, they cancelled all future elections and revealed themselves to be extremists.
The aid that goes to the Gaza Strip is either seized by the leaders of Hamas (who are billionaires living in luxury in Qatar) or are used to buy weapons to attack Israel. Very little actually goes to the Palestinian people.
Even if we set anything Israel-related aside, Hamas needs to go for the well being of the Palestinian people. At the very least, there should be free, fair, and regular elections so the government does what the people want instead of just what some billionaires in Qatar (who don't need to deal with the consequences) want.
Unfortunately for Palestinians, many Israelis do care
I haven’t been able to find a good answer to that either.
One of the speculations that I’ve heard kicked around is that they were trying to do something that would light a fuse, but there was no follow up. Hamas isn’t a bunch of student rebels out of Les Miserables, throwing caution to the wind but not having done the actual groundwork. It was a small attack that happened to have what I suspect was a far larger impact than they imagined. They obviously were doing prep work for the attack itself, if the stories we’re reading are to be believed, but it was a modest-sized incursion without coordination with either the West Bank or Lebanon assets. I think it was a terrorist attack - and I am not someone who throws that word around lightly - but I don’t think that they thought it was going to be this big of a hit.
I think it’s analogous to 9/11 where OBL wasn’t expecting the whole towers falling thing, and while trying to provoke a response, the US over-response exceeded his expectations. I don’t know if Hamas will survive this as an organization, but it’s really affected the global perception of Israel.
No it was not a small attack. It was light infantry against a full miltary but not small. It was planned and they stockpiled weapons and material to last months. What they were not expecting was to walk over the IDF military on the border (none of the videos released by the IDF show Hamas doing this). They were not expecting to get throught the defences so easily to get to the settlements. Remember most of the population of Gaza was ethnically cleansed from the land that these settlements are built on.
They are still fighting. The IDF is using tanks in urban warfare (this is a big tactical no no), so Hamas have the IDF where they want them. Even 2 months into the fighting we still see daily videos of IDF tanks (USD 3 million) being destroyed by rocket launchers (USD 200).
Strategically the Palestinians were being thrown under a bus by the rest of the Arabs so this attack put Hamas in control. It also destroyed the image of Israeli comptence which is a huge propaganda win.
If you look at the prisoner exchanges and the interviews afterwards you see the Israeli prisoners were treated well in captivity and the release was well managed and competent. This especially does not align with the story in the NY Times here. The release of the Palestinian prisoners was chaotic (tear gas was used in some places) and the prsioners were tortured and released with broken bones in some cases.
I am convinced the goal was to provoke a strong response from Israel. The reason is they knew the strong response from Israel would be disproportional and would damage relations between Israel and the rest of the ME.
Israel was approaching normalized relations with most of the major Arab nations around it, most importantly SA. Normalized relations with Israel would likely mean significantly less political and economical support coming to Hamas. Without outside resources Hamas is neutered.
So, seeing the real possibility of a large reduction in their economic and political power in the horizon they took desperate action to stop it, knowing full well the outcome.
Hamas wanted a response. Similar to how Al’Quada wanted a response from the US after the World Trade Center attacks. They knew Israel would bring the smoke after an attack like that.
More importantly Russia and Iran wanted a response to stir up the Middle East.
Israel and Saudi were in negotiations to become allies which would have swung the balance of power away from Iran.
Russia just wanted a distraction to take the US focus away from Ukraine.
The tools on this site that root for Hamas or the Houthis are just pawns caught up in the propaganda.
You're only going to get speculation on these forums.
The only way to know for sure what Hamas expected is to speak directly to their leaders.
Sick fucks.
why can't MFs just live next to other people's without wanting to kill and rape the "Other"???
Money doesn't want them to.
Sadly, this is the reason too many people overlook. It's not the only reason. A full listing of the reasons and their history would fill a book, but just focusing on the money aspect:
Hamas gets funding and weapons from Iran. Iran wants instability there and encourages the "wipe out Israel, kill all the Jews mentality."
On the other side, evangelical Christians in the US support people like the settlers in the West Bank. In the case of the evangelicals, it's because they need Israel to be controlled by Jews for Jesus to return, but they also need Israel to suffer a big attack. Peace in the Middle East would, in their twisted view, hurt Jesus' chances of returning. As an aside, they think that Jesus will toss all the Jews into hell once he comes back so them "supporting Israel" is definitely not "pro-Jews." It's merely delayed anti-semitism.
Remove these two elements and the fire would still rage there, but these groups see the fire and decide to toss some gasoline on top of it.
But the hexbears told me this didn't happen
And also it was a false flag
And also they deserved it
Wtf…
Why do we need a written article "How Hamas Weaponized......yadda yadda yadda"?
The answer is simple. They used their dicks and weapons and raped people. This article is purely for shock clicks.
No it's not. So many Hamas apologists refute that Hamas uses rape and torture as a tool. Strong articles with solid evidence like this put a lie to their propaganda.
I'm just curious, where is the 'solid evidence' you speak of?
I have no doubt Hamas committed rapes, but so far I've only seen testimony to go off of.
Unfortunately, testimonies aren't very reliable (especially in times of war), so I was wondering if you are seeing more 'solid evidence' than people's testimonies.
Edit: He just downvoted me in a minute but provided no further evidence, so we can assume that testimonies are the only 'solid evidence' he's referring to.
Well I, for one, think Israel should sign a peace treaty with these guys immediately and leave them in control of a small country. It's the only ethical course of action.
Prepare for the downvotes from the Hamas/Palestine-did-nothing-wrong brigade.
Are there a lot of Hamas supporters here? Let alone "did nothing wrong" people?
No, only people against the occupation and against the genocide currently happening in Gaza. Pro-zionists like to paint everyone critical of Israel's atrocities as terrorism supporters and as antisemites. But nobody is saying October 7th wasn't horrible. Nobody is saying rape isn't horrible. Resistance to this brutal occupation is always going to be nasty. The Palestinians have no peaceful means to resolve the conflict. That doesn't make terrorism OK but it was inevitable given how Israel is oppressing the Palestinians
I posted this in world news. Lots of downvotes and what aboutism that acts like Hamas didn't do this. https://p.lemmy.world/post/lemmy.world/10065818
Conflating Hamas support with Palestine support? That's a paddlin.
Lots of downvotes but little engagement. They are here LoL. Beyond pathetic, these green headed trolls.