New footage, taken by an Israeli soldier who was in Be’eri on October 7, “shows the bodies of three female victims, fully clothed and with no apparent signs of sexual violence, at a home where many residents had believed the assaults occurred.”
The New York Times has revealed that new video footage challenges the account of an unnamed Israeli military paramedic that the paper interviewed who claimed that two teenagers, killed in the October 7 resistance operation, were sexually assaulted.
The paramedic, from an Israeli commando unit, was interviewed along with dozens of other people for an article that the US paper published on December 28 entitled “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7”.
He had claimed that the bodies of two partially clothed teenage girls in a home in Kibbutz Be’eri “bore signs of sexual violence,” the paper said on Monday.
However, footage taken by an Israeli soldier who was in Be’eri on October 7 “shows the bodies of three female victims, fully clothed and with no apparent signs of sexual violence, at a home where many residents had believed the assaults occurred.”
The paper said that although “it is unclear” if the paramedic was referring to the same scene, residents of the kibbutz, in response to the new footage, reportedly said there was no other home in Be’eri where two teenage girls were killed.
“And they concluded from the video that the girls had not been sexually assaulted,” said The New York Times.
It also quoted Nili Bar Sinai, a member of a group from the kibbutz that investigated claims of sexual assault at the house as saying, “this story is false.”
Key Testimony Debunked
The paramedic, whose testimony was a key component of the paper’s December 28 report, “declined to say whether he still stood by the account, saying he would like to put the attacks behind him,” The Times said. An Israeli military spokesman later said the medic in question stood by his testimony, “but might have misremembered the place where he saw the teenage girls.”
The Associated Press, CNN and The Washington Post were among the news media who reported similar accounts attributed to an anonymous military paramedic.
‘The Black Dress’ – Palestinian Documentary Challenges NYT Report on Oct. 7 Mass Rape (WATCH)
The Times said the paramedic had been allowed, by the Israeli military, to speak with reporters on the condition that he remained anonymous “because he serves in an elite unit.”
The paramedic had claimed that he saw signs of sexual violence on the bodies, such as “bruises by her groin” on one body, and “her bottom exposed and semen smeared on her back” on the other.
The new video reportedly shows “the bodies of two female victims in a corridor outside a safe room, with blood stains on their clothing and the floor. In a nearby room, a third person was filmed on the floor in a pool of blood, wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt.”
Bar Sinai and three members of the kibbutz who knew the family confirmed the identities of the deceased, the paper said, as two sisters and their mother.
‘They Weren’t Sexually Assaulted’
The residents first learned of the video on February 12, when Israeli soldiers in the unit that had found the sisters’ remains returned to the kibbutz for a tour, said the paper.
Debunked by Palestine Chronicle – Co-author of of NYT Report on Sexual Assaults Exposed (VIDEO)
Troops shared the “eight-second video clip” after being taken aback by the discussions from residents about the sexual assault allegations.
“What happened to them was horrifying, but it was a great relief to find out they weren’t sexually assaulted,” Bar Sinai is reported as having said.
Co-Author Investigated
The New York Times has launched an investigation into an Israeli freelancer, Anat Schwartz, one of the original report’s co-authors.
The news emerged last month after a report by Mondoweiss exposed Schwartz’s online record, which was reportedly scrutinized by independent researchers.
Mondoweiss raised doubts about the credibility of the Israeli filmmaker.
‘We Can’t Find Witnesses’: Israeli Police Contradicts NYT Report on Oct. 7 Sexual Assaults
“You would expect the paper to look for someone with actual journalistic experience, especially for a story as sensitive as this one, written during the fog of war,” the report stated.
The Black Dress Investigation
The December 28 report was brought into question only seven days after its publication, with Israel’s own media and police seeming to contradict the allegations as expounded upon in this Palestine Chronicle feature report.
The Palestine Chronicle and Friends of Palestine Network, conducted a joint investigation, based on media reports, in addition to historical and political analyses into this report.
‘’The Black Dress’: Unveiling the Truth about Rape, Sexual Assault on October 7, an 18-minute documentary, is the result of that investigation.
Commenting on the topic in the documentary was Palestinian intellectual, Ramzy Baroud, who said sexual violence by the resistance “is just not part of Palestinian culture.”
Rape in Gaza – UN Experts Demand Investigation into Israeli Sexual Assaults on Palestinian Girls
“As a historian who has been writing about the history of Palestinian resistance within the context people’s history of Palestine, covering all periods of Palestinian history, from the Nakba to the two Intifadas, the current war and everything in between, I haven’t run into anything of this nature, it’s just not part of Palestinian culture,” Baroud said.
Baroud emphasized that even though there was “absolutely not only no real evidence,” of sexual violence on October 7, what has to be kept in mind is “the context and the function of these kinds of allegations.”
“It is there to create a distraction from the horrific things that Israel has done to Palestinians. Horrific beyond anything, only comparable to the Nazis…That’s what Israel has done to the Palestinians in Gaza.”
(The Palestine Chronicle)
I’ll repeat my observations made earlier in relation ot the infamous “40 Beheaded Babies”, who suffered from the pre-existing condition of not existing in the first place – this is in line with the behaviour in Mediaeval Christian Europe’s Blood Libel and Jim Crow Lynch Law massacres. Harm is alleged done to vulnerable members of the dominant group (ritual child abuse in Mediaeval Christian Europe; White women raped in Jim Crow America) by members of subordinate group (Jews in Mediaeval Christian Europe; Blacks in Jim Crow America). Dominant group leaders incite hysterical fear, rage, hate against subordinate group. Murders, massacres follow. It’s a lynching, not a war.