Israel’s silence and double standards on sexual assault

JVL Introduction

The New York Times published a well-researched article detailing horrific sexual abuse that Palestinians have experienced from Israeli soldiers, guards and others.  The reaction and denials were immediate but to its credit the NYT is standing by Kristoff while so many in power are painting Kristoff as a villain rather than the perpetrators of these ghastly crimes while people are incredibly vulnerable and totally defenceless.  Of course, Palestinians and many human rights organisations – including Israeli ones – have reported on much that was in the Kristof conveys piece.  And Kristof did not ignore the claims of sexual abuse by Hamas but that was not enough to stop the outcry, even in at least one case accusing the New York Times of being on the side of Hamas.

The very next day a report was published, claimed to be objective and authoritative claiming extensive and systematic sexual assaults, abuse and rape on Israeli women on October 7th.  It is likely that sexual abuse and even rape took place that fateful October day but claims that this was systemic have been frequently debunked and even family members of those claimed to be victims have objected to the claims.

Here the writer explores the many limitations of the new report alleging systematic rape by Hamas on October 7th. He also cites reports that do show evidence of sexual crimes but he notes that “Nothing in the public record comes close to proving a deliberate, systematic rape policy…. The available facts do not substantiate its sweeping claim of systematic rape as an organized policy, and the report itself does nothing to fix that gap, since its key evidence is sealed from independent review, its method cannot be reproduced, and several of its evidentiary streams run through sources already linked to false or unverified claims.” (My emph LL)

As we have noted elsewhere, there have been many well documented reports of torture, including sexual violence by Israel against Palestinians that it has incarcerated. The Sunday Times reported on this in 1977. Denialism and also deflection was the response then as now.

LL

PS: added 20 May: here is a link to B’Tselem’s devastating 2024 report Living Hell: the Israeli prison system as a network of torture camps

This article was originally published by Poya’s Substack on Fri 15 May 2026. Read the original here.