Concerns about sexual violence in Israel-Gaza conflict renewed amid NYT controversy

The debacle began on Monday, when the New York Times published an opinion piece suggesting that there is “a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women, and even children.” Nicholas Kristof wrote that there is no evidence “that Israeli leaders order rapes” but accused the country of creating “a security apparatus” where sexual violence has become “standard operating procedure.” 

Kristof wrote that his findings were based on conversations with 14 men and women who said they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces, as well as interviews with family members, investigators, and officials. He cited a recent report from the West Bank Protection Consortium, a coalition of international aid groups aligned with the United Nations. The report concluded it found 16 cases of “conflict-related sexual violence attributed to Israeli settlers and soldiers” and said it pointed to a “broader pattern of sexualised harassment, intimidation and humiliation, much of which remains underreported.” 

Kristof also cited research from B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that holds the Jewish nation is guilty of genocide and apartheid. B’Tselem’s report was based on testimonies of 21 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, which “indicate a great pattern of sexual violence and detention facilities in prisons, ranging from threats of sexual assault through forced stripping to actual sexual assaults,” including “beatings to the genitals that cause severe injuries, setting dogs on prisoners, and forced anal penetration with various objects.”

The following day, a human rights commission released a landmark report detailing sexual abuse endured by Israelis at the hands of Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group operating in Gaza. The Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children said its two-year investigation was based on 430 formal and informal interviews, testimonies, and meetings with survivors, witnesses, former hostages, experts, and family members. The civil commission determined “sexual and gender-based violence was systematic, widespread, and integral” to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and its subsequent approach to Israeli hostages in Gaza. Hamas’s alleged acts, including gang rapes, constitute war crimes and genocidal acts under international law, according to the civil commission, echoing some previous findings of 15 survivors documented in the Dinah Project. 

The commission’s analysis came after a stream of hostages released from Hamas captivity in recent years came forward with accounts of rape, sexual abuse, and harassment they faced from their captors and other Palestinians they interacted with in Gaza. In the wake of the commission’s report, Israel claimed the New York Times “deliberately timed its piece” to undermine Hamas’s “preplanned, systematic sexual atrocities on Oct. 7 and against hostages thereafter,” slammed Kristof for using the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor as a source in his reporting, and alleged EMHRM founder Ramy Abdu has documented ties to senior Hamas leaders.

Kristof said former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told him he didn’t know much about sexual violence against Palestinians but was not surprised by the accounts the reporter said he had heard.

Kristof faced swift backlash for his sourcing. Critics condemned him for citing Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA who left the prestigious California school following allegations of sexual harassment. Kristof also faced scrutiny for citing Sami al Sai, whose critics say has backed terrorism, including praising Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. 

“My first thought was everyone else’s. Horrifying,” Haviv Rettig Gur, a prominent Israeli journalist, wrote in a lengthy response to Kristof’s report. “We know that the Israeli Prisons Service is notoriously incompetent. … Abuse of prisoners isn’t merely possible, it’s guaranteed. October 7 and the ensuing war sent thousands of detainees into the prisons. And in the early months, drafted into the system, undertrained reservist guards. I expected, therefore, a hard-hitting story of real abuse, something Israeli leaders must take notice of.”

“And then I came across the first obvious lie,” he continued. “And then the second. And then an odd claim — maybe possible, but how exactly? — and then another just like it. And a famed Hamas propagandist laundered as a reliable source. And then another … the Jew is made fearful once more. Throughout Christendom and Islam, he is being returned to his proper place in the social hierarchies of old, complete with anxious conversos and ideological purity tests.”

The 300-page study produced by the civil commission recounting Hamas’s sexual abuse of Jewish hostages included reviewing more than 10,000 photographs and video segments and cross-referencing survivor and witness accounts. The civil commission said it decided not to rely on any information obtained through state interrogations, a standard practice in compiling such reports, in order to preserve the independence of the work, according to CNN, which released the initial report. Each case cited has been corroborated by witnesses, including first responders who attended the scene, according to the commission.

“The Commission identified repeated acts of sexual violence, sexual torture, sexual assault, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, threats of rape or forced marriage, and coercive sexual acts inflicted on both women and men,” the report said. “These acts were not isolated incidents but rather an inherent component of captivity, designed to exert control, instill fear, and strip hostages of their dignity, autonomy, and sense of personhood. Hostages of all ages, including minors and the elderly, were affected.” 

The commission’s report, which cited eyewitness testimony that Palestinian civilians participated alongside Hamas to carry out the Oct. 7 attack on the Nova music festival, said the attackers viewed sexual violence against Jews as “central” to the terrorist attack. 

“Women and girls, and, in many cases, men and boys, were subjected to rape, sexualized torture, mutilation, forced nudity, and desecration of bodies,” it said. “Siblings assaulted in front of one another; victims stripped, violated, filmed, and displayed. These were not crimes of passion: they were coordinated and orchestrated to exacerbate the cruelty of crimes that are sexual in nature.” 

The commission describes itself as an independent nongovernmental group. Its report was endorsed by a variety of international leaders, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, former U.N. special adviser on the prevention of genocide Alice Wairimu Nderitu, former chief prosecutor of the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone David Crane, and Rahm Emanuel, who was former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff.

The commission’s report includes testimony from several Israelis who were captured by Hamas and said they were sexually abused by their captors. Many of the hostages previously detailed their accounts, including Alon Ohel, Arbel Yehoud, Rom Braslavski, Aviva Siegel, Agam Goldstein-Almog, Amit Soussana, and Romi Gonen, who described sexual assaults from three different men. 

“You just pray to God for it to stop,” Braslavski told Channel 13. “Every day, I’d say to myself: ‘I survived another day in hell. Tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up to another hell. And another hell.'”