Believe All Victims—Except Jewish Ones

 What Happened on October 7

Most people know the basic facts: Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israeli communities and massacred attendees at the Nova music festival. In a matter of hours—though some fighters remained inside Israel for days—1,200 people were killed and over 250 kidnapped and dragged to Gaza. The killing was indiscriminate: soldiers, civilians, women, children, foreign nationals. No one was safe.

But one noticeable pattern was the particular brutality against women.

The world saw the footage: a terrified Shiri Bibas clutching her two red-haired baby boys as they were carried off to Gaza; Noa Argamani screaming on the back of a motorcycle; the body of Shani Louk, clad only in her underwear, paraded through cheering crowds in Gaza.

As days and weeks passed, more survivors, witnesses and evidence surfaced. It became undeniable that Hamas’s goal was not simply resistance against occupation, as supporters claimed. Their crimes showed intent to kill, but also to terrorize, humiliate, dehumanize and demoralize in every way possible.

“Silenced No More”: The Evidence

In May, the Civil Commission released a detailed 282-page report called “Silenced No More,” documenting the sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) that Hamas and its collaborators committed on October 7 and against hostages in Gaza. Compiled over two years from more than 10,000 photographs and video segments and over 430 testimonies from survivors, witnesses, released hostages and family members, the report is comprehensive, graphic and damning. Victims included not only Israelis but nationals of 52 other countries, including women but also men, children and the elderly.

The report found that the SGBV was not “a collection of isolated incidents, but a coherent and repeated pattern of violence, carried out across multiple locations and phases,” from the initial attacks through captivity in Gaza.

The commission identified 13 forms of SGBV, including rape and gang rape, sexual torture and mutilation, forced nudity, executions linked to sexual violence and postmortem sexual abuse. It also established a new category of violence: kinocidal sexual violence, defined as violence “deliberately designed to destroy family structures by weaponizing familial bonds.” This includes documented cases of family members being abused in front of each other or forced to commit acts of sexual violence against one another.

The terrorists did not attempt to conceal any of this. They recorded and livestreamed their acts, some posting footage directly to the victims’ social media accounts, which is how some families first learned what had happened to their loved ones. Evidence left behind by terrorists included notebooks, maps, checklists that included Hebrew phrases such as “Take off your pants,” “Lie down” and “Spread your legs.”

One male survivor of the Nova music festival, whose testimony was confirmed by polygraph, described in harrowing detail being beaten, gang raped and mocked. He witnessed a woman whose breast was cut off, tossed away and played with while she was still alive. She was shot in the head while still in the process of being raped. He saw another woman decapitated with a shovel while fighting back as terrorists tried to strip her. “I don’t know what they took before they did this,” he said. “They were like animals.” He added: “Today, I shower a thousand times a day, and I still feel disgust and filth.”

Double Standards on Display

And yet, despite thousands of photographs, videos and testimonies, despite a polygraph-confirmed survivor account and a 282-page documented report, much of the world still refuses to believe the victims. It simply doesn’t fit the anti-Israel narrative, and the world would rather paint Israel as the evil aggressor.

This double standard was highlighted the day before the “Silenced No More” report was published, when the New York Times ran a column by Nicholas Kristof alleging that Palestinian detainees were being sexually abused by Israeli security forces, including claims involving training dogs to rape the detainees. 

The dog-rape allegation was sourced from Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, an NGO that presents itself as a neutral watchdog but has a documented history of promoting disinformation about Israel and has known ties to Hamas. 

David Lange from HonestReporting dismantled the column, noting that it relied on sources who had changed their stories over time and on pro-Hamas activists. Other experts have challenged that it is biologically impossible to train dogs to become aroused and perform sexual assault on command.

Lange also noted the timing: the column appeared to cast Israelis as sexual abusers the day before the landmark report on Hamas’s own sexual atrocities was set to be released, which HonestReporting claims that Kristof and the Times knew was coming. As Lange wrote: “When Israelis are victims, the evidence is interrogated endlessly. When Israel is accused, suspicion quickly becomes accepted truth.” 

Imagine if the world possessed this volume of documented, irrefutable evidence that Israel had committed even a fraction of such atrocities against the Palestinians. The outcry, rallies and riots would be deafening. But when the victims are Jewish? When there is a mountain of undeniable evidence? Silence, shrugs and outlandish claims of dog rape.