NEW YORK: AF³IRM NYC stands firmly on the principle and practice of believing a victim’s account of sexual violence. When, however, the “evidence” comes from those who are part of a propaganda machinery that has sought consistently to portray its adversary as “subhuman terrorists” and “animals,” we must rage against the machine. It is highly suspicious that a military that prides itself on being super-efficient cannot provide forensic evidence of claims of bodies raped and mutilated, but must rely on videos which, as everyone knows, can be easily created, and altered by AI. In 2021, Israel launched what it called the world’s first AI war, “Operation Guardian of the Walls” which killed 261 and injured 2,200 Palestinians. In this war on Gaza, Israel had Gaza civilians stripped and shackled and videoed them as Hamas fighters, only to release them kilometers from their home area. So fraught with uncertainty were the “proofs” and “testimonies” of rape and sexual violence that even that staunch Israel supporter The New York Times had to hedge its words, “The Times identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls APPEAR to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated.”
The Hamas force that launched the October 7th attack was estimated at 3,000, though Hamas second-in-command Saleh al-Aruri said that around 1200 fighters took part in the siege. This figure is rarely mentioned, as it is certainly dwarfed by the Israel Defense Force of 169,000 on active duty and half a million reservists. Add to that advanced weaponry and nuclear bombs, and $260 billion the US has given Israel since WWII. But the actual number of Hamas fighters who laid siege to a rave festival and border settlements is rarely mentioned because Israel has always billed itself the victim while victimizing thousands for decades. Indeed, even those besieged in the border towns were not defenseless. As the Israeli military researcher wrote in the US Army’s Military Review, “the initial and immediate Israeli reactions to the terror attack were initiated by civilian residents, many of whom were officers and security personnel in the settlements.”[1]
The Hamas rocket barrage came at 3:30 GMT and was followed by border breach at 4:40 GMT. At 6:40 GMT, Israel’s Air Force began bomb runs over Gaza. By 7:00 GMT, there were battles at Israeli military bases and ground counterattacks were proceeding. According to Dr. Dostri, the second wave of Israeli response came from “YAMAM (Israel’s national counterterrorism unit), Shaldag (the air force reconnaissance unit), Magellan (paratroopers reconnaissance unit), Sayeret Matkal (general staff reconnaissance unit), Shayetet 13 (the elite naval commando unit), the IDF’s “Ghost” and counterterrorism units, border police, and various others.”[2] Under such a pressure, the uppermost consideration in a fighter’s mind would be to complete his mission and survive.
It is worth noting that the Western media began doling out these sexual assault and sexual violence stories when South Africa filed a case of genocide against Israel at the UN International Court of Justice. This was followed by two UN “experts” alleging these incidents of sexual assault and sexual violence constituted “war crimes.” They said not a word about the six thousand Palestinian women and ten thousand children killed by Israel’s blitzkrieg bombing of the Gaza strip. And certainly, not a word of protest about the cutting off the water supply, the food supply, and power supply. A more blatant exercise of narcissist colonial fake feminism cannot be found in history.
Nothing in feminism condones genocide. Nothing in feminism condones the murder of children. Nothing in feminism approves of the mass murder of women. Nothing in feminism justifies people being deprived of food, water, and medical care. Nothing in feminism consents to land theft and the eradication of a people and a culture.
But colonialism’s handmaids find those easy to accept, while crying “victimization” over unproven sexual assault and sexual violence.
AF3IRM decries this cynical use of an issue so long a central issue for women of world to justify the scorch-earth bombardment of a densely populated area. AF3IRM reminds the world that rape was first recognized as a war crime in the case of Rwanda, a Catholic country, and the first successful prosecution of rape as a crime against humanity involved the Muslim women of Bosnia-Herzegovina. With Palestine under Occupation and Palestinians therefore in a constant state of siege since 1948, the United Nations should look first into the sexual and physical atrocities practiced in Israeli prisons against Palestinian men and women, adults, and minors alike.
We demand that Israel be charged with genocide and crimes against humanity.
AF³IRM states that it is a just demand that Palestine be free, from river to the sea.
[1] Omer Dostri, Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel: The end of the deterrence strategy in Gaza, November 2023, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/Online-Exclusive/2023/Dostri/Hamas’s-October-2023-Attack-on-Israel-UA.pdf.
[2] Ibid.