Explainer: New York Times’ Celebrated Story Of Hamas Sexual Assault On Oct.7 And Its Debunking (X image@CarstenOvens)
Anat Schwartz is in trouble. She is silent on her claims that Hamas has systematically used sexual violence against Israelis on October 7th attack. New York Times, which once applauded Schwartz for her exceptional investigative report, no longer gives her bylines. NYT is also in an embarrassing position, where it’s credibility is under scrutiny. It walked back on its claim on Hamas and said that “there may have been systematic use of sexual assault”.
The paper is neither capable of defending their decision to appoint Scwartz on one of the most sensitive stories that could remould the way the world perceive Israel’s conduct of war on Gaza, nor her “hard work” on reporting the “thoroughly investigated” story. However, the “credible” reporting had a life altering impact on thousands of innocent civilians of Palestine.
Schwartz, the Israeli filmmaker and former air force intelligence official, had been assigned by the New York Times to investigate on the sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7, though she did not have any prior experience in reporting. Then born the celebrated story of New York Times, ‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7. The story was a bombshell. It also augmented Israelis brutal war efforts on Gaza, during a time even when Israelis itself started to question the killing of thousands of Palestinians by the occupation force. New York Times even attempted to turn the article into an episode in its flagship podcast, The Daily.
However, like every other celebrated claims made by the Israelis, which were later debunked, New York Times is also burdened with walking back on its “credible” story of Hamas perpetuating sexual violence on October 7th.
Despite Anat Scwartz not having any prior experience in reporting, she was assigned to investigate on the Israeli claim that Hamas, the resistance group of Gaza has systematically used sexual assault against Israel on October 7. She was assigned along with her nephew Adam Sells, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Jeffrey Gettleman.
The depth of the Schwartz investigation and the debunkings:
During an interview on Channel 12’s podcast, Schwartz said that she was told there had been no complaints made of sexual assault. NYT spokesperson said she made the comment during the earlier stages of investigations, and things unfolded later. After translating the Israeli media Channel 12’s interview, which was in Hebrew, The Intercept concluded that, “The New York Time’s mission was to bolster a predetermined narrative”.
At first, Schwartz was “frustrated” at the negative response from institutions like hospitals that looked into sexual violence, including rape. She said she had a lot of interviews which didn’t lead anywhere. She said, “I would go to all kinds of psychiatric hospitals, sit in front of the staff, all of them are fully committed to the mission and no one had met a victim of sexual assault”, as quoted by The Intercept. She said she had “crazy in-depth conversation”.
image@Anatschwartz
Allegedly, Israelis have a knack for orchestrating gruesome lies. The first person to testify for the alleged sexual violence was a paramedic from Israeli Air Force medical unit 669, known as “Witness G”. He claimed to saw evidence that two teenage girls at Kibbutz Nahal Oz had been raped and murdered in their bedroom. The claim was made in an anonymous media interview. The man also made another outrageous claim. He said a baby had been “pulled out of the garbage” by a rescuer. He said the baby had been stabbed several times. However, the man’s this claim made his earlier reports questionable. He further said that he had seen “Arabic sentences that were written on entrances to houses … with the blood of the people that were living in the houses”.
According to The Intercept, no such messages exist. The story in the trashcan was debunked, as it was later found that the only baby died on the date mentioned by the mans was due to a gunfire, and the body was not found in a trashcan. Also, the allegations on the murder of two teenage girls were also proven wrong, as no such bodies were found in Kibbutz. In another interview, the man changed the location to Kibbutz Be’eri, which was also proven false, as no victims killed there matched the description, as reported by Mondoweiss.
After seeing these interviews, Schwartz called natives of Kibbutz, asking about the incident. But she could not find anything. During the podcast, she said, “nothing. There was nothing…no one saw or heard anything”. She then reached out to the same man who made the claim to the media outlets. She said, she was then convinced that it happened. She said, “OK, so it happened, one person saw it happen in Be’eri, so it can’t be just one person, because it’s two girls. It’s sisters. It’s in the room. Something about it is systematic, something about it feels to me that it’s not random”.
Anat Schwartz then began her vast conversations with members and officials of Zaka. Zaka is a private ultra-Orthodox organization which has been documented to have spread multiple false stories about the happenings on October 7th. It is important to note that the infamous story of Hamas beheading babies and cutting fetus from a pregnant woman’s body was perpetuated from Zaka. Media reports suggest that Zaka members are not trained forensic scientist or crime scene experts.
Yossi Landau, a senior Zaka official said that they use their “imagination”. Describing the group’s work at the site of October 7 attack, he said, “when we go into a house, we use our imagination…the bodies were telling us what happened”. Without mentioning Landau’s track record of preaching “well-documented” stories of atrocities, which were often prove false later, NYT featured him in its report.
After conversing with Witness G and Zaka members, Schwartz continued to “collect” evidences from various sites and witnesses, but the “stories didn’t emerge from there”.
She then saw an interview that was aired by international news channels. The interview was of Shari Mendes, an American architect, who serves in a rabbinical unit of the Israel Defence Force. Mandes, who was deployed at morgue to look into the burial of bodies from the October 7th attack, said she saw evidences of rape. In one interview, she said, “pelvises were broken, and it probably takes a lot to break a pelvis … and this was also among grandmothers down to small children. This is not just something we saw on the internet, we saw these bodies with our own eyes”.
Facebook image@ Olive Palestine
Despite the blaring fact that she does not have any medical or forensic credentials to legally determine the alleged rape, Mendes is seen as a major figure in the Israeli government and several prominent media narratives on sexual violence on October 7th.
She made a baseless claim on baby cut from pregnant woman and beheaded, after which the mother was beheaded. The comment made to the Daily Mail in last October was later found false, as no pregnant woman died that day, as per the official Israeli list of people killed on October 7th attack. Independent research collective, October 7 Fact Check also found the claims as false.
After hearing, Schwartz was ‘convinced’ that the narrative of systematic rape was true. Scwartz also mentioned that she felt conflicted at times.
It was during this time the claims of IDF reservist on Hamas beheading babies reverberated around the world and then ended up being debunked. Yet, Schwartz and New York Times relied on Mendes testimonies and other witnesses who have visible track record of unreliable claims with zero forensic credentials.
Another person, whom the NYT teams interviewed was Raz Cohen, who attended the Nova music festival. Cohen is a veteran of Israel’s special forces. He did multiple interviews about rape he claimed to have witnessed. Few days into the attack, he told PBS NewsHour that, “the terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed — and after they raped, they — they did that”.
In a rather graphical description of what he witnessed, he told New York Times that he saw five men carrying hammer and knives dragging a young girl who were naked and screaming. He said he remembers her voice, “screams without words”.
It was from this interview the Times chose its title for the story, “‘ Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct.7”.
The pressure to prove the credibility of the story:
The Times reassigned Schwartz, Sella and Gettleman to re-report the story effectively. The team said that, “investigators have gathered ‘tens of thousands’ of testimonies of sexual violence committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli police, including at the site of a music festival that was attacked”, though none of the testimonies ever materialized.
During the podcast on Channel 12, Schwartz said majority of the women who were sexually assaulted on October 7th were “shot immediately after”.
NYT could not make any corroboration on the allegations claimed by Schwartz, Sella, and Gettleman. However, a revealing correction was made by the media. It said, “an earlier version of this article misstated the kind of evidence Israeli police have gathered in investigating accusations of sexual violence committed on Oct. 7 in the attack by Hamas against Israel. The police are relying mainly on witness testimony, not on autopsies or forensic evidence”.
Relative of Gal Abdush, who was killed on October 7, said that they were pressured by Schwartz and Sella. Gal Abdush’s sister took to social media story and said Times reporters “mentioned they want to write a report in memory of Gal, and that’s it. If we knew that the title would be about rape and butchery, we’d never accept that.” In its follow-up story, the Times sought to discredit her initial comment, quoting Abdush’s sister as saying she “had been ‘confused about what happened’ and was trying to ‘protect my sister.’”, as reported by The Intercept.
The women who filmed Abdush on October 7th told YNet that she pressured by Schwartz to handover the picture of Abdush for the purpose of Israeli propaganda. The woman said, “they called me again and again and explained how important it is to Israeli hasbara”. Hasbara is the term used for public diplomacy, which in practice refers to Israeli propaganda efforts directed at international audiences, as reported by media.
Every time NYT reporters found obstacles in proving their claim, they turned to Israeli officials or witnesses who had already been interviewed by media repeatedly. Even after months of their said investigation, the team still stood at square one. They only has the words of Israeli officials, Zaka members and soldiers to prove their claim that more than 30 women and girls were discovered with signs of sexual assault.
On the Channel 12 podcast, Schwartz said the last remaining piece she needed for her story was a solid number of possible survivors of the sexual assault. She said she was told by the Israeli Ministry of Welfare and Social Affair that “we have four and we can stand behind that number”. In the end, NYT wrote “at least three women and one man who were sexually assaulted and survived”.
During the podcast, Shwartz has admitted that there were “no collection of evidence from the scene”. She also added that the editors were behind the project. She said, “there was no skepticism on their part, ever,” she claimed. “It still doesn’t mean I had [the story], because I didn’t have a ‘second source’ for many things”, as quoted by The Intercept.
When Gettleman was invited to speak about sexual violence at the Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, he said he don’t even want to use the term ‘evidence’, because it is more like a legal term which suggest that one is trying to prove an allegation or prove a case in court. He said that was not his role, and he is supposed to “share the story in a way that makes people care. Not just to inform, but to move people. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time”.
Citing the UN’s report of Palestinian women being treated in dehumanising manner in the Israeli prison, and the report of two rape, one Times reporter said colleagues are what a balanced approach might look like. The reporter said, “I am waiting to see if the paper will report in depth, deploying the same kind of resources and means, on the United Nations’ report that documented the horrors committed against Palestinian women”.
