content warning: involving discussion of rape/sexual assault although as the title implies, there is no convincing evidence that any of this has actually occurred.
note: and I promise you person about to link something, it’s not convincing evidence, I read a lot of news including mainstream news, there is none as of the time I am posting this and if you believe some of the lurid, unsubstantiated (and frankly racist) atrocity propaganda fantasies spun up then propogated by the BBC among other outlers, I have a bridge to sell you.
The lack of any evidence of “mass rape” perpetrated by Hamas members on October 7 hasn’t stopped Israel from weaponizing these accusations to legitimize its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
and the closing paragraph
But it extends further than that. The reliance on lazy Orientalist caricatures of Arab men as savage sexual predators is both cunning and destructive. The implication that brutality and sexual depravity are intrinsic characteristics of Arab men and Arab people suggests that Palestinians are, inherently and irredeemably, an evil race, and their total annihilation, therefore, is justifiable. Manufacturing consent for a genocide works only when the genocide of a people is not regarded as a loss, and the eradication of their culture, their history, and their humanity is an act that renders the world a better place. The stigmatization and dehumanization of indigenous men and men of color is not new. It is an agenda that is all too familiar, and we must resist it.
Sexual violence as a tool of war has always happened and probably will always happen as long as wars exist. Pick a war, pick any side, they use sexual violence.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2631054/
I’m not defending anyone doing this, I think it’s heinous, but it’s incredibly common, which is my main point.
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Tell us more about how the US did a good job.
Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse 2004 American military scandal during the Iraq War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse?wprov=sfla1
Thanks for making my point!
“In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery.”
Wow… you actually very special to think only 17 were the one who caused Abu Ghraib.
You can’t rape anyone, if you blow the civilian population up with a drone!
Drones kill a lot less civilians than shelling does. Russia and Israel are straight up shelling entire cities. US does not.
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/thank-you-us-deadly-drones
However, leaked Pentagon documents show that during a five-month period in 2013, 90% of those killed by US drone strikes in Operation Haymaker in north-east Afghanistan were unintended targets.
In fact, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, US drone strikes have killed 1,551 civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen since 2004. Some of these deaths appear to have been unlawful, and may even amount to extrajudicial executions or war crimes
Well.
But overall the percent is around 7% to 15%, significantly lower than the 70%-80% for Israeli airstrikes.
US drone strikes kill between 7% and 15% civilians. It’s about 70%-80% for Israel.
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Perhaps there is something between “do nothing” and “do a genocide” which might have actually been appropriate. Who knows.
Yup, that was exactly my point. If someone punches your mother, kill everyone in that person’s neighborhood and anyone that looks like them. Eventually you will get the culprit.
I wonder if the ‘proof’ is going to be another ‘intercepted phone call’, with two obviously IDF soldiers speaking broken arabic with heavy isreali accents?
Do you think they’ll call each other Sunday and Monday to keep the bit going?Removed by mod
They keep saying rape and babies beheaded and hostages killing.
Let’s assume all is true, does that justifies bombing hospitals, schools, and stopping water and food along with 24H bombing on a 2 million person mostly under the age of 20?
The answer is no…
Thank you, I felt like I was taking crazy pills for thinking this.
The goal is to generate outrage, and then use the anger to justify retaliation. I agree with you completely, you don’t commit further atrocities over alleged or even prior atrocities.
Rape is always used in war, and always used as an excuse for escalation, and never really cared about by the men in power.
The question shouldn’t be whether rape is happening; it should be what kind of scum cynically uses that as an excuse to bomb shit harder when they don’t give a fuck about actual rape victims?
The question shouldn’t be whether rape is happening
Excuse me? We absolutely SHOULD question whether rape is happening.
This "that’s just how war is " kind of narrative needs to go, there is no laws of physics that force armies to commit rape or any voluntary attack against civilians for that matter.
That’s not useful, that’s not helpful, that’s not smart, that’s not having a “nuanced understanding”, that’s cynical minimization of unwarranted violence and horrible crimes against civilians.
It shift the blame of warcrimes on a cynical and frankly halfassed “that’s just how it is” kind of “explanation” and minimise the responsibility of the culprit.
You can’t just say that both sides of a conflict always do this and handwave it as if it was some kind of universal law, if you want to claim that, you need to prove it.