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Why are American progressives silent after reports of Hamas’ rape, sexual torture of Israelis?

March 13, 2024

The United Nations has long been so uniformly corrupt on the subject of Israel that anytime it ekes out an acknowledgement of attacks on the Jewish state — however reluctantly, belatedly and perfunctorily it does so — it’s a man-bite-dog story. Last week, a U.N. official who had clearly drawn the bureaucratic short straw issued a “report” of sorts, confirming what anyone paying attention already knew: that in the process of slaughtering 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, Hamas had also committed mass acts of sadistic, savage sexual violence.

Hamas’ barbarism against young Israelis at an all-night dance festival or asleep in their beds had been thoroughly documented for months by the time the poor U.N. functionary was asked by the secretary general to do something that looked as though he were looking into the matter in late January — almost four months after Hamas’ slaughter. God-awful evidence, video and audio recordings by Hamas gunmen, firsthand accounts — and confessions — had already been collected and analyzed.

“Everything was an apocalypse of corpses,” one survivor has recalled. “Girls without any clothes on. Without tops. Without underwear. People cut in half. Butchered. Some were beheaded. There were girls with a broken pelvis due to repetitive rapes. Their legs were spread wide apart in a split.”

One Israeli investigator stated that “our team commander saw several female soldiers who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina or shot in the breasts. There seemed to be systematic genital mutilation of a group of victims.”

The U.N. report did make official what had already been assumed about Hamas’ hostages. It found “clear and convincing” evidence that the children and women held by Hamas have been subjected to rape, sexualized torture, and cruel and degrading sexual abuse.

Now, it might be imagined that self-professed progressives on campuses, in social justice organizations and in The New York Times newsroom would find it natural to condemn Hamas, to make sure that the public knew about these outrages, and to demand that Hamas release those it continues to hold captive.

But no.

There are throngs of young feminists who, rightly disgusted by the sheer misogyny on full display in the “Access Hollywood” tape and by Donald Trump’s sexual assault on E. Jean Carroll, wouldn’t be caught dead breathing a public word about Hamas’ rape and torture of Israeli women. We are lucky if young progressives are prepared to acknowledge that it even occurred. As for speaking up about it on campus or in the workplace, forget about it. To say that it isn’t fashionable to deplore what Hamas did and pledges to do again doesn’t capture it; speaking up about this is considered social suicide.

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The current line is that condemning Hamas’ rape spree amounts to Zionists “weaponizing” rape — because, you see, it isn’t Hamas, which did the raping, which weaponized rape. It’s those pointing out what Hamas did. Moreover, condemning Hamas for its bestial violence against women is “playing into an anti-Palestinian narrative.” Such is the deeply disturbed state of the left: part Alice-in-Wonderland on steroids, part mind-bending intellectual dishonesty.

Writer Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy,” spoke recently about the video of 25-year-old Noa Argamani dancing at the Nova music festival just before she was executed by Hamas killers, who then carted her body back into Gaza, where a mob cheered. “Can you even imagine a starker contrast between good and evil?” she asked. “Surely, I thought in my naivete, the left would see itself reflected in these music-loving young people. Surely Noa Argamani begging for her life as the butchers made off with her would inspire on the left a sense of identification and a corresponding sense of anger.”

“How could it not?” she says she thought. “Friends, it did not.”

So many who hold themselves out as progressives remain silent about Hamas. They justify it, contextualize it, even defend it. Historians will look back at them, and pronounce them a disgrace. Justly so.

Jeff Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

Orange County Register

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Why are American progressives silent after reports of Hamas’ rape, sexual torture of Israelis?

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