Zaka stories have been essential to justifying Israel’s all-out war against Gaza, which has killed around 30,000 Palestinians in less than five months. Speaking at the United Nations in December, Zaka deputy commander Simcha Greiniman broke down while describing alleged atrocities. He later told the same stories to a meeting of British parliamentarians.
Even when Western media outlets have questioned Landau, the inquiries were half-hearted. The Times asked Landau “about reports, attributed to him, that children had been beheaded on Oct. 7.” It reported: “Mr. Landau denied making the claim, though he acknowledged sometimes misspeaking in the immediate aftermath of the attack. What he saw himself, he said, was a small, burned body with at least part of the head missing, perhaps severed by the force of a blast. It was unclear, he added, if it was the body of teenager or someone younger.”
While the Times said the statements had been “attributed” to Landau, there is no dispute he said them. He told the stories on camera, and the clips were posted widely online. He told CNN he found “a body, of a 14, 15-year-old. Head chopped off. We were looking around for the head. Couldn’t find it.” On India’s Republic TV, Landau said of beheaded children, “Yes, this occurred. This happened.” He made similar comments to Channel 14 Israel and CBS News. There is no evidence Hamas beheaded children or babies. As The Intercept reported at the time, the Israeli military said it couldn’t confirm the claims just four days after the attack.
Media outlets, including Israeli television news programs, have debunked numerous stories about dead babies, calling them “fictional.”
If you are talking about Miral Abdush, even her own family claimed that she was not raped.
There is no forensic evidence of her being raped.
That photo was a woman with her skirt being flipped up.
Unless you have cool new intel which no other journalist has in which case please link it or send it to me in a DM.
Here’s some fun reading material:
Family of “the girl in the black dress” accuses NYT of having “invented” rape claim
You write, “Based largely on the video evidence — which was verified by The New York Times — Israeli police officials said they believed that [Gal] Abdush was raped, and she has become a symbol of the horrors visited upon Israeli women and girls during the Oct. 7 attacks.”
However, the sister of Gal Abdush, Miral Alter, stated in a January 2 Instagram comment that “she was not raped… There was no proof that there was rape, it was only a video.” She also pointed out that the timeline between Gal’s last message to the family and the time of her reported murder made it impossible for a rape to occur: “How in 4 minutes [were] they also raped and burned [?]”
Alter concluded, “the New York Times that came to us indicated that they wanted to do a story in memory of Gal and Nagy [her husband] and that’s why we approved. If we knew that it was a headline like rape slaughter, we would never agree. Never.”
Is Alter’s statement accusing you of misleading her family true? And why have you ignored her comments bluntly stating that her sister had not been raped? Did you and Alter ever discuss your theory that Abdush was the victim of a sexual assault?
Gal Abdush’s brother-in-law has also spoken out against the claims contained in your article. In a January 4 interview with Israel’s Channel 13, Nissim Abdush denied that Gal had been raped, insisting that it would have been impossible given her husband was present with her at the time. “The media invented it,” he stated. Nissim Abdush also accused the international press – presumably referring to you – of resorting to sensationalism in place of evidence-based journalism. Finally, he lamented that the false claims of his sister-in-law’s rape were harmful to the psychological health of her orphaned children.
Once again, why have you failed to incorporate statements by a family member of Gal Abdush explicitly contradicting key claims in your article?
Eti Bracha, the mother of Gal Abdush, told Israel’s YNet she was first told that her daughter had been raped when she was contacted by you. “We didn’t know about the rape at first, we only knew when the New York Times reporter contacted us. They said they cross-examined the evidence and said that Gal had been sexually assaulted. Until now we don’t know what exactly happened,” added the mother.
Is it normal journalistic protocol to influence a family’s perspective of a loved one’s killing, when the crime remains unsolved? How did the New York Times obtain evidence which the Bracha-Abdush family had not yet seen? And what evidence existed beyond the video mentioned in your article?
There are more issues with your reporting on the killing of Gal Abdush. You claim that a video of Abdush filmed on October 8 by someone named Eden Wessely “went viral, with thousands of people responding, desperate to know if the woman in the black dress [was] their missing friend, sister or daughter.”
However, as the independent outlet Mondoweiss pointed out, you “did not link to the video but released a distant, indistinct image from it that revealed nothing.” Mondoweiss questions how you “confirmed the existence of these responses since Wessely’s Instagram account has been banned, and she created a new account in mid-December.”
Further, as Mondoweiss noted, “There is currently no trace of the video on the internet despite the [NY Times] claim that it ‘went viral.’ Moreover, the Israeli press, despite reporting on hundreds of stories about the October 7 victims, never mentioned ‘the woman in the black dress’ even once previous to the December 28 story.”
So where is the video that you claimed “went viral”? If it contained such powerful evidence of sexual violence, why was it not featured in your article? And how did you confirm the thousands of responses to the video by people supposedly demanding information about “the woman in the black dress”?
Her own family was not there. They saw the same photos as everyone else. They are in pain and it is understandable if they don’t want to believe she was raped, but I can draw my own conclusions.
Then explain why the IDF found no forensic evidence of her being raped. Or anyone else being raped.
A non-burned body would surely contain evidence.
The rape story is incredibly stupid to begin with. Rape only happens after combat is over. Even the hostages that were release all said they were not raped.
The only party raping in this conflict is the IDF which rapes women and sexually violates girls in prison.
They did not find forensic evidence because they did not conduct a forensic investigation.
That’s weird. Womens rights organisations were screaming at the IDF to use rape kits to collect evidence
But the IDF blocked their own forensic analyst experts specifically trained for this purpose from collecting and examining the bodies, and instead made Zaka do it.
All very coincidental.
Next time there is an unprecedented terrorist attack, perhaps they will be better organized.
In the meantime, all we are left with is the evidence of our own eyes.
Indeed. Our own eyes that can observe that Hamas did not rape anyone since October 7 but israel did.
Are you admitting israel raped people by the way? Or do your eyes not work well enough for that?
You can’t observe anything, because you don’t want to look and you don’t want to listen. Even when freed captives report sexual abuse. You’ve already made up your mind.
As for Israel, they are also responsible for atrocities. Both sides in this conflict are filled with a deep hatred that brings out the worst in humanity.
An IDF doctor statement is your “evidence”?
The same party that lied about rapes on Oct7, and are actual rapists are your credible source?
If only the IDF allowed interviews with the released hostages. But they don’t since the first interviews with released hostages all said they were treated well which is bad optics when the IDF is the side actually doing the raping.
And again no forensic evidence this time from women that are alive… 🤔