The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."
The United Nations, the Biden administration and the media continue to assert that Palestinians are enduring mass starvation even after proof emerges that the claim is propaganda.
Palestinians shop for fruit and vegetables at a
market in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Jan. 13, 2024. Photo by
Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
Part of the accepted narrative about the
war in the Gaza Strip is that the Palestinians there are enduring abject
hunger. In May, the head of the U.N. World Food Program claimed that
there was a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza. Reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post in
recent months have routinely noted that Palestinians are starving.
Indeed, the notion that there was a genuine shortage of food in Gaza
motivated President Joe Biden to order the U.S. Armed Forces to
construct a floating pier and anchor it alongside the Gazan shoreline to
facilitate the flow of vital supplies to those in need. On the strength
of these allegations, the International Criminal Court has requested
warrants for the arrest of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, largely because of the
claim that they are committing war crimes by deliberately starving the
Palestinians.
But what if there is no famine?
As it turns out, the U.N.’s own Famine Review Committee admitted
in a report that the claims about not enough food being sent into Gaza
were untrue. What’s more, this allegation, which is at the heart of the
equally widespread big lie that Israel is committing genocide against
the Palestinians, is a matter of sleight of hand bookkeeping. It seems
to be largely based on the fact that the number of trucks that are
delivering supplies, which flow into Gaza from Israel to feed the
Palestinians every day, were being undercounted with private-sector food
trucks not being counted as well as other deliveries. A pertinent fact
that should also be pointed out is that before Oct. 7, daily supplies of
food, fuel and other material were trucked into Gaza from Israel, which
gives the lie to the much-cited accusation that the Jewish state
blockaded the Strip. Egypt, however, has continued to close off its
border to it.
With a few exceptions, the truth about the current situation isn’t being widely reported. In Commentary, Seth Mandel wrote
about the findings of the U.N. report and various analyses that pointed
to the faulty data being used to justify claims of a Gaza famine. And
in The Jerusalem Post, Seth Frantzman
cited the work of two Columbia University professors who analyzed the
data and debunked the conventional wisdom about Israel starving the
Palestinians.
Palestinians
shop for fruit and vegetables at a market in Rafah, in the southern
Gaza Strip, on Jan. 13, 2024. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
All these studies show that if there are
food distribution problems in Gaza—and, obviously, an area that is the
setting for an ongoing military conflict set off by Hamas’s Oct. 7
attacks on Israel is going to experience disruptions—it is not due to a
shortage of food. The amount of items being shipped into Gaza from
Israel is, as these studies show, clearly sufficient to feed the people
of Gaza.
To note the truth about the famine that
isn’t happening should also be placed in the context of an event that is
happening. Israel’s efforts to keep aid flowing into the Strip are
unprecedented in the history of armed conflict. It is a given that
warring powers are not responsible for feeding their enemies, especially
people under the control of hostile combatants, as is true for
Palestinians who live in Rafah, where the last active Hamas military
units are still in control. That is, of course, countries other than the
Jewish state.
Under the circumstances, even the United
States has acknowledged that few of the supplies that had entered Gaza
via the floating pier had reached their intended recipients. The NGOs
and so-called human-rights groups blame Israel for inspecting the trucks
going into Gaza to try and stop them from being used for supplying
Hamas with weapons and other war materials, the primary obstacle to the
smooth flow of aid is the Palestinians themselves. But rather than admit
that the entire affair has been a scandalous waste of time, money and
resources—and illustrates the ill-advised and politically motivated
nature of Biden’s decision to involve the United States in this
fiasco—the administration continues to prevaricate about the problem.
Washington prefers to chide Israel rather than say outright that the
idea was a huge mistake.
As Mandel also pointed out, even the Times
is burying information that undermines the famine claim inside other
articles meant to buttress allegations against Israel. The newspaper
wrote that there is no shortage of food in northern Gaza, the very place
where it had previously asserted that famine was imminent.
Other reports point to not only the
continued flow of aid from Jerusalem but also the fact that food markets
are open even in areas in southern Gaza, where the fighting continues.
Hamas is stealing it
To point this out is not to deny that the
situation there is extremely difficult. In wartime, food distribution
networks are inevitably disrupted. But if Palestinians are suffering,
then it’s nothing short of libelous to blame Israel for it. From the
start of the war, armed Hamas operatives have hijacked most of the
deliveries, meaning that the aid goes to the terrorists and not to the
civilians they use as human shields. While media outlets often note that
Hamas is accused of stealing the goods, they generally put that down
only as an unsubstantiated accusation from Israel and its supporters.
Given the admission that the aid that was delivered from the U.S. pier
is not getting to Palestinian civilians, there is no other remotely
plausible explanation for this failure other than the fact that armed
Palestinians are preventing it from being handed out to their
compatriots who may need it.
Adding to the problem is a new factor. In
addition to Hamas itself commandeering aid shipments, gangs of
smugglers—most of which are likely affiliated with the various terrorist
movements—have also impeded the effort to feed Palestinians. As TheWall Street Journalreported,
cigarette smuggling has become a major part of the reason why shortages
exist, as criminals and aid workers who are their accomplices are using
the trucks that are supposed to bring in food and fuel for transporting
contraband tobacco.
Local
and displaced Palestinians prepare and bake food in a traditional clay
oven in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on May 17, 2024. Photo
by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
Then why are so many media outlets,
international organizations and the Biden administration still talking
about starvation and putting the onus on a single entity for this
largely fictional catastrophe?
The answer is obvious. In a war in which
much of the world has accepted the canard that Israel is a
“settler/colonial” and “apartheid” state against which just about any
tactic employed by its enemies is justified, inflating the predicament
of Palestinians in Gaza into a famine must be seen as the latest in a
long list of falsehoods that have been flung at the Jewish state since
Oct. 7.
This is a conflict in which some of the
same outlets highlighting the dubious claims of a famine have been eager
to discredit the truth about the reality of Hamas terrorism and, in
particular, the atrocities, including sexual crimes, committed by
Palestinians. Indeed, the members of the same anti-Israel media chorus
have faithfully repeated every lie spread by the Hamas propaganda
machine, including falsehoods about specific attacks and vastly inflated casualty figures
for Palestinian civilians, almost all of whom are alleged to be women
and children. So why should they be expected to be truthful about a
famine for which little or no proof can be supplied if they were willing
to lie about so much else?
As with every other falsehood put forward
about Israel’s conduct of the war, the truth—even when belatedly
admitted—doesn’t seem to matter. Those dedicated to the proposition
that, at best, Israel and Hamas are morally equivalent will always move
on to the next spurious charge without ever accounting for their
previous misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
That Israel is judged by double and triple
standards applied to no other nation—let alone no other democracy at
war—is nothing new.
A 21st-century blood libel
Yet the egregious nature of the Oct. 7
assault and atrocities, as well as the clear justification for Israel’s
counter-offensive to eliminate the genocidal terrorist movement that
carried out those crimes, seems to have impelled those who hate Israel
and Jews to new depths of mendacious reporting. The intersectional
left-wingers who are convinced that Israel is a nation of “white”
villains victimizing Palestinian “people of color” who are inaccurately
analogized to American victims of racial discrimination have no
compunction about spreading these smears. The worse the actual behavior
of the Palestinians, who are bent on the destruction of Israel and its
people, the more it becomes imperative to flip the narrative and accuse
Israel of genocide.
Palestinians
receive a hot meal prepared by volunteers in Deir al-Balah, in the
central Gaza Strip, on June 13, 2024. Photo by Abed Rahim
Khatib/Flash90.
Every death and all of the privations
suffered by Palestinian Arabs since Oct. 7 is the responsibility of the
Hamas terrorists who started this war and who take every opportunity to
maximize the suffering of their own people to besmirch Israel’s image.
That is not only the case for Gazans hurt or killed during the fighting
but true for anyone prevented from receiving aid shipped into the Strip
with Israel’s permission.
The mythical Gaza famine is just the
latest instance of how the Palestinians are gaslighting the world as
they deliberately spiral further into an abyss of unending conflict in
which they themselves are the primary victims. Sober-minded Americans
who by now ought to have learned better than to trust the corporate
media on this and many other issues should not be influenced by this
propaganda campaign, rooted in the age-old tropes of antisemitism in
which the Jews are always accused of conspiring to harm others. Stripped
of the emotionalism and partisan activism that colors so much of
contemporary journalism, and especially the coverage of the Middle East,
the claim that Israel is starving the Palestinians should be seen for
what it is: a 21st-century blood libel.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him @jonathans_tobin.
The new emails were gathered by the FBI in 2016 and show a degree of coordination with then-Vice President Biden top advisor and Burisma. Biden would later brag about quelling the investigation, but still insists he had no knowledge or relationship to his son's business.
Hunter Biden's team arranged for a
senior Burisma Holdings executive to meet with one of his father Joe
Biden's advisers at the State Department a decade ago, just months after
the Ukrainian energy firm's owner was targeted in a high-profile and
U.S.-backed corruption investigation, according to documents secretly
gathered years ago by the FBI. The elder Biden was vice president at the
time.
The documents, obtained by Just the News, chronicle a plan
in summer and fall 2014 to connect Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi
with then-State Department energy adviser Amos Hochstein, now a Middle
East envoy for President Joe Biden. It was facilitated by the law firm
that employed Hunter Biden at the time, Boies Schiller Flexner.
Hunter Biden himself was directly involved in the outreach, at one
point helping to forward a direct number for Hochstein to facilitate a
follow-up.
"Pls send D Amos' contact info," Hunter Biden wrote in a November
2014 email asking his business associate Eric Schwerin to forward the
phone number to another of his business partners, Devon Archer.
"Amos is 'Acting Special Envoy, Bureau of energy Resources' at
State," Biden added, showing he knew Hochstein's role and its relevance
to the Ukrainian energy company.
The documents, which were gathered by the FBI and other federal
agencies in 2016 in an unrelated securities fraud case, were recently
turned over to the House Oversight Committee by Archer.
The new evidence is significant to House investigators leading the Biden impeachment inquiry for several reasons.
First, some of the documents were not on Hunter Biden's infamous
laptop seized by the FBI in December 2019 and were never produced as
evidence in Donald Trump's Ukraine impeachment case.
Secondly, Hochstein had been questioned by Senate investigators in
2020 and claimed "he could not recall" whether he had contact with
Burisma as early as 2014.
And third, and perhaps most significantly, the efforts to connect
Hochstein with Pozharskyi began in July 2014, less than three months
after Hunter Biden joined Burisma's board. About that time, Great
Britain's Serious Fraud Office made a high-profile effort in April 2014
to freeze Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky’s assets as part of a money
laundering investigation that was assisted by the FBI.
The Zlochevsky investigation generated international headlines, and
the Obama-Biden State Department considered Burisma to be a corrupt
company at the time and was advocating for some form of accountability
or punishment.
Even Hochstein himself acknowledged the concerns about Burisma in his
2020 Senate testimony. “I certainly associated Burisma as having a
corrupt past that I believed needed to be prosecuted,” Hochstein told
Senate investigators while testifying he did not recall having contact
with the company in 2014.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who was one of the first in Congress to
investigate the Biden family's overseas business dealings and to
interview Hochstein, told Just the News the new records
chronicling the effort to connect Hochstein with Burisma in 2014 were
important evidence proving why foreign entities like Burisma were paying
Hunter Biden and his associates while his father was vice president.
"Well, it proves that what Hunter Biden was selling for all those
millions of dollars was influence, and access," Johnson told the Just the News, No Noise television
show. And, again, it's not surprising. What we're seeing now is we're
just seeing more and more pieces of the puzzle being found. It starts
showing a clearer picture of what happened."
The State Department and Hunter Biden's lawyer Abbe Lowell did not
return messages seeking comment on the documents. Hochstein could not be
reached over the phone for comment either
One document, a draft meeting schedule prepared for Burisma executive
Vadim Pozharskyi’s visit to Washington, D.C., shows that on July 23,
2014 one hour was set aside for Pozharskyi, Burisma lobbyist David
Leiter, and Boies Schiller Flexner, LLP law partner Heather King to meet
with Hochstein. A source directly familiar with the meeting confirmed
to Just the News that it took place.
Just days after the the meeting, King sent an email to Hunter Biden,
Pozharskyi, Burisma board member and Biden business partner Devon
Archer, and Leiter that indicates Hochstein had contact with the company
representatives.
“This news is very concerning. I assume you will be sending an email
to the State Dept today about this? We will also get you connected with
the US Embassy contact so you can hopefully meet with the guy Hochstein
recommended as soon as possible,” King wrote.
This email came in response to Burisma's concerns over new laws in
Ukraine which were set to raise taxes on private gas producers. It also
raises questions about Hunter Biden’s efforts to use his political
connections while his father was vice president to influence official
policy.
Hochstein's communications with another State Department official
weeks before the proposed meeting also indicate that he may have been
preparing for a contact with Burisma officials earlier that month,
though he could not recall the specifics in his 2020 testimony.
On July 9, Hochstein wrote to another official saying, "FYI, per your
email re: David Leiter." To the email he attached an article titled:
"Ukrainian employer of Joe Biden's son hires a D.C. lobbyist."
When Hochstein was asked by Senate investigators about the
communication, he could not recall the specifics. "It sure seems that
way, but I can't recall it. David Leiter was mentioned in this article.
I may have mentioned the article to her, but I really have no idea,"
Hochstein said, according to the transcript of his interview.
Leiter's lobbying disclosures filed with the U.S. Senate show that he lobbied the State Department during the time period when the meeting took place.
At the time, the State Department considered Burisma and its owner
corrupt and other agencies in the U.S. government were actively
assisting a British investigation into Zlochevsky. Several months
earlier, on April 28, 2014, the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office
opened a criminal money laundering investigation related to corruption
in Ukraine, the office announced in a press release. The country froze $23 million in assets of the individual under investigation the same day.
Though Burisma owner Zlochevsky was not directly named, Hochstein’s
testimony confirms the Ukrainian was the subject of the probe by the
British government and that the State Department viewed him as corrupt. A
report from the Kyiv Post also confirms that Zlochevsky was the target of the British action.
“There was an active case in the U.K. that the U.S. Government was
supporting against Mr. Zlochevsky. Unfortunately, the prosecutor's
office in Ukraine did not cooperate with the prosecutor's office in the
U.K., and that ultimately was a driving factor in dismissing the case,”
Hochstein told Congress, explaining why the department viewed the
company as corrupt.
It is unclear from the documents what Hunter Biden’s Burisma
associates expected from their meeting with Hochstein or what help he
might give them, if any. But, other documents previously unearthed by Just the News
show that Boies' firm was central to organizing a legal defense plan
for Burisma and Zlochevsky during part of the time that Hunter Biden
served on the oligarch's company board.
The Boies firm in June 2014 compiled a detailed 58-page memo,
to extricate the controversial energy company from an ongoing criminal
investigation in Ukraine that relied heavily on trying to influence his
father’s administration in Washington, Just the News reported earlier this month. The plan was obtained from the same collection of documents referenced in this article.
The memo identified several targets that the Burisma legal campaign
hoped to contact in Washington, including Amos Hochstein, with whom the
Burisma representatives would apparently meet one month later.
Leiter again communicated with Hochstein in August, according to another email.
“In addition, I actually ran into Acting U.S. Special Envoy and
Coordinator for International Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein this
morning. He came right over to say hello,” Leiter wrote to Pozharskyi,
King, and Archer.
“Unfortunately, we were both with other people at breakfast, so we
did not have the chance to have a very detailed conversation on the
developments in Ukraine, but I will reach out to him with a follow up
email to let him know about your conversations with John Bush at the
U.S. Embassy in Kiev, as well as our upcoming meeting at the Ukrainian
Embassy,” he added.
Hochstein’s communication with both Hunter Biden extended beyond summer 2014. In November, the day before Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine for his third visit as vice president, Hunter Biden asked Schwerin to forward Hochstein’s contact information to Archer.
“E- Pls send D Amos' contact info,” Biden wrote to Eric Schwerin on
November 20. “D- Amos is ‘Acting Special Envoy, Bureau of energy
Resources’ at State.”
In 2015, Hochstein continued to discuss Hunter Biden's Burisma
affiliation with both Hunter and then-Vice President Joe Biden,
according to his own testimony and email evidence. In October 2015,
Hochstein reportedly raised the issue of Hunter Biden’s work on
Burisma’s board directly with Joe Biden, he told Congress. Despite that,
President Biden and his surrogates have insisted there was no overlap
between his activities or meetings, and those of his son's.
Hochstein testified that he “wanted to make sure that he [Vice
President Biden] was aware that there was an increase in chatter on
media outlets close to Russians and corrupt oligarchs-owned media
outlets about undermining his message—to try to undermine his [Vice
President Biden’s] message and including Hunter Biden being part of the
board of Burisma.”
Then, Hunter Biden reached out to him to set up a meeting for coffee on November 4, 2015, shortly after he reportedly spoke with his father, an email from Hunter Biden's laptop shows. The
communications between them continued after the meeting.
“Amos Hochstein called,” Hunter Biden’s secretary emailed him shortly
after. “Please call back today if possible,” she wrote, according to
emails previously published by Just the News.
On December 6, 2015, Hochstein was photographed briefing the vice
president on his way to Ukraine. When Senate investigators asked about
this briefing, Hochstein declined to elaborate on the specifics of his
conversations with the vice president but said, “In my conversation with
Hunter Biden, I did not recommend that he leave the board” of Burisma.
The expansion underway at the Fordow underground plant alone could allow Iran to accumulate several bombs' worth of nuclear fuel every month, according to The Washington Post.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tours an exhibition in Tehran on Iran's nuclear industry, June 11, 2023. Source: X.
An expansion underway at Iran’s Fordow
enrichment plant could allow the regime to accumulate several bombs’
worth of nuclear fuel every month, The Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing confidential documents.
According to the report, the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran had informed the International Atomic Energy
Agency of its plan to install some 1,400 new centrifuges at the heavily
guarded underground facility, which would triple the production of
enriched uranium at Fordow alone.
The new equipment was to be installed
within four weeks, as similar expansion plans were underway at the main
enrichment plant near the central Iranian city of Natanz, according to
the report, which cited IAEA documents and European diplomats.
While Tehran has restricted IAEA
inspectors’ ability to monitor the country’s nuclear advancement,
inspectors witnessed technicians installing advanced IR-6 centrifuges
last week, per a confidential memo shared with the U.N. agency’s member
states.
Within a month after becoming
operational, Fordow’s new equipment could generate 320 pounds of
weapons-grade uranium, one expert told the paper. Using conservative
estimates, that would be sufficient for five bombs. In two months, the
stockpile could climb to nearly 500 pounds.
“Iran would achieve a capability to
breakout quickly, in a deeply buried facility, a capability it has never
had before,” said David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert and
president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and
International Security NGO.
After a leaked draft of Iran’s plans was initially reported by Reuters on
June 13, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller charged the
Islamic Republic with “expanding its nuclear program in ways that have
no credible peaceful purpose” and vowed to “respond accordingly.”
However, a U.S. official told The Washington Post on
Wednesday that the Biden administration does not believe that Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has “made a decision to resume the
weaponization program that we judge Iran suspended or stopped at the end
of 2003.
“That said, we remain deeply concerned
with Iran’s nuclear activities and will continue to vigilantly monitor
them,” stated the official.
Tehran has continued to ramp up enrichment, while maintaining that its nuclear program is strictly peaceful. Iran’s stockpile of 60%-enriched uranium has increased by 20.6 kilograms (45.5 pounds) since February, AFP reported on May 27, citing a new IAEA report.
The confidential document, which was also seen by the Associated Press,
revealed that Tehran had accumulated 142.1 kilograms (313.2 pounds) of
uranium enriched up to 60%. This level of enrichment is just a technical
step from 90% enrichment, considered weapons grade.
According to the IAEA definition, it is
technically possible to create an atomic bomb with roughly 42 kilograms
(92.5 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60% if the material is further
enriched to 90%.
There have also been recent Iranian threats of
a push towards the bomb. On May 9, an adviser to Khamenei warned that
Tehran would weaponize its nuclear program if Israel “threatens its
existence.”
Also last month, a lawmaker close to the regime suggested
that the country might already possess an atomic bomb, saying, “In my
opinion, we have achieved nuclear weapons, but we do not announce it.”
In their June 7 article in The Times, Catherine Philp and Gabrielle Weiniger chose to whitewash horrific crimes committed against innocent women, effectively further dehumanizing them.
“It’s very sad for me that people would
not believe, or deny, the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas,” a
former Israeli hostage told JNS.
“I was with the girls in Gaza that were
abused and while it’s very difficult to discuss in detail, I saw them
after it happened. The girls would not stop talking about their period
and I am very worried about them,” she said.
The woman, in her 60s, was freed from
Hamas captivity in Gaza in November as part of a ceasefire deal. She
asked that her name not be used due to her close connection to another
abductee still being held in the Strip.
“I saw that something happened to her. I saw it on her face,” said the ex-captive.
“She was very scared. And she did not tell
us at the beginning. She was very quiet. After a couple of hours, she
told us that he had touched her in all parts of her body,” she added.
This account is one of many excluded from Catherine Philp’s and Gabrielle Weiniger’s June 7 article in The Times of London, titled “Israel says Hamas weaponised rape. Does the evidence add up?”
The piece is a classic example of
denialism, cherry-picking information to paint Jews, and by extension
their country, as unable to differentiate between reality and fiction
due to their political proclivities and past traumas.
Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, Orit Sulitzeanu and Dr. Sarai Aharoni, all of whom were quoted in the Times piece, released a statement accusing its authors of misrepresentation in service of an agenda.
“We generally do not respond to press
articles. However, due to the cynical exploitation of our interviews in
the article … we feel compelled to depart from our policy,” the
statement reads. “Regrettably, the published article misrepresented our
words, twisting them to convey the impression that we support the
prejudiced argument that claims of sexual violence are being manipulated
by Israel.”
Its authors aim “to discredit and gaslight
the victims of heinous acts of sexual violence. … In this instance, the
reporters’ agenda replaced the professional and ethical commitment to
presenting evidence accurately,” the statement continues.
Despite the article’s claims, “The use of
sexual violence as a weapon of war was a significant part of the October
7 attack,” it states.
“We have the footage”
Halperin-Kaddari is the founding director
of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at
Bar-Ilan University Law Faculty, and a co-founder of the Dinah Project
7/10, which seeks justice for the victims of Hamas’s sexual crimes.
She told JNSthat the testimonies she had heard, and which were omitted from the Times piece, “from a legal point of view lead me to the conclusion that sexual violence on October 7 was used as a weapon of war.”
This conclusion, she said, is based on
“evidence that sexual violence was perpetrated in several distinct
locations, all at the same time during a very short span, and all
performed with an extremely high degree of brutality that included
mutilation of the breasts and genitalia.”
She added, “We have the footage, the
pictures taken at the scene, the testimonies of eye witnesses and those
of first responders who found all the bodies.”
The documented incidents followed a
similar pattern and were carried out in a similar fashion, she said.
“This could not have happened unless there were directions and unless it
was a premeditated part of the plan of the attack of October 7,” she
added.
Nevertheless, the Times cites a
grand total of one Oct. 7 survivor, Amit Soussana, who was freed along
with more than 100 others from Hamas captivity as part of the November
ceasefire deal.
“We cannot look away”
In March, Soussana told The New York Times that
she was sexually assaulted during her 54 days of Hamas captivity in the
Gaza Strip. She described being held in a children’s bedroom, chained
by her ankle. On multiple occasions, a guard named Muhammad would enter,
sit next to her on the bed, lift up her shirt and touch her.
Soussana recounted that Muhammad had
attacked her after briefly freeing her from the shackles to use the
bathroom. The terrorist forced her to “commit a sexual act on him” at
gunpoint.
The NYT noted that the accounts
were consistent with what Soussana told an Israeli gynecologist and a
social worker within hours of her release. The newspaper reviewed
medical files in order to verify the claims.
Released
hostage Amit Soussana in front of her destroyed home in Kibbutz Kfar
Aza, southern Israel, Jan. 29, 2024. Photo by Paulina Patimer.
On Monday, Soussana
recounted her experience during a White House event marking
International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict.
“The sexual assault I experienced should
never happen to any human being under any circumstances. No one should
ever be sexually violated, and there are no justifying circumstances for
these crimes,” she said.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris vowed
not to remain silent after hearing Soussana’s story, saying the Israeli
survivor, an attorney, “has bravely come forward with her account of
sexual violence while she was held captive by Hamas.”
“These testimonies, I fear, will only
increase as more hostages are released,” said the vice president. “We
cannot look away. And we will not be silent.”
Harris said that after Hamas’s Oct. 7
massacre in Israel’s northwestern Negev, she witnessed “images of bloody
Israeli women abducted.”
“Believing survivors has become a loyalty test”
Yet, Philp and Weiniger quote Aharoni to
suggest that “the only reason” Soussana and others “told their story was
because they wanted some kind of political pressure on the Israeli
government to work harder to release the hostages.”
Later, Aharoni is cited expressing concern
that politicians linked to Israel’s ruling Likud Party “have used the
feminist agenda in a very opportunistic way for a very specific
political narrative associated with the Netanyahu government.…
“The question of believing the survivors has become a test of your loyalty to the nation,” they claim.
“It’s happening right now in Gaza”
Shelly Tal Meron, an Israeli lawmaker from
the opposition Yesh Atid Party, confirmed to JNS that “on Oct. 7, we
had a lot of cases of sexual assault, mutilation, rape and different
kinds of abuse. We also know that it’s happening right now in Gaza so to
hear that people are even doubting it is outrageous.”
Tal Meron went on to say that, “I have
been in contact with hostages who returned from captivity and told me
what happened to them. I also met a survivor of the Supernova music
festival who heard other women being raped around her. We heard
testimony from someone else at the festival who watched a gang rape
happen during which the terrorists cut out the breast of their victim
and played with it. Another victim was stabbed while being raped and
then shot in the back of the head.
“There are a lot of bodies that had sharp
objects in the women’s groin, they shot or cut off their intimate parts.
We saw that this was a systematic way of Hamas terrorists harming these
women.”
“This is at the doorstep of every country in the world”
Tal Meron is also the chair of the Global
Women’s Coalition Against Gender Based Violence as a Weapon of War, and
has been speaking in parliaments around Europe.
“Right now, it’s happening in Israel to
Jewish women but this is at the doorstep of every country in the world,
we have instances in Ukraine, against Yazidi women in Iraq, and in
Africa,” she explained.
“We are making a plan for initiatives such
as proposing legislation in parliaments around the globe. We had around
160 representatives attend the first meeting of our coalition on May
20, including Israeli women, an Iranian, a Lebanese, a Syrian woman,”
she said.
Knesset
members Boaz Bismuth and Tal Meron lead the Knesset lobby for releasing
the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip, at the Knesset in Jerusalem,
Jan. 9, 2024. Credit: Tal Meron Spokesperson.
Blaming Jewish “historical memories”
After attempting to portray Soussana as a
political tool, the authors then attribute fantasies of rape on Oct. 7
to “historical memories” imprinted on the Jewish psyche during centuries
of pogroms in eastern Europe–“a fact that would come to play a role in
the reporting of what happened” during the Hamas massacre.
According to Philp and Weiniger, this
mental problem is compounded because Jews harbor an “idea of the Arab
male as an explicit sexual threat to Jewish women,” which, to hammer
home their prior point, was “developed in tandem with the movement of
Israeli politics to the right.”
The groundwork is thus laid to discredit
Zaka, an organization made up primarily of ultra-Orthodox Jewish
volunteers who have for decades sifted through the carnage of
Palestinian terror attacks in a bid to identify victims and provide them
with burials in accordance with Jewish law.
Zaka played an instrumental, albeit
imperfect, role in identifying the bodies of hundreds of Israelis
mutilated by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. The authors suggest that such
religious Jews are unable to identify evidence of sexual atrocities
because they are faithful to their wives.
“At Zaka, we have close to 4000
volunteers: Men and women, Jews, Muslims and Christians, so hearing that
we cannot identify rape because we never saw a woman naked aside from
our wives is outrageous,” veteran ZAKA volunteer Simcha Greiniman told
JNS. “Every volunteer goes through training to understand how to deal
with remains without contaminating the scene and to leave it in optimal
condition for those coming afterwards to collect evidence.
“According to Jewish law, a man can bury a
woman and can handle her body. Zaka volunteers don’t walk away from
women who were killed in car accidents and we didn’t walk away from
women killed on Oct. 7,” continued Greiniman. “I have many pictures and
videos that I took. The police got pieces of evidence from Zaka,
including 200,000 images from the scene. A lot of the bodies were shot
in their private parts so there wasn’t even the possibility to gather
samples.
“We won’t give it to anyone out of
respect. Whatever was taken by us was given to the police and it is
their responsibility to make sure what needs to be shown is shown and
the rest is not,” he added.
A
member of Israel’s ZAKA search-and-rescue organization searches for
human remains in Kfar Aza, near the Israeli-Gaza border in southern
Israel, Oct. 15, 2023. Photo by Edi Israel/Flash90.
Yet the Times article suggests that Israeli police have done next to nothing and have no evidence at all.
“The Israel Police is currently
investigating the heinous crimes and atrocities committed by Hamas
terrorists on October 7th, 2023. As part of this complex investigation,
our detectives and officers are meticulously examining sexually based
offenses,” according to a statement provided to JNS.
“While substantial evidence of various
types has already been collected and reviewed, this sensitive matter
requires the utmost care to ensure integrity, allowing us to properly
process the evidence through the criminal justice system. Beyond the
evidence cleared for public release, statements given, and admissions of
guilt by the terrorists, we remain committed to upholding due process
by reserving the right to not divulge additional sensitive information,”
added the statement.
No other interpretation
In January, Haim Otmazgin, another ZAKA
volunteer, described to an Israeli parliamentary committee how his team
worked to collect bodies while the IDF was battling terrorists nearby
because there was a threat of corpses being kidnapped to Gaza.
“Another woman is cuffed, another one is
stripped, another one has her body parts cut off. It’s like a series of
pictures being repeated again and again. We saw the same things at
[Kibbutz] Re’im and later in [other] kibbutzim,” recounted Otmazgin.
“We found a young girl, on the bed,
clothes rolled up, shot in the head and her throat split. Her pants
rolled down, without underwear on her. There are too many instances like
these… The images we saw tell a story that cannot be interpreted in any
other way,” he added.
ZAKA
search and rescue volunteers at Kibbutz Be’eri identify the bodies of
Israelis slain by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, Oct. 11, 2023. Credit:
ZAKA.
Thirty-four paragraphs into their article,
the authors finally reach a brief evidentiary stage, in which they
admit that sexual violence was, in fact, rampant on Oct. 7.
They write: “On March 4, Pramila Patten
sat down before journalists to deliver her findings. There were, she
said, ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe there had been rape and sexual
assaults on October 7, particularly at the Nova festival ground, and
‘clear and convincing information’— a higher standard of evidence—of
rape and sexual torture of hostages held in Gaza.”
What they omit is that Patten, the U.N.
secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence and
conflict, visited Israel in late January and early February at the
government’s invitation.
Her team found that “there are reasonable
grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in
multiple locations during the 7 October attacks, including rape and
gang-rape in at least three locations, namely: the Nova music festival
site and its surroundings, Road 232, and Kibbutz Re’im. In most of these
incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed, and at
least two incidents relate to the rape of women’s corpses.
“The mission team also found a pattern of
victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot
across multiple locations. Although circumstantial, such a pattern may
be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including sexualized
torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”
Pramila
Patten, special representative of the U.N. secretary-general on sexual
violence in conflict, with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and First Lady
Michal Herzog at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Jan. 29,
2024. Source: X.
Sulitzeanu, one of the experts who released the statement denouncing their inclusion in the Times
piece, is the head of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel.
The authors take out of context her explanations regarding Zaka’s
special mission in Israeli society, quoting her as calling them
“ultra-religious” and questioning their training.
Somehow, Philp and Weiniger fail to
mention that Sulitzeanu’s ARCCI in February released a report
documenting the “sadistic sex crimes” committed during the Hamas-led
invasion on Oct. 7.
“The report finds that the Hamas attack
included brutal acts of violent rape, often involving threats with
weapons, specifically directed towards injured women. Many rape
incidents occurred collectively, with collaboration among the
perpetrating terrorists. In some cases, rape was conducted in front of
an audience, such as partners, family, or friends, to increase the pain
and humiliation for all present,” the report found.
“Some Hamas members pursued victims who
escaped the massacre, dragging them by their hair with screams. The
majority of victims were subsequently killed during or after the sexual
assault. Several testimonies, interviews, and additional sources
indicate the use of sadistic practices by Hamas terrorists, aimed at
intensifying the humiliation and fear of sexual abuse. Many victims’
bodies were found mutilated and bound, with sexual organs brutally
attacked, and in some cases, weapons were inserted into them. Some
bodies were discovered deliberately booby-trapped,” it added.
Sulitzeanu told JNS that the Times journalists
“abused her sincerity and did not correctly represent her point of
view.” She had wrongfully assumed that “we are women, we fight this
terrible thing of sexual violence because we believe that nobody should
go through this regardless of political affiliations,” she said.
“You understand it was intentional”
“Not everybody has to believe in the same agenda but being a woman, you fight sexual violence,” she said.
She noted “meeting with Catherine Philp
twice. First, at the beginning of the war in October and then once more a
couple of months ago. It is not ethical to quote me eight months
later,” Sulitzeanu explained.
“On Oct. 7,” she stressed, “Israel worked
with limited resources and used what it could in order to do the job
required but this doesn’t mean that if a Zaka volunteer sees a gunshot
wounds to genitalia, he cannot identify it. Sexual violence took place
on Oct. 7 and it did not happen only to one, two, three or four people,
it happened in many places and in captivity as well.
“When you have a few dozen victims naked,
mutilated, you understand that it was intentional and not by chance. The
more information came and the more we understood that it took place all
over,” she said.
Demonstrators
protest against Hamas’s sexual violence against women during the Oct. 7
massacre, outside U.N. headquarters in New York, Dec. 4, 2023. Credit:
Yakov Binyamin/Flash90.
Equally incredible is that the Times authors
fail to note any other instances of witness testimony, such as that
provided by Chen Almog-Goldstein, who was released from Gaza after 51
days in Hamas captivity and told Israeli media in December that hostages
had been sexually abused.
“We heard three stories from a first-hand
source and another story that was told to us. Things that happened a few
weeks after the stay in Gaza [began]. They are physically injured. With
the way they sexually assaulted them and desecrated their bodies—they
don’t know how they will cope,” Almog-Goldstein said.
In an interview with the New York Sun in
January, she added: “The captors took advantage of the girls’ moments
of vulnerability. When the girls were sad, crying and yearning, their
captors would stroke them and touch them in their most intimate parts.
They described even more harsh accounts of sexual abuse under gunpoint.
And this sexual abuse occurred on a regular basis, not just on the day
they were kidnapped.”
“I’m not surprised by the denial”
In December, Dr. Itai Pessach, director of
the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical Center
outside Tel Aviv, told “CBS News Sunday Morning” that his team had
interviewed and treated hostages freed as part of the truce agreement
the previous month who were sexually abused.
“We did hear and see evidence of sexual
abuse in a significant part of the people we have treated. We also heard
evidence—and that was one of the hardest parts—of abuse against those
that [are still there], both physical and sexual,” he said.
Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, chair of The
Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children,
was also attacked in the Times article, described as one of the “women[who] made forensic assessments they were far from qualified to make.”
“The head of our archive is the former
deputy head of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial archive. We have legal
experts, forensic experts. All of us are exposed to traumatizing
material on a daily basis,” Elkayam-Levy told JNS. “We collect
testimonies with trauma experts. We try to do the most meticulous work.
We do our best to represent the victims accurately, give them a voice
and an opportunity to get justice in the future.
“Every week brings new information”
“We compile evidence such as videos,
images, work on authenticating the material and sorting it, in ways that
international tribunals could use the database in its entirety. We do
so in partnership with research institutes, universities and centers
around the world that have special expertise in documenting war crimes,”
she continued.
Cochav Elkayam-Levy. Source: LinkedIn.
Elkayam-Levy emphasized that her
initiative is non-governmental, despite having been branded as “a close
associate of the [Israeli] prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.”
“We do not accept Israeli governmental
funds. We are an NGO. We are doing our best every day to bring
recognition to the victims and ultimately justice,” she said.
“Every week brings new information in the form of footage or testimonies of people who want to come forward,” she continued.
“The Times article creates a
hostile environment for victims to come forward. What keeps me going is
that we are a safe address for victims to share their stories on their
terms,” Elkayam-Levy said.
“I am not surprised by the denial of
gender-based crimes. We know that individually every time there is a
rape victim who comes forward, we see the difficulty to navigate between
denial, systematic discrimination and the disbelief in women. On one
hand I am not surprised, on the other hand it hurts,” she added.
“The devil took over”
Or perhaps better to hear it from the terrorist’s mouth.
Britain’s Daily Mail last month
released footage of two captured Hamas terrorists, Jamal Hussein Ahmad
Radi, 47, and his son Abdallah, 18, confessing to rape and murder on
Oct. 7.
“My father raped her, then I did, and then
my cousin did, and then we left, but my father killed the woman after
we finished raping her,” Abdallah told an Israeli interrogator. “Before
this woman, we had raped another girl as well; I killed two people, I
raped two people, and I broke into five houses.”
In March, the IDF released footage of
Manar Mahmoud Muhammad Kasem, 28, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist
captured by Israeli troops in Khan Yunis, admitting that he raped a girl
on Oct. 7.
“I entered the kibbutz and went inside the
nearest house. I entered a room and someone was there who was scared,”
he says in the video. The girl begged for help, said Kasem, but he “laid
her down, started undressing her and did what I did. The devil took
over me. I raped her.”
Palestinian
Islamic Jihad terrorist Manar Mahmoud Muhammad Kasem speaks to IDF
interrogators, March 28, 2024. Source: Screenshot.
In December, the New York Timesreported
that everywhere Hamas terrorists struck on Oct. 7 they brutalized
women. A two-month investigation determined such assaults were not
isolated incidents but rather part of a greater pattern of
Hamas-perpetrated gender-based violence.
The piece pinpointed seven sites where
available evidence suggests Israeli women and girls endured sexual
violation or mutilation. One witness recounted that a Hamas terrorist
had raped an Israeli woman as another severed the victim’s breast.
The same month, the Associated Press reported
that at least 10 of the hostages released during the ceasefire in
November, both men and women, were sexually assaulted or abused, citing a
doctor who treated those released from captivity.
A special form of mental gymnastics
In December, the Israeli mission to the
United Nations sponsored an event at the international body titled,
“Hear Our Voices: Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in the Oct. 7 Hamas
Attack.” It took place against a backdrop of what critics called a
“shameful silence,” including by U.N. Women.
During the event, Simchat Greyman, a
volunteer for ZAKA, told participants that on Oct. 7 he saw a dead woman
with “nails and different objects in her female organs.”
Shari Mendes, an IDF reservist tasked with
preparing female soldiers’ bodies for burial, said that “many young
women arrived in bloody, shredded rags or just in underwear, and their
underwear was often very bloody.”
She added that “our team commander saw
several female soldiers who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts,
vagina or shot in the breast.”
Protesters
bring attention to the crimes and sexual violence against women during
the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 massacre, as well as
reports of abuse of those taken hostage, outside of U.N. headquarters in
New York City on Dec. 4, 2023. Photo by Yakov Binyamin/Flash90.
All of this information is publicly
available, leading U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller to
say that Hamas was likely refusing to release additional women hostages
to prevent testimony on sexual violence committed against them.
To downplay such horrors or deny them outright requires a special form of mental gymnastics, which the authors of the Times article have perfected along with their fellow denialist travelers.
Case in point: Briahna Joy Gray, the
former national press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 U.S.
presidential campaign, who earlier this month was fired from her
two-year gig as co-host of The Hill‘s online program “Rising.”
She was sacked after rolling her eyes at and cutting off an interview
with Yarden Gonen, whose sister Romi was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists
from the Supernova music festival during the Oct. 7 invasion.
Yarden had visibly frustrated Gray by
imploring her and others to believe Israeli women who come forward with
stories of sexual violence perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists.
Would any other person get away with eye-rolling on television when begged to believe women who have been raped? One rule for them, another for us. More repulsive behaviour from @briebriejoypic.twitter.com/FeFWF6r7id
A day later, Gray let loose on Twitter:
“We already knew this [because] of excellent reporting by independent
left outlets, but The Hill fired me for pushing back against a guest who
tried to use the platform to spread the mass rape hoax, & congress
members like @RitchieTorres lie about it almost daily.”
To support her claim of a “hoax,” Gray linked to the Times article.
We already knew this bc of excellent reporting by independent left outlets, but The Hill fired me for pushing back against a guest who tried to use the platform to spread the mass rape hoax, & congress members like @RitchieTorres lie about it almost daily. https://t.co/Ag0XXKteRu
To clarify: There is ample evidence that
Hamas perpetrated widespread sexual violence on Oct. 7. That the scope
remains unknown and might never be fully understood is because so many
of the victims were killed; that plenty of evidence was lost due to the
fog of war and the overriding difficulties associated with collecting
samples in the aftermath of a massacre perpetrated by 3,000 invading
terrorists; since victims have not yet come forward; or their stories
are still working through the justice system of a country at war.
Not due to some nefarious rightwing Israeli conspiracy.
Yet, Philp and Weiniger chose to advance
Hamas’s denialist narrative by whitewashing horrific crimes committed
against innocent women, effectively further dehumanizing them.
They and their editors at the Times might begin a mea culpa by internalizing the underlying humanity demonstrated in a comment cited in their piece by the U.N.’s Patten:
“I do not have numbers in the report because for me one case is more than enough.”
"The shocking truth is that the United States is providing material support to a terrorist organization that is waging a brutal war against the only democratic ally the US has in the middle east, and the US-funded and trained Palestinian Authority Security Forces are no different than Hamas. " – Meir Deutsch, Director General, Regavim.
The letter provides
irrefutable evidence and undeniable testimony that the humanitarian aid
provided to Gaza, ostensibly to the civilian population, is invariably
commandeered by Hamas: The letter cites statements to this effect by the
US embassy in Israel, the US government itself, the IDF, UNRWA – and
even Fatah officials.
"The shocking truth is that the United States is providing
material support to a terrorist organization that is waging a brutal war
against the only democratic ally the US has in the middle east, and the
US-funded and trained Palestinian Authority Security Forces are no
different than Hamas. Exposing the terrorist nature of the US's 'partner
for peace' is 'inconvenient,' to put it politely, so the Administration
has decided to attack the messenger in order to suppress the message." –
Meir Deutsch, Director General, Regavim.
(Image source: iStock)
Biden Administration seeks to silence consensus civil society
organizations in Israel with sanctions typically used against
terrorists: "A draconian measure that harks back to the days of
colonialist oppression."
A team of legal experts submitted a sharply worded letter to the US
State Department following the announcement of Executive Order 14115
sanctioning the Tzav 9 Movement. "The Executive Order is an
anti-democratic attack on free speech and the right to protest."
Earlier this week (Monday), following publication on Friday, 14 June
2024 of a US Executive Order imposing sanctions on the Israeli protest
movement Tzav 9, a team of lawyers headed by Attorneys Marc Zell, Noam
Schreiber, Jerome Marcus and other experts in US and international law,
on behalf of the Regavim Movement, sent a request for clarification to
the US State Department.
The sharply-worded letter decried the Executive Order as vague and
unsubstantiated, describing it as an attempt to stifle free speech and
the right to protest. The legal team called upon the US government to
explain both the basis for the sanctions and the practical implications
for Tzav 9 and Regavim, one of several civil society organizations that
helped the Tzav 9 activists organize.
"Our firms represent The Regavim Movement, a public interest
organization dedicated to the protection of Israel's national lands and
resources, as well as Regavim's Chief Executive Officer, Meir Deutsch; a
number of persons who have donated to Regavim and wish to continue to
do so; and ... persons and political advocacy organizations which have
interacted with, supported, and been addressed by Regavim and its
leaders," the letter explained. "The Regavim Movement is active in the
public, parliamentary and judicial spheres, through publication of
opinion and research papers, and through the dissemination of reports,
policy and opinion papers, media communications and, when necessary,
legal action."
"One of Regavim's initiatives is support for Tsav 9, an entity which
conducts nonviolent demonstrations and civil disobedience in an effort
to prevent the transfer of assets to Hamas."
The letter went on to highlight the vast differences between the
target of the sanctions – Tzav 9, an apolitical, non-violent, law
abiding grassroots protest movement – and the beneficiaries of the aid
that the sanctions aim to protect -a US-designated terrorist
organization that continues to take pride in the atrocities it
perpetrated on October 7th, the very same group that continues to hold
men, women and children hostage.
"Tsav 9 is resolutely nonpartisan, and is supported by over 15,000
members and supporters from all walks of Israeli life, and from all
points on the religious and political spectra. ...The protest activities
in which Tsav 9 has engaged are completely nonviolent, and precisely the kind of public advocacy and civil disobedience of which President Biden and members of his administration have explicitly approved. Hamas is a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, and the provision of any financial support to Hamas is a federal crime."
The letter provides irrefutable evidence and undeniable testimony
that the humanitarian aid provided to Gaza, ostensibly to the civilian
population, is invariably commandeered by Hamas: The letter cites
statements to this effect by the US embassy in Israel, the US government
itself, the IDF, UNRWA – and even Fatah officials.
The letter further notes that the Executive Order was issued without
any prior dialogue, clarification, discussion or communication with the
Tzav 9 leadership or with the Regavim Movement, despite the fact that
the US Embassy in Israel has an open and active channel of communication
with the public policy group.
Meir Deutsch, Director General of Regavim: "The Biden Administration,
which claims to be the leader of the world's greatest democracy, has
been exposed as anti-democratic. Apparently, both Tzav 9 and Regavim
have spotlighted some uncomfortable facts that the American government
prefers to hide: The shocking truth is that the United States is
providing material support to a terrorist organization that is waging a
brutal war against the only democratic ally the US has in the middle
east, and the US-funded and trained Palestinian Authority Security
Forces are no different than Hamas.
Exposing the terrorist nature of the US's "partner for peace" is
"inconvenient," to put it politely, so the Administration has decided to
attack the messenger in order to suppress the message."
"Regavim extended support to Tzav 9 and to the families of those
murdered and captured by Hamas, adding our voice to their call to halt
support for the Nukhba terrorists in Gaza – as did 80% of Israeli
citizens," Deutsch added. "Particularly against the backdrop of the most
recent United Nations report,
which determines that there is no famine in Gaza, the imposition of
sanctions is a desperate move by American government, a misdirected
tantrum targeting a protest movement that expresses dissent through
legally protected non-violent free speech, in the most legitimate and
justified protest there is. These unprecedented punitive measures hark
back to the dark era of the Iron Curtain. Executive Order 14115 is
illiberal and anti-democratic."
“That mob showed up. They were armed. They were angry. They believed the ‘Big Lie’ that the election had been stolen. And when Donald Trump pointed them toward the Capitol and told them to “fight like hell,” that’s exactly what they did.” —Bennie G. Thompson, chairman, Select Commitee (sic) to Investigate
the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, December 22, 2022.
As America skitters toward the planned June 27 presidential debate,
this would seem an opportune time to reflect on what will inevitably be
one of the debate’s central issues, President Donald Trump’s role in the
events of January 6, 2021. If the Biden team relies on the Select Committee report,
they will put themselves at a serious disadvantage. The report contains
little in the way of uncontested truth, and much in the way of outright
falsehood.
In researching my book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6,
I routinely cross-checked what I was learning against what the
committee had reported or strategically omitted. A compilation of the
report’s inaccuracies would run longer than the report itself, but,
fortunately for the reader, Rep. Thompson managed to compact the essence
of the report’s failings into the one paragraph cited above. To parse
the paragraph is to understand the depths of the report’s dishonesty.
Yes, a large crowd did show up at the Ellipse to hear Trump speak,
but they were not angry, not armed, and not a mob. As to believing the
“Big Lie” that the election was stolen, the protestors could not prove
the particulars of vote fraud, but they did watch as 51 members of the
intel community conspired with the FBI and Big Tech to suppress a
game-changing story weeks before the election. If the protestors were
uncertain about “stolen,” they were certain about “rigged.”
“It was a happy, joyful day,” Dr. Simone Gold told me. Gold recalled
grandmas pushing baby carriages, groups literally singing “Kumbaya,” and
people of every race mixing peacefully together. Gold would be
sentenced to two months in a maximum security prison for giving a speech
on medical freedom inside the Capitol. The report does not mention her.
Victoria White stayed to the very end of Trump’s speech on the
ellipse and heard his final plea to fight like hell. Yet, as she marched
toward the Capitol, she found herself amid a crowd of happy, singing
people. Before the day was through White would suffer the most brutal
police beating captured on video since Rodney King. The report does not
mention her either.
Rosanne Boyland seemed in her element that day as well. Her friend
Justin Winchell sent her father a final photo of Rosanne, walking along
in her stars-and-stripes sunglasses, a “Save America” sign in one hand, a
Gadsden flag resting on her right shoulder, and a big smile on her
cherubic face.
Before the day was through, Boyland, while laying unconscious, would
be beaten brutally over the head by a stick-wielding policewoman. Her
death was never investigated. The policewoman was never punished. And
neither was so much as mentioned in the House report.
“There is a sea of nothing but red, white and blue patriots for
Trump,” Ashli Babbitt told viewers on a live Facebook feed. “God bless
America, patriots.” Said Babbitt’s mother, Micki Witthoeft, “I can see
in that video that she was absolutely in her element, having a wonderful
time.” Husband Aaron Babbitt agreed. From her texts he concluded, “She
was having the best day of her life.”
A 14-year Air Force veteran, Babbitt came to the Capitol alone and
unarmed. Rep. Thompson knew what all the committee members knew. As
Witthoeft wryly observed, “The gun-toting populous of the United States
showed up that day without guns.” The only shot fired that day was shot
by the Capitol Police lieutenant (now captain) Michael Byrd, who killed
Witthoeft’s daughter. That shot was captured on video as were the
beatings of Rosanne Boyland and Victoria White. Byrd goes unmentioned in
the House report.
Ignoring harsh truths, Thompson and his colleagues doomed their
report to frivolity by their obsession with Trump. “The rioters were
inside the halls of Congress,” wrote Thompson, “because the head of the
executive branch of our government, the then-President of the United
States, told them to attack.” In the foreword, Thompson alluded to a
quote that would be reported in the body of the report, “We fight like
hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a
country anymore.”
The report does not quote Trump’s more specific directive, “I know
that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to
peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” The report
writers dismiss this instruction, observing, “Trump used the word
‘peacefully,’ written by speech writers, one time.”
In the final analysis, it did not much matter what Trump said or did
not say. If Thompson read his own report, he knows that the riot began
at the Capitol 15 minutes before Trump made his “fight like hell” remark
on the Ellipse, a 45-minute walk away. Leading the charge at the
Capitol was the ubiquitous Ray Epps, the day’s most visible agent
provocateur but hardly the only one. He goes unmentioned in the report.
The report does concede that “[a]s violence escalated at the West
Front, non-lethal grenadiers began launching chemical munitions at the
crowd.” What the report fails to mention is that Trump was still
speaking at the Ellipse when the grenadiers began their assault. No one
in that crowd heard Trump’s “fight like hell” remark. Most probably
heard none of the speech at all.
When the speech goers reached the Capitol, doors had already been
open and windows broken. Most of those who went in walked in, looked
around, took selfies, and walked out. Of the ten women I profile in Ashli, two were killed that day, six have been imprisoned or are in prison, and two await sentencing, one a great grandmother.
The most overt criminal act any of these women committed was to help
break a window. That woman, Rachel Powell, a mother of eight, is serving
57-months in a federal prison. Not until September 23, 2023, did Ray
Epps plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge. Texts such as, “I was
in the front with a few others, I also orchestrated it,” embarrassed the
keepers of the narrative into damage control. Epps was sentenced to a
year’s probation.
With more than 1400 protestors arrested and nearly 500 imprisoned,
the DOJ roundup more than rivals the notorious Palmer raids of a century
ago. In the years ahead dispassionate observers will see the J6
hysteria for what it is, the federal government’s greatest mass
injustice against its citizens since Japanese internment. The
duplicitous report only adds to the infamy.
