Norman Finklestein's "Disproving" Hamas October 7 Sexual Abuse; A Law Enforcement Response

 

Demonizing Israel has long been Norman Finkelstein's obsession. It has brought him fame, perhaps fortune, and a lifetime of celebrity status amongst those equally obsessed with demonizing Jews and Israel.

He does not deny the mass murdering, mutilations and other atrocities Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others from Gaza committed on October 7, 2023, inside of Israel against babies, children, women, defenseless people of all ages. Instead, he defends and justifies the murder, mutilations and other atrocities; terrible evils and cruelties that are always indefensible and never justifiable.

Regarding the sexual abuse and rape that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others from Gaza committed on October 7, he shifts from justifying and defending murder, mutilating and other atrocities, to trying to disprove that rape and sexual abuse were committed on that day. 

It takes an enormous leap of faith to believe that people that can stomach murdering, mutilating, beheading, cutting people open, dismembering, burning people, and more, somehow find raping and sexually abusing immoral or crimes that are off limits. 

Finklestein asserts that the absence of video or digital records of the sexual abuse and raping is proof that these crimes did not occur.

It is not suprising that people raised in a culture that glorifies murdering Jews would gladly broadcast and film the slaughter. Murdering Jews is a source of pride to Hamas and company. Filming it is a way of bragging, terrorizing, and showing off. There is a recorded phone conversation, for example, of a Palestinian Arab bragging to his parents that he murdered 10 Jewish civilians. The father and mother, instead of being horrified, express joy and deep approval. Hamas and company videotaped many of their murders and graphic atrocities on that day.

It is not surprising that people in that same culture, steeped in modesty, having women and girls covered, would not want to film themselves, or be caught on camera naked or showing their genitals or in compromising positions raping and sexually abusing men, boys, girls and women.

ISIS also mass murdered and raped. They often took videos of beheadings and other murders that they posted on social media, but not of their sexual abuse. 

What did Finklestein need to see in order to believe? Graphic, gruesome pornographic videos of the raping and sexual abuse? The absence of videos and a digital record do not in any way mean the crimes did not occur. And if they do exist, there is no way it would be released to the public. Which includes Finklestein.

The mass rapes and sexual abuse Hamas and others from Gaza committed on October 7 was not a controlled crime scene. Many bodies were boobytrapped, including with grenades. Terrorists were still in the area. It was a mass casualty event in a time of war and terror. Not a controlled police crime scene where investigators take their time and document everything.

Many of the victims of the rapes and sexual abuse were murdered. Silencing by murder silences voices but does not mean that Hamas and company did not violate their bodies before, during or after being murdered.

Plenty of people saw what Finkelstein never did see and probably could never stomach. There were first responders, forensic pathologists, morgue employees, doctors, nursses, other medical personal, and others. 

There were survivors and witnesses that Finkelstein attempts to discredit. 

He questions how they were interrogated, showing no understanding of how victims or witnesses of rape and sexual abuse crimes are interviewed, not interrogated. 

Finklestein writes, "How is it possible to ferret out “credible information” if an alleged witness is preemptively insulated from aggressive, skeptical interrogation?"

Two retired cops with extensive investigative experience respond to Finklestein's assertion. It is clear that he has no knowledge or experience conducting a criminal investigation, especially when it comes to rape and sexual abuse. Also, this was a mass casualty massacre, sexual abuse and other atrocities event by well-armed terrorists. Does he actually think it is appropriate to conduct skeptical, aggressive interrogations of witnesses or victims? Witnesses and victims are exactly that, witnesses and victims. They are not offenders in which a different standard of questioning is applied, which can include aggressive, skeptical interrogations.

Captured Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists are on record confessing to rape, sexual abuse, mutilation and more. In that Finklestein routinely likes to project onto Israelis the genocidal desires that Hamas openly declares and acts upon, such as what they did on October 7, 2023, it is doubtful that people obsessed with demonizing Israelis will give credence to the confessions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.

Finklestein seems to believe that at least some people hiding during the attack should have been able to record the sexual assaults. Witnesses hiding could not realistically be expected to risk being spotted by attempting to capture on their phones the horrors unfolding before them. The absence of graphic videos of rape and sexual abuse by witnesses does not in any way disprove that the crimes did not occur.

In light of Finklestein's contempt for Israelis, he does not see Israeli girls, women, or other defenseless people in Israel that are witnesses or survivors of sexual abuse and/or rape as human beings deserving of compassion or consideration, even as they survived the worst massacre in the history of Israel. Finklestein writes, "In light of the genocidal poison coursing through the Israeli body politic, shouldn’t the default setting have been that these witness testimonies constituted lying propaganda—as credible as the testimony of guards at Auschwitz that there were no gas chambers".  

He continuously asserts that the absence of a digital record, actual videos and photos of the raping and sexual abuse proves that these crimes did not occur.

By the Finklestein standard, we are henceforth to believe that when rape and sexual abuse occurs, if the perpetrators do not film or videotape their actions, then they are innocent and no crime occurred. And if there are any witnesses, then they are perversely responsible for making videos and digital records.

As already mentioned, it does not seem to dawn on Finklestein that there are reasons why rapists and sexual abusers choose not to document their crimes. Hamas was proud of its murdering. This does not mean Hamas was equally proud or willing to share its sexual abusing and raping.

And again, even if there is a digital record of the sexual abuse and rapes, there is no way this would be shared as public information. And that includes with Finklestein.

Finklestein names one of the chapters of his recent book, "Rape Fantasies". He uses the words, "rape hoax" to describe the rape and sexual abuse. 

Finklestein seems far more interested in humiliating, ridiculing, demeaning, insulting and abusing the victims, survivors, forensic experts, first responders and eyewitnesses of the mass murder, mutilations, rapes, sexual abuse and other atrocities committed by Hamas and company on October 7 than of actually disproving that sexual abuse and rape occurred on that day. This effort seems like little more than an exercise in depravity.

Here are some examples:

A response by Finklestein to a first responder's testimony- first the responders quote, ‘I couldn’t close her legs in order to place her into the [body] bag. . .. They had inserted various cans into her. Her legs were spread open. I looked more closely: she was half-naked, and they had inserted tin cans, into her genital area.’”

And here is the Finklestein response:

"Alas, he didn’t specify how many cans, or whether or not they were Campbell’s Soup."

In response to a witness testifying that he observed the body of a man with severed male genitlia in his mouth, Finklestein adds in parenthesis, " (With or without condiments?) ".

In response to dead women being found without underwear, Finklestein concludes that dead women and girls found murdered, naked or half naked, cannot possibly have anything to do with men that gleefully murdered young girls and women but somehow had the moral restraint to not also rape and sexually abuse. Finkelstein writes:

"It seems not to have occurred to our amateur Sherlocks that perhaps the victims weren’t wearing underwear. Be that as it may, it is credible that bodies were found partially or fully naked: the attack began in the “predawn and dawn hours”; the largest massacre unfolded at the Supernova festival that was celebrating “free love."

Here is a Finklestein response to a summary of a civil commission-

First the summary:

"The Civil Commission likewise documented cases in which bodies were found with various objects, including nails, aluminum cans and other items, inserted into their genitals.”

And now the Finklestein response.

"It appears that the witnesses tastefully omitted the kitchen sink, toilet bowl, and corner gas station."

People that do not hesitate to murder babies, children, defenseless people of all ages, which even Finkelstein acknowledges Hamas committed on October 7, 2023, and that he defends, are not above raping and sexually abusing. A man capable of murdering babies, children, women, girls, the very old and other defenseless people in cold blood does not live by a moral code that would preclude that person from raping and sexually abusing. The willingness of Hamas to take videos of the slaughter and other atrocities but not expose themselves in pornographic images does not, despite the Finklestein assertions, mean the crimes did not occur.

Free Palestine Is Nothing More Than a Genocidal Movement

 Free Palestine is nothing more than a genocidal movement following in the footsteps of Hitler and company's genocide. 

It is not a call for a two state solution. It is not a call for a one state solution of co-existence, mutual acceptance, tolerance and peace. It is a call for endless war and terror.

It is a declaration that only Arabs and Muslims are allowed to have nations and countries, not the long despised and demonized Jew or other religious minorities in the world at large.

It is a movement to destroy Israel and mass murder, sexually abuse and enslave.

The majority of the world's remaining Jewish population live on the land of Israel. The majority population of Israel are Jews from the middle east, Africa and Asia, where many had been ethnically cleansed and endured long histories of persecution. 

Israel is the ancient homeland of the Jews. The kingdom of the Jews was destroyed by European Romans, who renamed the land Palestine to erase any Jewish connection to the land. Despite being slaughtered and driven out from their nation that the Romans destroyed, there has still been a continuous Jewish presence on the land of Israel for thousands of years.

Jihadis and every Jew hater on the planet, every person in the world that needs an easy target to scapegoat and demonize, have joined forces to destroy the small nation of Israel and commit October massacres, mass rapes and other atrocities over and over again.

Israel is the crutch of the weak minded and cowardly.

All the other terrible things in the world continue to be ignored, including child marriage, mass poverty, environmental destruction, slavery, wars and real genocides the world over. The weak minded of the world want everyone to share in their anti- Israel obsession and disregard everything else.

The Cheerleaders for Murder and Sexual Abuse

 The lives of millions of children are being destroyed by child marriage and instead of an outcry there is worldwide silence.

Millions of children have already been killed and are continuing to be killed in the recent and ongoing wars and/or genocides in the Congo region, Yemen, North Nigeria, Syria, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sudan and elsewhere and there is nothing but silence.

Brutal regimes massacre, murder, torture, rape and sexually abuse the people forced to live under the thumb of these corrupt, sadistic tyrants, including in Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere receive nothing but silence.

You can destroy rivers, oceans and the environment and fill them up with plastics and other poisons and contaminants, have people live in complete squalor and misery, and no one will say a word.

No Jew or Israel to blame and demonize, then no concern for the environment, children, or human life.

When Palestinians, including Hamas, murder, massacre, rape, sexually abuse, mutilate, torture, burn people alive, kidnap, including babies and children, as they did not october 7, 2023, it is celebrated as resistance. Every excuse in the books is made to defend grave crimes and evils that no narrartives about oppression or anything else should ever excuse.

When Hamas and Islamic Jihad wage war blending into civilian populations, hiding beneath and in the midst of civilians and civilian structures including hospitals, schools and mosques, making them legitamite targets of war by the Geneva convention and rules of war, casaulties of war gets blamed on Israel, not on the jihadis.

Oct 8, 2023, the day after the worst massacre against Jews since the holocaust, already mobs were out pretending being anti-Israel was legitamite, or progressive, or anything else, and that the sheer evil of resistance by any means meant that murder, rape, sexual abuse, mutilation and other atrocities were now mainstreamed as long as targeted against Jews. If the victims of jihadis similiar to Hamas are in Nigeria, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Mali, Europe, or anywhere else, there is silence or indifference in a world where good is losing to evil. A world where murder, mutilation, sexual abuse and other atrocities now has its cheerleaders. Millions believe demonically that their religion, politics, greivances or victimhood status, real or not, grants them the right to commit grave crimes, harms and evils.

Cenk Uygur And The Murdered Children That Cannot Be Blamed On Israel

 Millions of children have been killed in the recent or ongoing wars and/or genocides in the Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Congo Region, Mali, North Nigeria, Mozambique, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Myanmar and elsewhere. 

No voices of concern because the lives of children mean nothing if there is not Israel or the Jew to blame.

The silence continues for child marriage destroying the lives of millions of children, female genital mutilation maiming and killing countless girls and young women, slavery, the complete oppression of women and girls in places like Afghanistan. IRGC mass murder and sexual abuse/rape of countless Iranians, extreme poverty killing countless children, environmental poisons and degradation killing and harming countless children, and far more.

It means nothing to the Israel and/or Jew obsessed. No Jew or Israel to blame, human life means nothing to them.

The children of Gaza they pretend to care about would never have been killed from war if Hamas did not murder, mutilate, sexually abuse, kidnap and commit other atrocities inside of Israel on October 7, if Hamas did not wage war using children as child soldiers, if Hamas did not wage war and terror hiding beneath in their tunnels and behind and in the midst of civilians and children in complete violation of the Geneva convention and rules of war. 

Children are always killed in war. Jihadis murder the world over, not just the murdering Hamas chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, but also Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Islamic Jihad, IRGC, Hezbollah, United Democratic Forces, RSF, ISIS, Al Quada, and far more.

Weak people need simplicity, a scapegoat and an easy target to demonize, hate and blame for everything.  With or without Israel, millions of people will continue to believe their religion, politics or grievances gives them the right to murder, sexual abuse and commit other atrocities. And worse yet, many of these millions will act on these evil beliefs.

Child Marriage, Child Suffering Ignored Unless Israel Can Be Blamed

 Child marriage is epidemic. The lives of millions of children are being destroyed.

Millions of children suffer under the weight of extreme poverty, the many wars raging all over the world, gang violence, genocide in the Sudan, Yemen, North Nigeria, Congo region, real slavery that exists to this day, the exploitation of children in dangerous and hazardous working conditions, including exposure to mercury and other poisons, working in mines, and much more. FGM that kills and maims for life countless girls and young women. Millions of children live in complete squalor and filth. Countless children are persecuted and often sexually abused by those that believe their religion grants them a right to do whatever they want to those considered infidels. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls are still held in captivity and have yet to be found. The IRGC and other corrupt, brutal theocratic regimes and dictatorships murder children by the untold thousands. Jihadis murder the children of their enemies and wage war and terror making sure to hide behind, beneath and be surrounded by their own children and civilian populations, in complete violation of the Geneva convention and rules of war.

The oceans and environment in general are being destroyed, including from plastics and their many derivatives, and far more. It is death by a thousand cuts. Environmental destruction condemns millions of children to a life of poverty and misery.

All of this is ignored. They say silence is complicity, yet the world is silent and complicit. They only raise their voice if they can virtue signal and/or be part of the group think that wants all eyes directed on the target of their hate and animosity.

They pretend to care about the children of Gaza, yet they cry for more war and terror. It never bothered them how Hamas and Islamic Jihad squandered billions of dollars enriching their fat cat leaders living in Qatar and Turkey, two of the biggest exporters of Muslim Brotherhood intolerance that includes hatred agsinst Jews, apostates and infidels, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad built tunnels for themselves in Gaza and not a single bomb shelter for civilians above ground. Oil and gas rich Qatar lives on exploited foreign workers, while using its vast wealth to spread hatred and intolerance worldwide. Jihadis indoctrinate countless children into their cult of hate and murder.

The millions of children dying from the other wars, violence and real genocides, numbers that far exceed the children and civilians killed in the war that Hamas started, are of no interest to them.

They only care about children if they can exploit children to further their religious or political narratives, and to demonize the target of their animosity.

Meanwhile, the perverted, demonic, obsessive focus on Israel ensures countless millions of children suffering greatly will continue to be ignored. As this is written, many more children have been married off to grown men, many more children have been killed in the wars, persecutions, extreme poverty, genocides, slavery, child exploitation, and more that rages across the planet. 

And no one does anything. Silence is complicity.

Norman Finklestein, White Man Defense of Murdering Brown And Black Israelis

 If the target of Finklestein's animosity and demonizing were not Israelis, the majority of whom are brown and black, no one in this day and age of political correctness, especially on the left, would accept a white man demonizing Israelis and justifying their murder. 

The majority population of Israel, brown and black Jews, know firsthand the hatreds, persecutions and genocidal intent of those that seek to destroy their small nation, the only place on earth where Jews form the majority population and have the means of defending themselves from their many enemies. 

A New York born and bred man raised in a country of privilege has a vastly different experience than the Jews from the middle east, Asia and Africa, who he is quick to judge, dehumanize and demonize, along with other Israelis, and goes so far as to justify their murder. 

He has made a career out of demonizing Israelis. It has opened doors for him in a world full of hatred against Jews and Israel that would otherwise be closed if it were not Jews or Israel that served as his target. His parents were Jewish and were survivors of Hitler's extermination, things that he never experienced but that is exploited by some to legitimize his hatred of Israel by virtue of his parent's experience. 

The October 7, 2023, Hamas and company mass murdering, sexual abusing, kidnapping and other atrocities committed against defenseless Israelis of all ages, including children, babies, women, the elderly, are defended and even celebrated by far too many.

Murdering civilians is not resistance, no matter how it is framed. It is a grave evil that no one with even the slightest amount of decency and integrity would defend.