Breaking the Overton Window -- s1e06 -- 20231210

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TODAY'S SEGMENTS.

== Welcome ==

Bismillah.

Welcome to the sixth episode of Breaking the Overton Window. I am your host, Hugh Esco. Today is December 4th, and in this episode we take another look at the accusations of mass rapes used as a weapon of war during the October 7th raid by the al-Qassam Brigades.

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We begin our coverage this episode by clarifying evidence we cite in the fourth episode of this program. Since this sixth episode was first scripted and before it is being recorded, a plethora of new and lengthy sources have been published promising to further document the mass-rape charges. This program does not try to dissect the evolving nature of the narrative in light of these new sources. As Mark Twain put it, "a lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on." Breaking the Overton Window does not enjoy the research resources sufficient to keep up with the evolving narrative emanating from Tel Aviv in real time. Watch out for a future episode when we will review and report on these new materials.

We had earlier reported, "In the past week or so, several Israeli based journalism platforms and later the international media have begun sharing what appear to be potentially credible reports of sexual assault."

And further that:

"The hamas-massacre.net site, hosted by the state of Israel, shows two photos captioned as depicting rape victims. One depicts a charred female body, with the only indication of rape being the caption. The other shows a woman's body lying face down in the dirt, her skirt pulled up above the waist, and her underwear ripped and pulled to the side. This image is captioned 'Nova Party victim, raped and then killed'."

Between the time episode 4 was scripted, on November 14th, and when it was released on November 20th, that second photo had been removed from Israel's website. We now know why. On November 15th, Max Blumenthal published a tweet describing that same photo as "purporting to show a victim of rape by Hamas militants at the Nova music festival". He states: "The image predates 10/7 and likely shows a female Kurdish fighter killed in action whose corpse was defiled." His tweet links to a Japanese website which includes that same photo, on a page dated May 2022, seventeen months prior to the Nova festival.

These charges of mass rape lack credibility on their face. Zina, sex outside of marriage is recognized as haram by every school of Islam. Zina may be prosecuted on the confession of its participants or the eye-witness testimony of four witnesses. While in the 21st century, we recognize that rape is not sex, I find it hard to imagine that it would not be treated as zina under Islamic law. The idea that muslim soldiers on a potential suicide mission and likely to soon meet their judgement would participate in such haram conduct defies logic. The idea that they would do so in front of witnesses seems absurd to any muslim familiar with the requirements of the faith.

The burden of proof begins with a requirement to demonstrate that rape happened to begin with. But as we reported in our fourth episode, Israeli authorities failed to collect any forensic evidence to back up that claim, leaving us dependent on eye witness accounts.

Michal Herzog is married to Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, making her the First Lady of the Occupation. On the 22nd of November, Newsweek published an opinion piece under her byline, called: "The Silence From International Bodies Over Hamas' Mass Rapes Is a Betrayal of All Women". In her article, she cites third person testimony and videos which have not been released to the public to assert that it is "abundantly clear that mass rape was a premeditated part of Hamas's plan." Her Newsweek piece castigates UN Women and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women for having failed to mention sexual abuse on October 7th as a war crime.

A few days later, a new website appeared to promote the hashtag Me Too, Unless you're a Jew. It features a lead capture form masquerading as a petition to UN Women. It "aims to address and correct the imbalance in the United Nations' portrayal of events, most specifically UN Women, in light of the critical events of October 7th in Israel". The site bills itself as "a grassroots global campaign", but sports a Project Team crediting thirty names, including a law firm, a PR team, casting, photography, production, strategy, creative, traffic, social media and more. The site's menu includes a link to 'Facts', which alleges brutal rapes among other war atrocities without citing evidence for any of it.

Since then Hillary Clinton has recorded a statement on the subject and Israelis living abroad have organized actions to support the demand that the international community speak out about these allegations of rape.

Haaretz published a piece called "The Scope of Hamas' Campaign of Rape Against Israeli Women Is Revealed, Testimony After Testimony". But rather than detailing the evidence from the promised testimony, this 6000+ word piece profiles Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, and the mission of the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, which she leads.

Early on in this personality profile, Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy recounts a story of getting a call from Michal Herzog, Israel's First Lady and author of the opinion piece in the November 22nd issue of Newsweek. Ms. Herzog called to ask Dr. Elkayam-Levy how she is doing. She responds, "How am I doing? I am doing terribly. But I am not the story here."

But then the Haaretz author, ignoring the click bait-ey title his editor would assign to his piece, spends 6 thousand some words making the story entirely about her, and recounts her many excuses for not sharing the evidence promised in the article's title.

It makes repeated references to a program at Harvard where she was on the panel:

"Last month, when Elkayam-Levy was invited to speak on a panel organized by several different Jewish student groups at Harvard University, she felt that the time was right to present some of the evidence to the world."

but fails to identify what 'evidence' it was she may have presented on that trip. She denies that her work is hasbara, which the world understands to mean war propoganada but which Haaretz characterizes as 'public diplomacy'. She denies that her job is to investigate or prosecute sexual assaults. She is quoted as stating, "Our task is historical".

We will be right back, after a quick appeal that you support this program.

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As previously reported in episode 4 of Breaking the Overton Window, Israeli women's groups are complaining that no forensic evidence useful to rape prosecutions is being gathered, the morgues claim that too much time has lapsed to get a useful rape kit from the bodies and police agencies are declining to answer questions on the subject.

So the task has fallen to Dr. Elkayam-Levy, but her role is 'historical', not prosecutorial. And as Haaretz reports: "Thus far, the commission has not taken testimony directly."

Two days after this episode was initially scripted, Max Blumenthal published a piece entitled, "Scandal-stained Israeli ‘rescue’ group fuels October 7 fabrications". Blumenthal writes: "the most inflammatory allegations have emerged from a collection of ultra-Orthodox volunteer organizations such as ZAKA. Though ZAKA specializes 'in body collection and disposal,' the group has no coronary credentials and is staffed by droves of poorly trained volunteers." Leaning on an investigation by Brad Pearce, he described ZAKA as having been "Founded by a serial rapist known as the 'Haredi Jeffrey Epstein,' . . . (and as) responsible for some of the most obscene post-October 7 atrocity fabrications," including the 'mass rape' stories.

The fabrications "disseminated by Israel’s government and echoed in Washington originated from one man with an especially active imagination: Yossi Landau of ZAKA . . . (who claims) anyone who questions his version of events 'should be killed.'" This Grayzone investigation seeks and fails to find corroborating evidence for ZAKA's claims but does find conflicting testimony. He credits ZAKA and a competing group with having "armed Western leaders like Blinken and President Joe Biden with the narrative they would weaponize in order to block ceasefire proposals and rearm a military that has killed over 15,000 civilians in Gaza in less than two months."

Another ZAKA source, Dizingoff, was responsible for the report published in the Guardian, which we shared in episode 4 of Breaking the Overton Window, about "a woman, naked from the waist down, [who] had been bent over a bed and then shot in the back of the head". But the Grayzone investigation raises multiple questions related to this report, which we had previously identified as 'potentially credible'.

What could be the motivation for these false reports? As the Grayzone article put it: "The shock of October 7 has indeed proven a fundraising bonanza for these notoriously unscrupulous religious organizations, enabling them to transform the Israeli government, Western media outlets such as CNN, and the Biden administration into free publicity agents." And by 'bonanza' we are talking about tens of millions of dollars raised in the United States with the help the deep pockets of "The Islamophobia Industry", as Nathan Lean described it in his book by that title, including Sheldon and Mirian Adelson, whom Bloomberg reported having given in 2016, $75 million to a Trump aligned PAC.

On December 1st, Mondoweiss published a piece called: "CNN report claiming sexual violence on October 7 relied on non-credible witnesses, some with undisclosed ties to Israeli govt". It accuses "CNN’s Jake Tapper (of) fail(ing) to adhere to professional and ethical journalism standards". In this article, its Palestinian author living under occupation remains anonymous to avoid retribution by Israeli authorities. This author punches holes in most of the evidence this program, BtOW, had earlier characterized as "potentially credible reports of sexual assault". Apparently we may have gotten it wrong.

For one of the eye-witness reports of an alledged rape at the Nova Music Festival, the witness had posted on social media within hours of the incident they purportedly described, as having checked in as 'safe' and at a settlement miles from the scene. An anonymous woman in civilian clothes relied on for the November 18th report by CNN, claims to be a witness to sexual assault. But the same woman was interviewed on October 31st while in IDF uniform for the publication Ynet during which she made no mention of sexual assault. The Mondoweiss article reports another piece from the Hebrew language HebrewNews.com site which reveal multiple inconsistencies with the narrative projected by the CNN piece.

Max Blumenthal has investigated the resume of Dr. Elkayam-Levy. She previously served as a legal advisor to the Israeli Attorney General, for whom she authored a report on breaking the hunger strikes of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Her paper was intended to provide legal cover for forced feeding, broadly recognized as a human rights abuse. Blumenthal's tweet also cites the Mondoweiss piece just discussed which claims that she consults with Netanyahu's security council.

In the face of the growing support for the mass-rape narrative, this week, Hamas has published a media statement denying the charge. Their statement says, in part: "We strongly reject and denounce the alignment of some Western media outlets with the misleading Zionist campaigns that promote unfounded lies and allegations aimed at demonizing the Palestinian resistance, the latest of which is the allegation that resistance members committed 'sexual violence' during the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle on October 7."

Brigadier General Amid Eyal Karim is the Chief Rabbi of the Israeli Occupation Force. He cited the Torah to write that rape of the enemy is not only permissible, but perhaps even necessary 'for soldier morale'. He was supported by dozens of fellow Zionist rabbis who signed letters in his defense.

There is a growing record of sexual abuse by the Occupation, particularly in its prisons of Palestinians. Public documents, court cases and headlines as well as the testimony of prisoners recently released in last week's hostage exchange document this pattern of behavior.

[[ video interviews of released prisoners, victims of sexual abuse ]]

There is a recurring theme raised in public debate, that the Occupation's accusations are often a matter of projection or confession, of their own crimes. Given the manner in which other stories of atrocity propoganda have so quickly fallen it remains completely reasonable to remain skeptical of accusations of mass rape emanating from the Apartheid Occupation desparate to recover the narrative on the world stage.

Israel has a long and well documented history of serving as a sanctuary for Jews in the West evading prosecution on charges of pedophilia. Israeli's Ynet News in a March 2021 report about ZAKA former chairman, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, quotes an anonymous source, "For him, everything goes – women, children, boys and girls, and if animals could talk and tell their stories, I've no doubt we would've found out he was playing around with them too. Everything that moves, essentially."

As a more complete understanding of the events of October 7th is revealed, we may soon see these accusations of mass rapes as a weapon of war fall under the growing weight of evidence, or the lack thereof, much like the earlier tropes of beheaded babies, a baby baked in an oven, a command and control center located under a hospital and other lies of Tel Aviv, already debunked by investigative journalists.

In his 2013 book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, Blumenthal quotes Netanyahu as saying, "The [Israeli] Declaration of Independence depicts Israel as both Jewish and democratic. To stop democracy from wiping out the Jewish nature of the country we must ensure the Jewish majority."

Meanwhile, much like a magician, Tel Aviv's deployment of atrocity propoganda has been a resounding success. Its use continues to distract the worlds' attention from the ongoing massacres in Gaza and the West Bank in Palestine. Far too many of us remain distracted from the massacres committed yesterday; from the role of 'friendly fire' and the Hannibal Directive in the 1200-some deaths; from the suspiciously false flag like nature of the IDF's intelligence failures. With a wave of the wand, our attention remains misdirected to the presumed sins of Hamas on October 7th.

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I'm your host, Hugh Esco. This has been the sixth episode of Breaking the Overton Window. Watch for the next episode coming soon. I leave you with a quick appeal for any ready to lend your support to relieving the humanitarian crisis created by the Occupation's war crimes. Until next time, I leave you with wishes for peace.

As-salaam alaykum warahmatullahi wabaraktuh.

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