This is a lazy piece of journalism filled with omissions and sleights of hand that create the impression that sexual assault occurred on October 7 on a wide scale, but that investigators have been stymied by factors beyond their control in their quest for actual evidence. The article also contains some revealing errors.
Gessen cites the Pramila Patten report without informing readers that Patten repeatedly emphasized that her mission was not a formal investigation. They later write that the Israeli tale of a "woman who supposedly had a number of nails driven into her vagina" was "not corroborated." In fact, Patten has explicitly stated this claim was not just uncorroborated, but untrue. x.com/zei_squirrel/s…
Gessen goes on to write that Patten's team struggled to find evidence because "survivors and eyewitnesses [to supposed sexual assault on October 7] were reticent." This statement is also disproven by the Patten report, which stated that the Israeli government refused to provide their team with any access to supposed survivors. x.com/muhammadshehad…
Reticence implies that survivors do exist, but that they've been reluctant to speak out of shame. Yet nine months since the October 7 attack, no one has managed to interview a self-proclaimed survivor of rape on October 7, because none exist. The New York Times sent a reporter, Anat Schwartz, to every rape crisis center in Israel to locate an October 7 sexual assault survivor, and she turned up nothing. Schwartz co-bylined the Times' disastrous and comprehensively debunked "Screams Without Words" article alleging "systematic" rape by Hamas, and was subsequently fired for her unprofessional conduct. Gessen, who is joining the NY Times as a columnist, whitewashes that article as merely "controversial."
While interviewing a cast of liberal Zionist NGO feminists operating near the top of Israel's colonial hierarchy, Gessen denigrates "Palestinian activists and pro-Palestinian media, including several U.S.-based outlets," accusing these unnamed elements of "a campaign of denial." Perhaps if Gessen had interviewed critics of the official Israeli propaganda line, or at least read their work, they might have avoided so many embarrassing flubs.
Mike