New York Times raises skepticism over its Hamas sexual assault story

By Merve Aydogan

HAMILTON, Canada (AA) - A report published Tuesday by The New York Times countered its own story nearly three months earlier about members of Hamas sexually assaulting Israeli women during the group’s cross-border incursion into Israel on Oct. 7 last year.

Titled "Israeli Soldier’s Video Undercuts Medic’s Account of Sexual Assault," it acknowledges a video taken by an Israeli soldier showing "the bodies of three female victims fully clothed and with no apparent signs of sexual violence at a home where many residents had believed the assaults occurred."

On Dec. 28, the Times published a lengthy investigative report titled “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7” delving into the alleged rape and sexual violence by members of the Palestinian group against women during the Oct. 7 attack. It included statements from an unidentified paramedic belonging to an Israeli commando unit.

Several media outlets including The Associated Press, CNN and The Washington Post published similar narratives attributed to an anonymous military paramedic.

The Times article cited three alleged victims of sexual assault. Two of them, from Kibbutz Be’eri, were described with enough detail to potentially identify them as sisters, with the last name Sharabi, aged 13 and 16.

Michal Paikin, a spokesperson for Kibbutz Be'eri, categorically rejected the allegations about the sisters, saying that while they were shot, they were not subjected to sexual abuse.

“You’re talking about the Sharabi girls?” she told The Intercept. “No, they…were shot and were not subjected to sexual abuse.”

Further undermining the credibility of the allegations, Paikin called into question the reliability of testimony by an Israeli special forces paramedic, a primary source for the Times article.

“It’s not true,” she said, referring to the paramedic’s claims about the girls. “They were not sexually abused.”

According to the latest report by The New York Times, residents of the kibbutz commented on the newly surfaced video footage and said that only one home in Kibbutz Be'eri housed the two teenage girls who were killed, leading them to dismiss claims of sexual assault.

The report also included remarks from Nili Bar Sinai, a member of the kibbutz group investigating the allegations, saying “this story is false.”