The New York Times has contradicted its earlier claims of sexual assault on Israeli women by Hamas during its Oct 7 attack, releasing the latest video that challenges the Israeli soldiers' assertion of sexual assault.
The newspaper had published a report investigative report titled ‘Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7’ but the recent development has cast doubt on the validity of the claims made in the article.
The Times recently issued a partial refutation of its own investigation, acknowledging that new evidence has emerged that challenges the account of sexual assault by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack. According to the newspaper, a newly surfaced video contradicts claims made by an Israeli military paramedic regarding the alleged sexual assault of two teenagers killed in the attack.
The video, captured by an Israeli soldier and viewed by community members as well as by The New York Times, shows the bodies of three female victims fully clothed and with no apparent signs of sexual violence at a home where residents had believed the assaults occurred.
Residents of Kibbutz Be’eri, where the attack took place, noted that no other home in the area had two teenage girls killed, leading them to conclude from the video that the girls had not been sexually assaulted, as initially reported.
This development follows previous challenges to the accuracy of the Times' report. Both the news website Mondoweiss and The Intercept had contested the claims made in the investigative report, with The Intercept debunking two out of three claims of sexual assault reported by the newspaper.
Family members of the victims have accused The New York Times of manipulation in their reporting, alleging that the journalists aimed to "score a journalistic achievement" rather than accurately report the facts.
Despite mounting evidence calling into question the veracity of the original report, The New York Times has yet to retract the article entirely. The newspaper stated that they had contacted the Israeli military paramedic mentioned in the report, who declined to confirm whether he still supported the account.
A UN report released earlier in March, criticized for relying largely on Israeli government sources, acknowledged "reasonable grounds" and "circumstantial evidence" of some forms of sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attack.
However, the report concluded that at least two allegations of sexual violence widely reported in the media, supposedly taking place in Kibbutz Be’eri, were unfounded.
Critics, including Ali Abunimah, executive director of the Electronic Intifada, have called for The New York Times to retract the article entirely, citing the collapse of almost every element of the original report and accusing the newspaper of perpetuating "Israel’s mass rape propaganda.