The Guardian published an account of Hamas’s sexual violence against women yesterday: “Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October attacks.”
The article begins by telling Shani Louk’s story:
In videos from 7 October, the body of a young woman is lying face down in the back of a pickup truck, stripped to her underwear, one leg bent at an unnatural angle. One of the men sitting next to her pulls her long hair as armed men around him shout praises to God.
Footage of the lifeless corpse of Shani Louk, a 22-year-old Israeli-German national, paraded around the streets of Gaza was some of the first to surface on 7 October, as the scale of the horror visited on sleeping families in kibbutzim neighbouring the strip and people partying at a nearby rave started to become clear.
That footage was filmed by Hamas on the weekend of October 7. How did the Guardian report Shani’s story on October 9?:
A video appeared to show a partygoer, reported to be Shani Louk, a 23-year-old German-Israeli dual national, being paraded through the streets of Gaza. CNN said it had verified a video showing her being driven in a truck guarded by a militant carrying a rocket-propelled grenade, while another held her by the hair.
Louk’s mother, Ricarda, later said: “This morning my daughter, Shani Nicole Louk, a German citizen, was kidnapped with a group of tourists in southern Israel by Palestinian Hamas.
The paper’s first account omitted important details: Shani’s lifeless and naked body was strewn in the back of a pickup truck. A terrorist — or, as the Guardian says, a Hamas militant — stomped on her back. And, at that point, the video had been verified by Shani’s mother who was able to identify her daughter by a distinct tattoo. General instinct should direct people who see terrorists cheering at the sight of a seemingly unconscious and naked innocent woman to recoil in horror, disgust, anguish. The first images out of Israel, and the video of Shani, should have caused the world to label Hamas’s actions what they so clearly were: pure terror that targeted Israel’s most innocent.
It’s been three months, and some outlets are just now noting that evidence suggests systematic gender-based violence. Granted, greater and more detailed evidence of Hamas’s violence has come out of a painful and thorough Israeli investigation, one that National Review first covered on November 16. But now-well-known reports of Hamas severing a woman’s breasts, raping women next to their dead friends, and mutilating women’s vaginas were available months ago to the same people who now say that evidence merely points to Hamas’s crimes against women.