In the New York Times, an Israeli lawyer named Amit Soussana describes how she was kidnapped by up to ten Gazans, dragged into Gaza, and was tortured and subject to sexual abuse while held as a captive. It is now-familiar, but horrifying story:
The kidnappers attempted to restrain her by beating her and wrapping her in a white fabric, the video shows. Unable to subdue her, the attackers tried and failed to carry her by bicycle, she said. Finally, they bound her hands and feet and dragged her across the bumpy farmland into Gaza, she said.
***
After several minutes, they used duct tape to cover her mouth and nose, tied her feet, and placed the handcuffs on the base of her palms, she said. Then she was suspended, hanging “like a chicken” from a stick stretching between two couches, causing her such pain that she felt that her hands would soon be dislocated.They carried on beating and kicking her, focusing on the soles of her feet, while simultaneously demanding information they believed she was hiding from them, Ms. Soussana said.
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He dragged her at gunpoint back to the child’s bedroom, a room covered in images of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, she recalled.“Then he, with the gun pointed at me, forced me to commit a sexual act on him,” Ms. Soussana said.
It is a long story, and some might be surprised that the left-wing Times is willing to print it. The Times reached out to Gazan authorities for comment:
A spokesman for Hamas, Basem Naim…cast doubt on Ms. Soussana’s account, questioning why she had not spoken publicly about the extent of her mistreatment.
Well, she has.
He said the level of detail in her account makes “it difficult to believe the story, unless it was designed by some security officers.”
A novel approach to evaluating witness credibility.
“For us, the human body, and especially that of the woman, is sacred,” he said, adding that Hamas’s religious beliefs “forbade any mistreatment of any human being, regardless of his sex, religion or ethnicity.”
Right. Actually, Gazans have publicly gloried in the abuse of Israeli captives. And the murders, rapes and other outrages committed on October 7 are well documented, largely by proud Gazans who filmed and boasted about them. So this falls into the category of lies that are strictly pro forma, and not told with any expectation that anyone will believe them.
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