Israeli reservist peddles lies about Hamas ‘sexual violence’ and gets away with it

By Press TV Staff Writer

Appearing on a prime-time Sky News show earlier this week, Israeli military reservist Shari Mendes again resorted to her favorite activity – peddling lies about the Palestinian resistance.

“It seems like there was a systematic genital mutilation of women,” Mendes told show host Yalda Hakim while discussing the events of October 7 when Hamas launched the unprecedented military operation dubbed ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Storm’ (Al-Aqsa Flood).

“The halls were lined to the ceiling with body bags, the smell was unimaginable. I can't tell you the shock and despair that struck all of us,” she added, repeating the claim made by Israeli officials.

The Israeli military reservist noted that women were “shot in the crotch and the genitals.”

Her remarks were in line with a report by the New York Times, which accused the Gaza-based Hamas resistance group of “weaponizing” rape on October 7, which the group dismissed flatly.

Hamas politburo member Basem Naim said the claims were “biased to what the Israeli propaganda says [in terms of] lies and slanders against the Palestinians and their resistance.”

A Mondoweiss report on December 1 also debunked a report by veteran CNN journalist Jake Tapper that claimed “rape crimes” against Israeli women on October 7.

“The most concerning aspect of the report is the fact that every single witness and “expert” in the CNN report proves to either be lacking in credibility or have ties to Israeli government officials and institutions,” the report stated.

Journalist Jonathan Cook in an article published on October 18 asserted that the allegations against Hamas were not backed by evidence and were being used to justify genocide in the besieged territory.

“However, unlike the lack of evidence that Hamas ordered rape as a weapon of war, we do have evidence – from the Israeli media – that an Israeli military leader encouraged Israeli soldiers to rape Palestinian women to “boost morale”,” he wrote, referring to Col. Eyal Karim, Israeli military’s rabbi who suggested last month that rape “was permissible” in times of war.

Exposed: 100 days of Israeli genocide in Gaza and 100 lies peddled by regime

Since Oct. 7, when the Israeli regime launched its fresh aggression on Gaza, the regime and its media have weaponized lies and propaganda against Palestinians.

Interestingly, the Israeli military failed to gather forensic evidence to substantiate the allegations of rape against Hamas, and even an Israeli military spokesman retracted the statement.

So, the claim repeated by Mendes holds no water, according to independent observers. Sky News, after a barrage of comments calling out the lie of the “serial liar”, blocked comments on the post on X.

It’s not the first time Mendes has made such baseless claims about “sexual violence” against Hamas.

On October 20, she claimed, without a shred of evidence, that a baby was “cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded, and then the mother was beheaded.”

“There is evidence of mass rape so brutal that they broke their victims’ pelvis – women, grandmothers, children,” the Israeli military reservist stated in a report published by the Daily Mail.

“I heard stories about Auschwitz as a child growing up in New Jersey. But what I have seen here with my own eyes is worse than the Holocaust,” she claimed – a claim that turned out hollow.

Two days later, on October 22, the Christian Post repeated the same unsubstantiated claim of a baby being “cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded and then the mother was beheaded.”

It was followed by her interview with The Jewish Insider, in which the Israeli military reservist rehashed the same worn-out claims: “Pelvises were broken, and it probably takes a lot to break a pelvis. This was also among grandmothers down to small children... We saw these bodies with our own eyes.”

On Nov 25, in an interview with The Washington Post, Mendes claimed to see "many women with bloody underwear, with broken bones, broken legs, broken pelvises.”

The report was scandalously headlined – “rape as a weapon of air” – an attempt to vilify Hamas.

On December 4, she appeared at a press conference, representing the Israeli regime, at the United Nations, making the make allegations.

Factbox: How Israeli regime designs its blatant lies for Western audiences

If you can’t win them, fool them. This has been the flagship public relations strategy of the Israeli regime for decades, one that it has seemingly doubled down in the wake of the events of Oct 7.

The world body was slammed for providing the stage to a hate-monger who defends the regime that has been responsible for the killing of hundreds of UN workers in the besieged Gaza Strip since Oct. 7.

On December 28, speaking with the New York Times, Mendes said she saw four people with signs of sexual violence, including some with “a lot of blood in their pelvic areas".'

Last month, speaking at an event in Westminster organized by the All Party UK-Israel Parliamentary Group, Mendes claimed to have fled a morgue as “bodies were coming in booby-trapped."

“We didn’t want to leave them [the dead women] but we were told ‘it’s dangerous, you have to get out’... The whole staff had to leave [the morgue] until it was safe to go back in.”

Her claims have been debunked by the Israeli military officials themselves, albeit privately, and no independent investigation has so far proved the credibility of what she continues to say in interviews.

A report by the Electronic Intifada website in December deconstructed the “deceptive campaign based not on evidence but emotional manipulation, outlandish claims, distortion.”

“Its purpose is to demonize them and soften up public opinion to tolerate or support Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” the report stated.

Mondoweiss, in a report published on December 8, stated that the Israeli claim of “sexual violence” consists of only one eyewitness testimony that was shown exclusively to Israeli journalists.

On the other hand, what is known to the world are the testimonies of Israeli female captives themselves, who spoke highly of their captors after being freed in a swap deal.

Daniel Aloni, one of the elderly captives, even wrote to thank Hamas’s armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades before being released along with her daughter Emilia, which grabbed headlines.

“I will forever be thankful that she doesn’t leave here with trauma,” she wrote. “If only in this world we could truly be good friends.”

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