Every pillar of the genocide accusation against Israel has crumbled. The institutions that built it have suddenly lost their voices.

By Andrew Fox

Sometimes I think I am not angry enough, but the scale of the problem is almost too huge to be angry at, collectively. Towering rage must be split into smaller rages at each of the component parts of the blood libel machine.

• The fantastical Lancet “studies” salivating over hundreds of thousands of imaginary dead Gazans.
• AirWars’ pearl-clutching reports, drawing conclusions of civilian targeting in Gaza without a tenth of the evidence needed to draw said conclusions.
• Amnesty, B’tselem and all the other NGOs, releasing fraudulent genocide conclusions achieved only by changing the definition and parameters of genocide.
• The paid media squad of hacks, twisting and distorting and murdering the truth just to get one over on the Jewish state.
• South Africa, ripping apart the genocide convention at Iran’s behest, making it harder to punish real genocides in future.

The whole sorry mess sickens me, and now the great indictment of Israel is coming apart, one revelation at a time. This fact is not being reported by a single damned one of the media outlets that have spent years screeching over the war in Gaza to the exclusion of almost all else. Famine, deliberate attacks on hospitals, the slaughter of journalists and children, and systematic obstruction of aid: each allegation was broadcast as settled fact and then used to prove genocidal intent. The same newsrooms and universities that thundered these charges have shown remarkably little interest in the evidence that now destroys each of these allegations.

It is incredible. There is no aspect of the genocide allegation that has not collapsed.

Start with the famine claim.

In August 2025, the IPC used two ways of measuring malnutrition in children: weight compared with height, and the size of a child’s upper arm. Gaza had no local data showing how those two measures matched up, so the IPC used an estimate from elsewhere in the region. It assumed the weight-and-height measure would find about twice as many malnourished children as the arm measurement.

The first large Gaza survey to use both measures found the reverse. Of 1,335 children surveyed in 2026, 0.5% were identified as acutely malnourished by weight and height, while 1.3% were identified by upper-arm measurement. That survey cannot tell us exactly what conditions were like in 2025. The later survey cannot recreate conditions in 2025, but it exposes the rotten foundation beneath a verdict presented to the world as scientific certainty: a key assumption behind the famine declaration had never been tested in Gaza itself.

The food figures are equally awkward. Official COGAT-based data show that about 1.01 million tonnes of food entered Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 17 January 2025, against an estimated requirement of 825,000 tonnes. From the October 2025 ceasefire to 7 June 2026, 1.78 million tonnes entered, against a calculated need of roughly 643,000 tonnes.

Of course, food crossing a border does not guarantee it reaches every family. Roads were destroyed, distribution failed, aid was looted, and Israel’s two-and-a-half-month block on aid in spring 2025 was a grave error. However, those qualifications cannot rescue the claim of a continuous Israeli policy to starve Gaza. The quantities of food that entered Gaza are simply too large.

The hospital narrative has also disintegrated. American intelligence independently confirmed that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad used al-Shifa for command operations, weapons storage, and to hold hostages. Hamas accounts now describe armed men, including senior officers, sheltering inside the hospital during an Israeli siege. Hospitals remained protected, and Israel still had to obey the laws of war, but the moral fairy tale of innocent hospitals attacked by the brutal IDF is dead. There is now endless evidence in the public domain of Hamas using hospitals for military purposes.

The casualty statistics have fared no better. The claim that 70% of the dead were women and children became a fixture of global coverage. OCHA’s July 2026 snapshot, based on Gaza Health Ministry figures for 71,444 identified fatalities, placed those categories at 45.2 %. Adult men make up over 50% of the fatalities, from a pre-war adult male percentage of approximately 25% of the population. Not all adult men can be counted as combatants, but a figure repeatedly cited as proof of indiscriminate slaughter is now shown to be false when applied to the overall toll. The “hundreds of thousands” of dead under the rubble have likewise not materialised. That number is completely implausible, given Gaza’s mechanism for reporting the missing and the financial compensation incentives to use it.

The supposed massacre of journalists is now unravelling in the same way. A Meir Amit Centre study of 266 people listed as journalists or media workers found that 157, around 60 %, were members of or clearly affiliated with terrorist organisations. The Committee to Protect Journalists has already removed eight names after establishing that they were Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad combatants, removed another twelve for other reasons, and, after this exposure came to light, opened a full review. Other OSINT (open-source intelligence) suggests this figure of combatants is even higher.

This proves that “journalist” was often a dangerously incomplete label and that lurid claims of Israel slaughtering journalists were nothing more than propaganda. An artillery commander does not become a civilian by picking up a camera. Major outlets repeated the raw total for years, yet now they are barely reporting its collapse.

The same contamination appears across lists of healthcare workers and children. Militant obituaries have identified numerous medical workers as commanders and operatives, while faction records have revealed teenagers listed only as children despite their documented recruitment into armed groups. Recruited minors remain victims of the adults who used them, but age alone cannot establish civilian status or Israeli intent.

Hamas’s role in the aid disaster has finally forced its way into the UN’s own language. In July 2026, a senior UN official accused armed personnel affiliated with Gaza’s “de facto authorities” (i.e. Hamas) of breaking into a food distribution point and a World Food Programme warehouse, assaulting drivers and participating in a wider pattern of intimidation, obstruction and smuggling attempts. Years of sneering at Hamas’s aid diversion as Israeli propaganda ended with the UN admitting it.

Academia performed no better. The International Association of Genocide Scholars declared Israel guilty, falsely claiming that the International Court of Justice had found genocide “plausible”. The court’s former president had already explained that it made no such finding. Only 28 % of the association’s members voted. Membership was open to literally anyone, yet headlines announced the judgment of the world’s genocide scholars. The same applies to the fraudulent squad of historians newly reinventing themselves as “genocide scholars”, assuming authority their qualifications do not grant, and grandly declaring Gaza a genocide. No mea culpa from these frauds. There are books to be sold.

The repercussions are no longer theoretical. Britain recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in 2025, the second-highest annual total in its history; the United States recorded 6,274, with physical assaults at a record. Two Israeli embassy employees were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. Fifteen people were slaughtered at a Chanukah celebration in Sydney. And on, and on, and on.

No newspaper article pulled those triggers, and the hatred long predates Gaza, but the relentless depiction of the Jewish state as a child-killing, famine-making engine of genocide gave old hatred a new moral vocabulary. Jews everywhere were forced to answer for accusations that the evidence can no longer sustain. The genie of antisemitism is out of the bottle, and any corrections now will not put it back. The academics, NGOs, politicians and journalists who spread the genocide blood libel without waiting for evidence (or fabricating their own) now have blood on their hands.

Israel should already have been exonerated of the blanket charge that it sought to exterminate Gaza’s civilians. Individual strikes and alleged crimes still require investigation, but genocide cannot remain the default verdict after every single factual pillar supporting it has cracked.

The record now requires urgent correction, followed by inquiries within the universities and professional bodies that lent the libel their prestige. Some of those responsible should resign.

They will not.

The people who spread these blood libels remain in post, reviewing one another’s work and hoping nobody notices the ruins of their reputations.

About the writer:

A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, Msc in Psychology and is currently studying for a PhD in History.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

What is the connection between the bombing of the King David Hotel 80 years ago and Moshav Gan Ner in Northern Israel?

By David E. Kaplan

One of the most iconic blots in Israel’s fight against the British for independence was the bombing of the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946, eighty years ago last week.  Ninety-one people, died when explosives planted by an Irgun commando detonated in the basement of the building, which housed, among others, the British headquarters for Palestine.

An act of terrorism which killed mostly civilians,  but:

 Was it true as it was once asserted that no warning was issued? 

BUILD-UP TO A BOMBING

To understand the circumstances leading to the bombing of one of the most historically iconic architectural gems in Jerusalem, one must understand the acute desperation of the parties  to the conflict at the time.

On June 29, 1946, Britain launched Operation Agatha  — a random name choice unrelated to the ‘who done-it’ novelist  -in which 25,000 British troops participated, raiding the Jewish Agency headquarters and imposing curfews, seizing arms, and confiscating documents detailing Hagana operations and the activities of the joint resistance movement that included:

– the Hagana, the most organized group, which was aligned with the Jewish Agency;

– the Irgun, the Revisionist movement led by Menachem Begin that had initiated many military actions; and

– Lehi, which was the acronym for “Lohamei Herut Yisrael,” the smallest and most extreme of the three.

All three groups had put aside their differences and rebelled against British rule to pressure the revocation of the White Paper under Neville Chamberlain’s government which sought to appease the Arab population in Mandatory Palestine on the eve of World War II by:

– severely limiting Jewish immigration

– restricting land purchases, and

– abandoning the goal of a Jewish state.

The British arrested 2,700 individuals, including Moshe Sharett, head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department and future prime minister; David Remez, chairman of the Jewish National Council; Yitzhak Gruenbaum, director of the Jewish Agency’s Labor Department; and Dov Yosef, a prominent Jewish Agency member and future minister. A people traumatized, the day went down in modern Jewish history as “Black Saturday” until it was superseded by the events of Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.

The documents seized by the British were taken to the British Mandate Secretariat, located in the King David’s southern wing. As the center of British mandate rule in Palestine, the hotel was treated as a target even before Operation Agatha  and with the transfer of these compromising documents to the secretariat it hastened a strategic decision to bomb the hotel.

So, what is the connection of the bombing to the community settlement of Gan Ner, founded in northern Israel, south of Afula in 1987?

At the turn of the millennium, Lord Grenville Janner was visiting Israel from the UK and he addressed a meeting in Ra’anana where I had the opportunity to interview him.

He revealed an illuminating conversation he had with his mother following the passing of his father Sir Barnett Janner, who had preceded him as the Labour M.P. for Leicester West in the House of Commons and had also been president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews:

She said:

 “Your Dad worked all his life for Israel and there is nothing named after him. You should rectify this and go see Mr. Begin.”

“The Israeli Prime Minister! What do I tell him?” asked the son.

“I’ll tell you. Not so long ago, a colonel wrote to your father revealing that he was in the King David hotel when Begin’s organization blew it up. However he knew that Begin had warned the military authorities prior to the operation, which our British government has always denied.  He confirmed that he had been present when the warning call from the Irgun came through to the hotel switchboard confirming an effort was made to protect lives. Your father, despite being ideologically poles apart from Begin, had the courage to stand up in the House of Commons and proclaim that truth. It could no longer be publicly denied.”

JANNER DOESN’T GEL

So, Greville dutifully went off to see the Menachem Begin. The Israeli Prime Minister’s response was:

 “Sure, we are truly thankful to your father for revealing an unpopular truth in your Parliament. However, we can’t name a place in Israel ‘Janner’ – it’s not a Hebrew sounding name.”

Pondering for a few seconds, Begin then continued:

“How about Gan Ner? Sounds Israeli and more-or-less like Janner and translates into Hebrew as ‘Candel Garden’. After all, your father shone a candle of light illuminating a truth. Nu, how about it?”

It was agreed.

However, when Begin suggested that Gan Ner should be located “in Judea or Samaria,” Lord Janner said he resorted to some very unLORDly Yiddish expletives to describe what his late liberal father would have thought about that and “So today, there is a delightful settlement of some 700 souls nestled in the heart of Israel in the Jezreel Valley at the foothills of Mt. Gilboa.”

That was over two decades ago and as at 2024, Gan Ner has expanded to over 2,657 souls with its Gan Ner Sports Hall serving as the home venue for the Hapoel Gilboa Galil professional basketball team.

EPILOGUE

Unlike the warning given in 1946, there was no  warning when a mass of marauding killers crossed over from Gaza into southern Israel on October 7, 2023 massacring Jews wherever they found them.  “Black Saturday” of 1946 had an all-new meaning, and among the many murdered on October 7, was  a young resident from Gan Ner, 22-year-old “partygoer” Stav Barazani.

She attended the Nova Music Festival with her boyfriend, Asaf Edberg. The two fled together and took refuge in a police station, where they were subsequently found and murdered.

For Stav, Gan Ner or ‘Garden Candel’, burns  eternally – a flame of remembrance.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Where is the global outrage at new UN finding of Hamas’ obstruction of humanitarian aid?

By Kenneth Moeng Kgwadi

There has been near-total silence from many of Israel’s critics following the recent United Nations (UN) finding that Hamas obstructed the delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. Hamas had long portrayed the humanitarian crisis as solely the result of others denying Gazans access to necessities such as food, medicine, water, clothing, and other essential supplies. However, the UN’s finding indicates that Hamas itself also played a role in preventing civilians from accessing this aid.

Such actions serve Hamas’ political objectives by reinforcing its narrative of victimhood on the global stage. By obstructing humanitarian assistance while simultaneously presenting itself as the defender of Gaza’s population, Hamas has contributed to shaping international perceptions of the conflict in ways that advance its own strategic interests.

This is the same group of people who refused to allow people to leave endangered locations for the humanitarian zones after the Israel Defense Force (IDF) issued warnings of impending strikes. In their minds, they were being strategic in order for Israel to kill civilians and have blood on its hands, so that the world would believe that the IDF is the monster and isolate Israel in order to achieve their political and religious ends. It has previously been stated that Hamas is using innocent civilians as human shields, but to date the UN has neither seen, investigated, nor acknowledged some of these indictments.

In a strongly worded statement dated 12 July 2026, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Dr. Ramiz Alakbarov, said:

“I strongly condemn the recent obstruction of humanitarian operations in Gaza by the de facto authorities, which endangered humanitarian personnel, intimidated workers delivering lifesaving food assistance and disrupted lifesaving humanitarian assistance.”

What happened on Saturday, when armed Hamas men ambushed two truck drivers at a World Food Program warehouse, was not the first time they had stolen, hijacked, or intimidated humanitarian personnel. At the height of the war between Israel and Hamas, they stole food aid in order to feed their insurgents in the tunnels, while the remaining food aid was sold at exorbitant prices to the poor people of Gaza. Since its formation in 1987, Hamas has become accustomed to not taking any form of accountability for its actions. They always falsely blame Israel as a political strategy and people who accept this false narrative are complacent in the destitution that the people of Gaza are confronting. 

Hamas won political power in 2006 but has held elections in 20 years. It recently announced the dissolution of its governing “Emergency Committee” stepping aside to transfer administrative authority to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) as part of the U.S.-brokered peace and ceasefire plan.

As a government ruling more than two million people, they have only brought terror to the lives of those people by inviting unnecessary wars, while they could have created a conducive environment for their people to thrive. It is highly unlikely that Hamas would be attacked by Israel without any provocation because Israel has invested its time and resources in establishing ties with its neighbours. In all the wars that have taken place between Israel and Hamas, it has always been Hamas that started the war, with Israel counter-attacking as a form of defense of its territory.

Since 2006, Hamas has been majorly responsible for the poor material conditions of the people of Gaza through its political divisions, incompetence, corruption, and war-mongering policies. Throughout the past 20 years, they have never gone to elections to allow the citizens to vote for their preferred government and use elections as an accountability mechanism, which means they have continuously imposed themselves on the people of Gaza to their detriment.

About the writer:

Kenneth Moeng Kgwadi is a political scientist, journalist, and research fellow at the Middle East Africa Research Institute (MEARI).

*Feature picture: Hamas Hijack. A Hamas coordinated intercepting food aid from trucks.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Rubio has delivered a diplomatic breakthrough. Now comes the difficult task of turning a framework into lasting security.

By  Andrew Fox

For the first time in 44 years, Israel and Lebanon have put their names to a framework agreement. Rubio is presenting it as a first step toward ending the conflict, restoring Lebanese sovereignty, dismantling Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, and creating a verifiable path toward security on Israel’s northern border. The deal reportedly begins with two pilot zones, into which the Lebanese Armed Forces will enter as Israel redeploys. At the same time, the IDF remains in Lebanese territory for as long as Hezbollah continues to pose a threat.

This agreement is a meaningful development. It is also where the hard part begins. The agreement creates a process, not an outcome, and the central question is whether anyone can impose that process and outcome on Hezbollah. According to the framework text, Israeli withdrawal is tied to the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups and the dismantling of their infrastructure. That sounds straightforward in Washington. In Lebanon, it runs straight into the political and coercive reality of Hezbollah.

Iran will not let Hezbollah go quietly into that good night. For decades, Hezbollah has been an integral part of Tehran’s regional architecture: a military asset in the plan to destroy Israel, a deterrent, and a lever in wider negotiations. It has proven its utility both by striking inside Israel’s borders and by keeping Lebanon diplomatically tied to Iran’s confrontation with Israel. From Tehran’s perspective, the disarmament of Hezbollah would be a catastrophic strategic loss.

That said, Hezbollah is far more than a line item in an Iranian budget. It has its own funding streams, including smuggling, illicit trade, and international criminal networks. Pressure on Tehran alone will not collapse Hezbollah’s operating capacity. The group has spent years building redundancy into its financing, logistics, and social control.

The pilot-zone mechanism is therefore the key test. The Lebanese army’s entry into the first two areas could be a useful beginning, especially if it establishes a precedent for state authority in places where Hezbollah has long treated Beirut’s sovereignty as an irrelevance. The problem is that Hezbollah overmatches the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in most important respects: firepower, salaries, coercive capacity, embedded networks, and willingness to intimidate local opponents.

(On the origins of Hezbollah – see here.)

The success or failure of the deal hinges on operational freedom. If Israel hands areas to the LAF and the LAF cannot prevent Hezbollah retrenchment, can Israel still act? Israeli officials are already saying the IDF will retain freedom of action in the security zone and remain until Hezbollah and other armed groups no longer pose a threat. That answers part of the Israeli security concern, but “pose a threat” is a loose definition and “no longer” may be doing some heavy lifting. Still, it also creates an obvious point of Lebanese and Hezbollah resistance: an agreement framed as restoring sovereignty may be attacked domestically as legitimising an open-ended Israeli presence.

The risk of Lebanese civil war is already more than a theoretical problem. Hezbollah has already rejected the deal, with Naim Qassem describing it as a surrender and saying the group will continue armed resistance. We have seen reports today of an Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon, in an area outside the newly defined Israeli-held zone. In other words, the announcement has not suspended the underlying dynamics of the conflict.

The same question applies beyond the south. What happens in Hezbollah’s depth areas, including the Bekaa Valley and the logistical corridors that keep Hezbollah in the fight? Can Israel still strike weapons flows, command nodes, and rearmament infrastructure there under the terms of this deal? A framework that manages the border while leaving Hezbollah’s rear areas intact may reduce friction without meaningfully changing the balance of power in Lebanon.

There is also the view from northern Israel. If residents of Kiryat Shmona, Metula, Manara, and other border communities still believe Hezbollah can rebuild observation posts, restore launch capacity, or prepare another frontier shock, displaced Israelis will not return simply because a framework exists. They will only return if the facts on the ground change, visibly and durably.

The Lebanese side faces an equally hard political problem. Hezbollah’s power inside Shia communities rests on welfare provision, patronage, identity, coercion, and deep disillusionment with the Lebanese state. If Lebanon is serious about replacing Hezbollah’s order with state authority, it has to offer more than checkpoints, and foreign-backed security plans. It has to offer protection, services, and a political alternative that does not leave communities feeling exposed.

So, yes: this is progress. A signed Israel-Lebanon framework after 44 years is not nothing, and the pilot-zone model gives the parties something concrete to test. The right posture, however, is cautious scepticism. The success of this deal depends on enforcement, verification, Israeli freedom of action, LAF capacity, Hezbollah’s coercive response, Iran’s tolerance for strategic loss, and Lebanon’s ability to offer its Shia citizens something better than the status quo. Until those details are clear, this is a good first step but it is not yet a settlement.

About the writer:

A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, Msc in Psychology and is currently studying for a PhD in History.

*Feature picture:  ‘Sign’ of the Times.  The historic signing of the Israel-Lebanon-U.S. “Trilateral Framework Agreement” is intended to contribute to regional transformation by envisioning an eventual normalization of relations between the two states of Israel and Lebanon. (Photo: AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Promises, platitudes and politics is all that is left on offer from Israel’s prime minister.

By David E. Kaplan

The story about the prophet Samuel informing King Saul that his kingdom was being taken away in favor of a more worthy successor, remains a pivotal moment in the biblical narrative about the wisdom of timeous political transition. (Samuel 15 and 16)

Some 3000 years later, this narrative could not be more instructive.

What if Samuel was with us today and like all Israelis on 16 June 2026, who turned on their local TV news channels to hear their prime minister address the nation on Trump’s MoU. (Memorandum of Understanding).

After all, the issue is the number one existential issue facing the nation of Israel.

This is what the prime minister himself believes.

This is what he has been telling us and the world not for years but for decades. On this issue, he prides himself no less a prophet than Samuel.

So, what would Samuel have thought as he looked upon like all of us in disbelief?

What would he have wisely counseled while going about doing God’s work?

After so much war and  suffering, did not the people of Israel deserve to hear at least some details from their prime minister to UNDERSTAND what was happening?

Bibi offered anything but UNDERSTANDING!

Well, not quite because we UNDERSTOOD that Bibi was as lost as all of us as the only relevant insight he could share on the MoU was that he did not know yet any details.

He let us know that we knew as much as he did.

Comforting!

As we prepared to watch Bibi’s carefully choreographed address, all were anxious having been subjected to the rumors that the agreement would:

– strengthen Hezbollah

– strengthen Iran and

– weaken Israel.

As we later learned,  it did all three, virtually making Lebanon an Iranian protectorate. Bad enough for us in the center of the country but what of our fellow citizens in the north that as The Jerusalem Post editor solemnly writes would mean:

 “…the difference between a family returning to Metula, Kiryat Shmona, Minara, Shlomi, or the Galilee, and another year of empty streets, shuttered businesses, improvised schooling and lives lived in suspension.”

Did the prime minister offer to them and the rest of his listening citizenry anything beyond, promises, platitudes and politics?

Like an ailing King Saul this was a failing “King Bibi” and that we, the modern citizens of Israel, needed fresh ideas and fresh leadership.

Displaying disdain for the concerns and anxieties of his people he hardly even addressed the MoU  – the number one issue on all viewer’s minds and why they turned on their TVs to watch.

Desperate to hear some straight talk about what the burgeoning deal between the US and Iran would mean for us, all we got as most commentators agree was  a superficial “campaign speech” using the platform to highlight Bibi’s military achievements and outlining future political goals.

Clearly, most pressing for Bibi was setting the record straight following a June 2026 interview, when U.S. President Donald Trump publicly questioned whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intended to run in Israel’s upcoming fall elections, remarking “I wonder if Bibi even wants to continue.”

Bibi assured his viewers that he will be running and that “I intend to win.”

Hardly what many wanted to hear!

In a  De Gaulle mode of Je suis la France (“I am France”), Bibi believes he is indispensable to Israel – that he embodies the Jewish State.

Having endured two major conflicts with the Iranian regime, spending hours in shelters as Iranian ballistic missiles rained down indiscriminately in attempts to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible, with lives lost, homes destroyed, and nerves frayed, Israelis deserved more.

They did not get it.

Where we did get the truth was from Trump’s former partner- in-chief during his first term, VP Mike Pence who blasted the U.S.-Iran MoU, warning it contains no requirement for Iran to dismantle its nuclear or ballistic missile programs and no commitment to end support for terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

All issues critical to Israel, Pence said the deal would immediately ease sanctions, unlock billions in frozen Iranian assets, and pave the way for hundreds of billions in reconstruction funding for Iran, calling it “the kind of appeasement” seen under previous administrations.

Days later, having time to “digest”, many in Israel felt a need to belch as the final memorandum appeared even worse than the leaked version, strengthening Iran’s hold over Lebanon, ignoring Hezbollah’s disarmament and exposing a seismic gap between Trump’s declarations and the agreement he signed. This deal sounds little more than extortion – paying Iran off to open Hormuz!

While all this is going on and Israelis have made such sacrifices for their families, for their friends and for their country, thousands of Hareidi protestors are blocking highways, attacking Supreme Court Deputy President Justice Noam Sohlberg’s private residence all in support of draft dodgers. What would Samuel say listening to a representative of the Jerusalem Faction protest say:

 “We will shut down the country, and anyone who thinks they have seen it all is in for surprises. The struggle is only at its beginning, and our next steps will be far more significant.”

And what is this governments response to this anti-Zionist conduct undermining and dividing the country?  

Adding insult to injury, this government under this prime minister is advancing a proposed Basic Law that elevates Torah study to a foundational national value that will define long-term Torah study as equivalent to “meaningful service” in the IDF.

Shame, Shame, Shame.

What would Samuel of 3000 years ago say today?

He would say like most are feeling.

It is time for change.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Media Watch:  Arab world is watching Israel like never before says Arab journalist.

Explaining this phenomenon is veteran Arab journalist and author Nazir Majli, widely known for his extensive career as a political correspondent covering Israel and the Middle East for the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat. He has served as the publication’s Israel bureau chief, offering analysis and breaking news across both Arabic and international media. Reported in Ynet, Majli questions how Irael seems impervious to the negative impact many of its actions are having on Arabs in the region who were growing to the idea – once an anathema – of closer ties with Israel following the Abraham Accords. He characterizes Israel by its conduct as “a subcontractor for Hamas,” for the self-inflicted harm damage it is causing.
Let Majli explain – it is well worth a read.

David E. Kaplan
Editor, Lay of the Land

ARAB WORLD WATCHING ISRAELI MEDIA LIKE NEVER BEFORE, BUT ISRAEL IS FAILING TO UNDERSTAND WHY

By Nazir Majli

No country draws the attention of the Arab world more than Israel. Perhaps it began as “know your enemy,” but it did not remain only that. Many Arabs wanted knowledge and answers. For years, they learned about Israel mainly from hostile Arab sources, mobilized media, propaganda and incitement. Many believed that distorted picture until they encountered another truth.

Israel’s achievements in science, technology, security, high-tech and the economy raised more questions and increased the demand for reliable information.

When that demand became real hunger, Arab media faced a major challenge. Major newspapers such as Asharq Al-Awsat and Al-Hayat began employing Arab citizens of Israel as correspondents in the early 1990s. Al Jazeera later joined, followed by Al Arabiya. Today, there is no influential Arab channel or newspaper without a correspondent in Israel. Even Hezbollah-linked Al Mayadeen has commissioned reports from Arab Israeli journalists.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, the Israeli voice has reached the Arab nation live and from the source. Netanyahu’s speeches and those of his ministers have been broadcast live with simultaneous Arabic translation and later quoted in news bulletins. Studio discussions were repeatedly interrupted for statements by Israeli leaders.

Even as Israeli planes bombed universities, schools, mosques and churches, even as thousands of women and children were killed and homes were destroyed in Gaza and in West Bank refugee camps, the voice and image of IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari appeared on screens in Palestinian and Arab homes. Every appearance was broadcast and translated reliably for Arab audiences.

At the same time, while Israel practiced military and self-censorship over IDF operations in Gaza and later Lebanon, and while broadcasters, reporters and commentators in Israeli studios often concealed the harsh consequences, Arab media made sure to carry the other voice — the Israeli one.

It was openness against opacity. Veteran Arab journalists remembered the 1960s, when Israel projected great self-confidence and often told the truth, while Arab media concealed it.

After 50 years of deeper and more authentic Arab familiarity with Israel, there is no longer one united Arab hostility toward Israel. There is an internal Arab conflict over Israel. The Abraham Accords were one of the clearest expressions of that change.

Hamas, inspired by Iran, attacked Israel in an effort to destroy that process. Israel’s harsh, unconventional and destructive response turned it, in effect, into a subcontractor for Hamas, helping it advance that goal and damaging the new Arab current that wanted normalization with Israel.

What had been seen as Israeli wisdom suffered a severe blow after Oct. 7.

The questions I now hear from Arab colleagues, influencers and policy figures have become much harder. Covering Israel for the Arab world has become more difficult. Israeli policy is seen as a gamble with everything on the table. Even those who hate Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah cannot digest Israel’s conduct throughout the war. Many believe this policy is helping the extremist axis.

Even friends of President Donald Trump, who strongly supports the Israeli government, do not understand how Netanyahu has placed everything in his hands.

They ask me:

 “Don’t you think about the day after? Is there no responsible body analyzing reality, examining scenarios and drawing professional conclusions about the future? How is policy made in Israel? What are the considerations? How do Israelis understand the value of good neighbors? Even if there are military achievements, why not use them for a diplomatic horizon? The first rule of wars is to end them with political achievements. Is Israel waiting for Trump to do that work, too?”

A wealthy, educated woman from Gaza, now a refugee in Egypt and known for opposing Hamas, asked me in despair: “Don’t Israelis have children? Don’t they think about their future? Do you know that my grandson talks about revenge?”

A Syrian intellectual living in Canada, who celebrated the fall of the Assad family’s regime, canceled his plan to return to Syria with his family because of the uncertainty there.

“What do the Israelis want from Syria already?” he asked. “A country without an army, extending a hand for peace and ready to cooperate against terrorism — why is it met with such hostility from Israel?”

A senior Egyptian diplomat I met in Tel Aviv told me: “You know how much I hate Iran. But Israel has been exposed. For me, it is the second Iran in the region. What it did in Gaza conveys weakness more than strength. The arrogance of its leaders and the talk of turning Israel into the most powerful force in the region and the world express a sick internal weakness.”

A senior official in Abu Dhabi, once an enthusiastic supporter of the Abraham Accords, spoke of deep shock.

“What Hamas did was not only carry out a cursed, murderous attack,” he said. “It also pulled Israelis out of judgment and strategic thinking, dragging them into sacrificing future generations to a dark future.”

He recalled Netanyahu’s 2015 comment at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, when he was asked whether Israel would forever live by the sword and answered, “Yes.”

“Do Israelis understand what that means?” the Abu Dhabi official asked. “What leader promises his people wars for life?”

The Arab world is watching Israel more closely than ever. But attention is not support. Israel’s words are translated, its leaders are heard and its military briefings are broadcast. Yet everything Israel says is now weighed against what Arab audiences see.

The question is whether Israel understands what it is showing them.”

People would far rather believe that pigs can fly and Israel trains dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners than that Hamas-led terrorists randomly mass raped and slaughtered women, children and some men on October 7. Here’s why:

By Marika Sboros

(Courtesy of Daily Friend in SA where first published)

There are moments when language fails, when violence outstrips the vocabulary available to describe it. 

October 7, 2023, in southern Israel was one of those moments.

The unprecedented violence, mass rape and sexual savagery that the Hamas-led attack unleashed on that day was so deliberately, systematically calculated to destroy bodies and families that no existing legal framework had a word for it.

Until now.

A new, independent report released on May 12, 2026 is the most comprehensive documentation and analysis to date of that violence. It is the work of the Israel-based, internationally focused NGO, CCO7 (Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children).

Buried in it is a word the Commission’s investigators coined soon after October 7, for what they found in their early research: kinocide – from kin (family) and cide (the systematic nature of destruction).

World media have yet to embrace the word.

The Commission’s leader, Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, an Israel Prize laureate and international law expert, developed the concept of the word with principal contributor, former Canadian justice minister Prof Irwin Cotler.

They did so after watching video after video of Hamas terrorists forcing parents and grandparents to watch their children and grandchildren be tortured, raped and murdered, and children to watch their parents and grandparents suffer the same fate.

Elkayam-Levy describes kinocide as:

 “The deliberate, systematic torture of families and the weaponisation of familial bonds in order to maximise suffering.”

While looking and analysing the videos, they started seeing the pattern – moments that made them “understand that we were seeing something that needs to be defined,” Elkayam-Levy says in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

These moments made her move after October 7 to secure evidence before denial could take hold.

“We saw silence and denial  .. very quick denial,” she told the Times of Israel. This made her “understand that we have to collect evidence as quickly as possible and establish an archive under stringent international standards.”

The Commission’s two-year investigation has done so. It has drawn on legal scholars, international jurists, researchers, archivists and trauma experts, conducted in collaboration with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

Prof David Crane, founding chief prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone has endorsed the report. So have Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Israeli Supreme Court president Aharon Barak and Anila Ali, president of the American Muslim and Multi-Faith Women’s Empowerment Council.

Their endorsement alone should silence those who would dismiss this as a partisan document.

Investigators documented 13 recurring forms of sexual violence across the Nova music festival, kibbutzim, roadside shelters, military bases, abduction routes and hostage captivity in Gaza. These were rape, gang rape, sexual torture, forced nudity, genital mutilation, executions linked to assault, post-mortem abuse and assaults in front of family members.

Some examples: a male survivor of the Nova musical festival slaughter, identified only as D, reportedly passed a polygraph after describing his gang rape:

“They laughed, they were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll … They did whatever they wanted to me.”

A 17-year-old hostage called her mother from Gaza:

“Mum, they’re going to rape me.”

Two related minor children held hostage in Gaza were coerced into sexual acts against one another. Their captors stripped them, touched their genitalia and whipped them.

These are not isolated accounts. They are part of what the Commission documents over two years and 300 pages, in a report titled “Silenced No More: Sexual Terror Unveiled”: a “systematic, widespread and integral” use of sexual violence, designed, planned and organised to terrorise Israeli society as a whole.

The Commission’s legal conclusion is unequivocal – these are war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal acts under international law.

After reading the Commission’s report, Lord Zac Goldsmith, British peer and former Cabinet minister, took to X to ask questions that journalists globally haven’t asked

I include them in full, as a handy reference for journalists who might yet cover it:

• What kind of a depraved monster slices off a woman’s breast while she is being gang-raped, and throws it into the dust to be used as a plaything?
• What kind of a twisted pervert turns rape into necrophilia by shooting a woman in the head while he is still defiling her?
• What kind of ‘freedom fighters’ go into battle with a set of handy Arabic-to-Hebrew phrases, including ‘take off your pants’, ‘lie down’ and ‘spread your legs’?
• What self-respecting human being presses nails, scalpels, a hammer, an axe, screwdrivers and other household tools into a woman’s genitals?
• How hard do you have to rape someone, and with what, to shatter their pelvis?
• Who shoots a young girl in the face and then films her mutilated corpse on her brother’s mobile phone?

The answer is staring us all in the face: Hamas terrorists.

I call them terrorists while many in the media call them “militants”. Unlike “militant”, “terrorist” has a specific meaning – someone who deliberately targets civilians to create fear for political ends. It carries legal weight and moral condemnation.

The October 7 attack meets every legal and common-sense definition of terrorism. Hamas is formally designated a terrorist organisation by the US, the EU, the UK and Australia, among others.

When the Civil Commission’s report landed in newsrooms, many mainstream editors may well have reached for a familiar refrain not to publish: the report is “not new”.  

Technically, they are correct. The Civil Commission’s first detailed report was in November 2023.  And accounts of mass rape and sexual violence began circulating online in the wake of October 7.

Yet there is not wide acknowledgement of why the full extent of that violence has never found its way into public consciousness – and the media’s role in that.

It’s not because the story is not new. It is because a sustained, organised, sophisticated global propaganda campaign has, over more than two years, successfully seeded doubt, denial and deliberate distraction into the information ecosystem.

This may arguably persuade those in positions of power and influence to give credence to claims that accusations of mass rape and massacre of innocents have been “exaggerated” and that Israel “doctored” all the evidence to make October 7 look worse than it was.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese lends ongoing institutional cover to this line of thinking. She regularly underplays the extent of the violence of October 7 – when she acknowledges it at all. She has opined that reports of Hamas’s sexual violence “may have been exaggerated.”

What is new about the “Silenced No More” report is the scope, rigour and forensic depth of its documentation – two years of painstaking evidence-gathering producing the most comprehensive war crimes archive ever assembled on these events.

It is designed to be undeniable.

Yet the denialism goes on, as does the global propaganda campaign.

A column in The New York Times on 11 May by the newspaper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof is relevant in that regard. The irony of its headline, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians”, is probably lost on Kristof 

It mirrors the moral language condemning the silence around October 7 in the Civil Commission’s own report headline: Silenced No More”. It makes Kristof’s column look like a deliberate attempt to pre-empt precisely the rhetorical space the Civil Commission’s report deserves to occupy.

Kristof’s column is riddled with terminal weaknesses, not the least is its most sensational claim: that Israel trains dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners in its jails.

Kristof is careful not to make the claim himself. He leaves it to his sources.

The claim quickly went viral. It is not only unverified. It is old.

As Honest Reporting has noted, Euro-Med Monitor, Kristof’s chief source for his column, and a self-described “human rights” NGO, was pushing it in June 2024.

The claim is physiologically and biologically impossible. As veterinary experts could have told Kristof, if he’d bothered to ask

They could have told him that the canine sexual response is governed by species-specific pheromones that humans do not produce; that canine mounting behaviour is non-sexual; and that canine anatomy is incompatible with human anatomy for penetrative acts.

Veterinary scientists call the dog-rapist claim biologically implausible. It is also a fabrication of a fevered mind designed to overwhelm critical faculties before implausibility registers. In the context of the Middle East conflict, it helpfully contributes to demonising Israel and Jews.

It’s tempting to see that Kristof’s column as preparation for undermining the Civil Commission’s report that launched the next day.

The New York Times did run an extensive news report of the Civil Commission’s the next day, by its Jerusalem correspondent, Isabel Kershner.

Some analysts see that as giving due credence to the Commission’s report. Others have a more jaundiced view. Whether it constitutes balance, accountability or damage control remains to be seen.    

Euro-Med’s record alone should have disqualified it entirely as Kristof’s source.

The NGO spread the debunked claim that Israel harvested organs from Palestinian prisoners. Israel has designated its founder, Ramy Abdu, as a Hamas operative in Europe. Abdu publicly declared on X (formerly Twitter) that Israel has “an insatiable appetite for drinking the blood of Palestinian children.”

(The tweet has since been deleted or made inaccessible, but not before Honest Reporting took a screen shot of it.)

Abdu was just spreading a modern “blood libel”, the word given to the first one that was weaponised in 12th-century England to trigger massacres and expulsions of Jewish communities across medieval Europe for centuries. In its original “glory”, the blood libel claimed Jews kill Christian children and drink their blood for religious ritual.

That The New York Times allowed Kristof to present Euro-Med as a credible watchdog over Israeli prisons without flagging any of this context is a notable editorial failure.

Times of Israel senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur gives his views of Kristof’s column in a YouTube video on May 12. He says that Kristof was not tasked with revealing sexual crimes but “covering for them. And it worked.”

Middle East analyst Eitan Fischberger was more blunt on X:

“Utter depravity from (Kristof) for parroting such cartoonishly evil Hamas propaganda that would make Goebbels blush.”

The paper has stolidly defended the column.

In South Africa, the largest news platform, News24 and EWN were practically alone in covering the Commission’s report.

Contrast that with the considerable space and attention South African media gave to every procedural twist in the ongoing, ill-judged genocide case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel that South Africa launched following October 7.

Some even treated it as a matter of national pride. They also later falsely reported (many journalists still do) that the ICJ found “a plausible case of genocide” against Israel in its ruling in January 2024.

The ICJ did nothing of the sort.

Former ICJ president Judge Joan Donoghue explicitly corrected this publicly in a BBC interview in April 2024: the court “did not decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.” The court did decide that the Palestinians had a “plausible right to be protected from genocide.”

Many Jewish legal and historical scholars consider the genocide claim to rival the original blood libel about Jews killing kids to drink their blood as the worst modern-day libel against Israel and Jews.

Many journalists still make the false claim about the ICJ’s ruling. Many South African media have yet to correct their record.

That’s not incidental. It is an editorial choice that amplifies allegations against Israel and suppresses documented evidence of atrocities against Israelis. It has a cost – paid by the women, children and men whose suffering is erased from public consciousness when false claims are not debunked.

Silence and denialism from journalists on the full extent of the Hamas-led mass rape and other sexual violence of October 7 is one thing; the ongoing silence from feminists globally is another.

Women’s rights organisations built on the principle of believing survivors have still not found their voices. The slogan “Believe Women” turned out to have a gross political limit:

“Believe Women, Except Jewish Women.”

UN Women took weeks to issue even a hedged statement. The UN’s own special rapporteur on sexual violence in conflict reportedly labelled survivor accounts “disinformation”.

When former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg took to the UN podium in December 2023, two months after October 7, to demand that the world acknowledge Hamas’s sexual violence, she was not addressing a hostile audience. She was addressing a silent one.

“The silence on these war crimes is deafening,” Sandberg told the assembly. “Silence is complicity.”

She later added: “I never thought that politics could make any group or feminist leader turn a blind eye to just such clear documentation of sexual violence.”

Her contribution to breaking that silence was to produce a film, titled Screams Before Silence, to give voice to the silenced.

The Civil Commission’s report, which Elkayam-Levy, herself a feminist scholar of international law, built in direct response to that silence, is in part a rebuke to her own field.

The deafening silence still ongoing from feminists over the sexual violence of October 7 is troubling enough. Compounding it with an ironic veneer of respectability is Jewish voices among the loudest dismissing or minimising it.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the American antizionist organisation, blamed Israel for the attack on the day it happened. It has e cast doubt on the sexual violence documentation.

The Antidefamation League (ADL) has noted that JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield some in the anti-Israel movement from allegations of antisemitism and provide a veneer of legitimacy.” That veneer gives the denialism of October 7 sexual violence a halo it would not otherwise have.

In South Africa, the halo hangs over the quaintly named South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) and the non-profit Jewish Democratic Initiative (JDI) when it comes to Israel’s war against Hamas.

The implicit message is insidious: if Jews themselves say something didn’t happen or was exaggerated, how could doubting it be antisemitic or antizionist?

When people with professional credentials in women’s advocacy, or the perceived moral righteousness and authority of being Jewish, line up to cast doubt, the propaganda campaign need not argue its case. It simply points at them.

This is the ecosystem in which the Civil Commission’s report lands in 2026.

Of course, none of the above justifies ignoring credible accounts of abuse in Israeli detention facilities. Confirmed abuse allegations demand accountability, no matter the perpetrators or victims.

Rettig Gur is among Jews prepared to acknowledge the existence of documented cases of Palestinian prisoner abuse. These are “real”, he says, but “far smaller” than alleged and mostly not sexual. He identifies Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich as responsible for treating prisoner welfare as a political liability rather than a legal obligation.

He also stresses that “the vast majority of (IDF) soldiers are honourable men (and women) who walked into fire so our families may live.”

Israel’s government has served notice that it will sue The New York Times for Kristof’s article. An announcement that it was addressing and investigating concerns about abuse of Palestinian prisoners would have been more helpful.

Rettig Gur posits the way forward: the failures of a minority must be fixed from within and must never be weaponised to erase what Hamas did.

The denialism goes on. As the Civil Commission’s CEO, Merav Israeli-Amarant, told Kershner in The New York Times, sexual crimes are “the easiest crimes to deny.” This is especially true of the October 7 attack “because most of the victims were murdered and are unable to testify.”

History has its own power.

It will not remember the perpetrators of kinocide kindly. It will be equally unkind to those who had all the evidence and chose to stay silent. 

About the Writer:

Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.

Follow Marika Sboros on X:  @MarikaSboros
Subscribe on Substack: Marika Sboros 

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

There are words here that will direct you to look away – DON’T! You need to read, process and bear witness.

By Rolene Marks

[Warning: Sensitive Content]

In 2024 I was invited with a small group of journalists and diplomats to view some of the evidence that was found on the terrorists on 7 October and what was subsequently discovered in the Gaza strip. Under close supervision and military intelligence headquarters, we viewed weapons, maps, books and material – and orders in specific detail to commit acts of appalling sexual violence, including instructions for the victims to remove their clothing.

This article will be extremely uncomfortable and difficult for many to read. I appeal to you to please persist – we must bear witness and be the voices of victims and survivors. 

Ushered into another room, phones prohibited, we were shown a 20-minute collation of footage from Hamas body-cam, first responders and desperate family members searching for their loved ones. This we were told, would be evidence submitted to the ICJ where South Africa had filed a case accusing Israel of genocide. The images are seared into my conscience – including that of a partially burnt woman, her legs splayed, dress pushed up and naked, intimate parts for the world to see. There was a slice across her one thigh. I recall another image that I see as clear as day. The body of a woman, on top of a pile of corpses, bleeding from her crotch where she had been shot with the deliberate intent to defile her femininity.

The evidence of what I saw is undeniable.

These are two specific examples of the horrific crimes of Sexual and Gender based Violence (SGBV) and crimes against humanity committed against Israeli men, women and children on 7 October 2023 and to hostages in captivity.

Despite irrefutable proof noted in reports by UN Women, the Dinah Project and one from the Association of Rape Crisis Centres, denial, downplaying and even justification of the atrocities still continue – including from feminist organisations. It would appear that the voices of victims matter – unless they are Israeli. What message does this send future victims of SGBV?

This week, the Civil Commission – an independent Israeli non-profit organisation led by human rights expert and 2024 Israel Prize laureate Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy – released their report. “Silenced no more” was meticulously documented and referenced for over two years and is a devastating collation of the crimes against humanity and SGBV committed on that day and to hostages in captivity.

The report is close to 300 pages long and contains documentation of at least 10,000 items including videos, photographs, forensic findings and the testimonies of 430 victims and survivors. Hamas proudly filmed and distributed evidence of their crimes. The hope is that not only will this be documented to fight back against denial – but could lead to further legal action against the perpetrators. Israel’s Knesset has approved the convening of a special tribunal to try the perpetrators of 7 October.

The individual testimonies are absolutely devastating.

In the weeks and months following the atrocities, eye witnesses and forensic experts testified about what they witnessed. Forensic experts spoke about the condition of the bodies that were brought in for identification, saying how they were shot in their eyes, their faces and their breasts, and even targeted in their most intimate parts. Women were stripped, bound, stabbed, shot and burned. Heads were decapitated and pelvic bones shattered. Even after death, sexual assault continued.  A Nova survivor testified to a victim being shot in the head while her rapist continued his assault. The intention was clear – to destroy their beauty and femininity. Forensic pathologists spoke of an “obsession with sex organs”. First responders echoed the same sentiment and have addressed numerous NGO’s and global institutions sharing their testimonies to the defilement and horror they saw on the kibbutzim, road 232 and at the Nova festival grounds.

“I saw them raping her,” says Raz Cohen, who escaped the Nova Music Festival, “Then they murdered her. And then they raped her again.”

Eden Wessely, who came to Nova to rescue a friend, found and filmed a naked, burned body. “Her dress was pulled up, and she wasn’t wearing underwear, not because it burned, because there was no trace. . . . Her legs were spread. Her genitals were exposed.” Was it the same image I saw?

Former hostages have spoken about the abuse they suffered in captivity. Guy Gilboa-Dalal spoke about how he was touched on his private parts and how his captor “wanted to make a porn movie with him.” Arbel Yehud testified to daily abuse.

Keith Siegel, a 66-year-old grandfather who was taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza along with his wife Aviva, 65, testified that he was made to undress in front of a terrorist who then shaved his pubic hair and made comments about his penis.

Aviva Siegel spoke about how she was nearly executed after she comforted a young girl who was sexually assaulted in captivity. Siegel recalled telling young girls to take feminine products with them to the bathroom so that if their captors thought they were on their period, they would not abuse them.

A male says he was gang-raped at the Nova site, providing medical records and a detailed account:

“They laughed, they were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll.”

The Commission also identified thirteen recurring patterns of sexual and gender-based violence repeated across multiple sites. They include a damning list of crimes:

*    Rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual assault.

*    Sexual torture, including intentional burning and mutilation.

*    Deliberate shooting in the head, face and genital area.

*  Killings and executions following or committed during abuse.

* Postmortem sexual abuse, humiliation, and the desecration   of bodies, including cutting off body parts.

*   Forced nudity and exposure including to family members.

*   Handcuffing, binding, and restraint of victims.

*   Public displaying and parading of women and children. One such example is the parading of the body of Shani Louk, whose partially undressed and twisted limbs were paraded on a truck in Gaza while men spat at her.

*    Abduction of mothers and children.

*     Sexual violence in the presence or near vicinity of family members including Kinocide – the deliberate targeting and destruction of families as a weapon of war or terror, recognized as a distinct form of violence against humanity.

*   Filming and digital dissemination by the perpetrators including the use of social media to document, glorify, and amplify the atrocities.

*    Threats of forced marriage.

*   Rape and other forms of sexual violence against boys and men.

President Herzog released a statement on social media platform X on behalf of his wife, Michal, who said:

 “We must continue to amplify around the world the voices of the victims of sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7th and thereafter.”

 Mrs. Herzog commended the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes against Women and Children “for their dedicated research and tireless work, resulting in the publication of an important new report that once again gives voice to the victims.”

The victims and survivors of these most evil of crimes will no longer be silenced by those who deny, downplay and justify the atrocities committed by Hamas. Please do not look away. As unbearable as the testimonies are to read and hear, we must bear witness. We have a moral duty to be their voices. Silence is a second violation.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).