Israel and its supporters are trying to give genocide a feminist facade. To provide a pretext for the current war against Gaza, Israel has fabricated claims that Hamas committed mass rapes during its 7 October offensive. Representatives of the European Union have sought to present these blatant lies as proven facts. Earlier this month, the EU’s embassy in Tel Aviv marked International Women’s Day by hosting a propaganda event. In a tweet following the event, the embassy declared it had given voice to women “who suffered the atrocities of Hamas’ sexual violence.”

Soon after seeing the tweet, I contacted the EU’s foreign policy team asking what evidence the Tel Aviv embassy had of Hamas resorting to sexual violence on 7 October. It took more than a week before I received a reply.

The reply presented zero evidence that sexual violence had occurred. Instead, it pointed to a report from Pramila Patten, an envoy for António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general. In her report, Patten recycled a number of unverified Israeli claims about sexual violence.

But a key conclusion of her paper reads that Patten and her team were “unable to establish the prevalence of sexual violence.” Doing so, the report adds, would require a “fully-fledged investigation.” As I was unhappy with the European Union’s response to my question, I sent a follow-up query.

In the new query, I argued that the EU’s Tel Aviv embassy did not appear to have evidence that sexual violence occurred on 7 October. “If I have got this wrong, please provide me with evidence that I have got it wrong,” I stated.

Peter Stano, the EU’s foreign policy spokesperson, sent a brief response. He wrote that if I had read the original tweet from the EU’s embassy and the answer to my initial query properly, “you would see that the evidence is from the victims, witnesses and a relevant UN report dedicated to the issue.” “Not sure what other type of evidence you are looking for,” Stano added. The reply from Stano was dripping with the kind of condescension I have often encountered from EU spokespeople. He was essentially saying that I should just accept the veracity of allegations made at a propaganda event.

Since that propaganda event took place, Al Jazeera has broadcast a documentary which examines in depth what happened on 7 October. The documentary found that while there may have been isolated cases of sexual violence, there was not enough evidence to support claims that rape had been widespread…..more