On the day that Canada remembers the Montreal Massacre, I am reading articles about the terrible sexual violence and rape that Hamas inflicted on Israeli men and women on Oct 7 -- I think it is shameful that it has taken two months for this violence to be called out and condemned.
NEW: According to three senior Biden admin officials, Hamas is not releasing the remaining Women hostages because, it seems, they have been sexually abusing them. One official said they think Hamas is keeping these women in order to keep raping them.https://t.co/ZMXQAXa2X6
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) December 6, 2023
The New York Times writes Biden condemns sexual violence in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller suggests “one of the reasons [Hamas doesn’t] want to turn women over that they’ve been holding hostage — and the reason this pause fell apart — is they don’t want those women to talk about what happened to them.” pic.twitter.com/GOlM3PHgVR
— The Recount (@therecount) December 4, 2023
For more, see several articles in the New York Times over the last couple of days.President Biden on Tuesday condemned the “unimaginable cruelty” of Hamas attackers who raped and mutilated women in Israel on Oct. 7, and he blamed the group’s refusal to release its remaining female hostages for the breakdown in cease-fire talks.Speaking at a fund-raising event in Boston, Mr. Biden cited reports that Hamas fighters “used rape to terrorize women and girls” on Oct. 7, as they swept through Israeli towns and a music festival in the southern part of the country, killing more than 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.“Over the past few weeks, survivors and witnesses of the attacks have shared the horrific accounts of unimaginable cruelty,” Mr. Biden told donors at the event at a Westin hotel. “Reports of women raped — repeatedly raped — and their bodies being mutilated while still alive — of women corpses being desecrated, Hamas terrorists inflicting as much pain and suffering on women and girls as possible and then murdering them.”He added: “It is appalling.”......Mr. Biden also echoed comments made on Monday by Matt Miller, a State Department spokesman, who said that Hamas had “reneged” on an agreement to release all the women it was holding hostage, and that the group’s officials “were never able to provide a credible reason why.”Hamas has said it considers the women to be soldiers. But President Biden said, “These are civilian women, mostly between the ages of 20 and 39,” adding, “Let me be crystal clear. Hamas’ refusal to release the remaining young women is what broke this deal and ended the pause in the fighting.”On Monday, Mr. Miller said that “a number of people believe” that Hamas did not want to release the female hostages because of the stories they would tell about how they were treated.
I’m no fan of @RepStefanik but I’m with her here. Claudine Gay’s hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends: https://t.co/HEzQ0sLKkA
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) December 6, 2023
Damage control https://t.co/w1IfhHosTs
— Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) December 7, 2023
There is truth here:The reason 3 university presidents had trouble with the genocide question is not because of an over-zealous commitment to free speech. Universities punish people all the time for First Amendment protected speech. They had trouble because anti-Jewishness is baked into the ideology… https://t.co/gp7FpRoM5j
— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 7, 2023
For the non-insane among us, the last two months has been a realization that a troubling amount of our social circle wouldn't only have no trouble refusing to hide Jews ... but would turn us in if they found out we were doing it.
— Tristin Hopper (@TristinHopper) December 6, 2023
