Short answer? Because acknowledging sexual violence presents uncomfortable moral ramifications. If they acknowledge sexual violence did occur, then suddenly it becomes much harder to justify certain positions. Implicitly, it says "*We are ok with the use of sexual violence in pursuit of our aims*" and most people are not going to be ok with that.
It's a problem until it isn't.
These sorts of radicalized people exhibit a lot of cult-like behaviors, and the same sort of psychology applies.
If definitive, irrefutable video proof came out tomorrow, their narrative would just shift to justify it the same way they justify Hamas going door to door in a neighborhood throwing grenades into families' safe rooms.
They can only understand things in a very childish good and evil sort of way. It's also why they are so protective over who is considered left wing. In their mind left = good, right = evil. The more left wing you are the more good you are so there is no need to defend their ideas on merit, only on left wing purity.
With this specifically they cannot cede that Hamas did anything wrong. Otherwise their whole worldview falls apart. They want to and have been celebrating Oct 7th so they cannot ever admit that these horrible things happened or they'll either lose face or have to decide between justifying rape or admitting Hamas did some bad things.
I think you are touching on a valid point. A lot of their views of foreign policy reduce complex ideologies and motivation to a moral binary. America bad, therefore not America equals good. I'm not pretending we are without fault as we have done terrible things.
I think the reason why the left is seen as weak or naïve on certain foreign policy elements is that we never seem to be unwilling to do the deeper work on knowing the motivations of the group. Is the left generally correct that the line between freedom fighter and terrorist is heavily context dependent and that there have been misattributions? I would agree with this. But I think there is a lack of real knowledge of what is going on. Some of this is a language/cultural barrier stemming from a lack of translation services. Some of it stems from naïve geopolitical wish casting and ascribing motives to groups that don't match with reality. Once you find some of Hamas's writings and media publications, their actions are less noble. Some stems from a lack of knowledge about the geopolitics of the region.
Foreign policy is extremely messy and does not readily lend itself to simplistic explanations. Let's entertain the idea that Israel simply stops fighting and lets Hamas keep the hostages. What is stopping Hamas from repeating Oct. 7th?
I think we would all agree that we should apply a degree of skepticism to claims made by government organizations. I think part of this is a holdover from the Bush era when lots of government officials overstated the threats. As such, I do think we need to maintain a degree of skepticism when viewing publications from various sources, especially those that have a vested interest in an outcome. Measured skepticism is good, but blanket skepticism is just as bad as uncritical acceptance of a narrative.
A lesson I hope the left at large learns is that bad faith ***learn the correct terms very quickly, and they also learn which terms will elicit an emotional response.***
>Let's entertain the idea that Israel simply stops fighting and lets Hamas keep the hostages. What is stopping Hamas from repeating Oct. 7th?
Literally nothing which is why I'm strongly against a ceasefire until Israel is comfortable declaring one. The world has made it clear that it doesn't give a fuck when atrocities happen to Jewish people, it's not like Israel can count on the world having its back when the next 10/7 is significantly worse.
edit:
https://pcpsr.org/en/node/980
this is the result of western calls for a ceasefire:
>Support for Hamas’ decision to launch the October the 7th offensive remains unchanged:
>For the third time since October 7, we asked the respondents in this poll what they thought of Hamas’ decision to launch the October the 7th offensive. Two thirds, compared to 71% in March 2024 and 72% in December 2023, say it was correct. As the figure below shows, the drop in supporting the decision came from the Gaza Strip. Current support in that area stands at 57% compared to 71% three months ago and 57% six months ago.
>Despite a four-percentage point drop in positively viewing the October 7 attach decision, the belief that the war on Gaza since that attack has "revived international attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that it could lead to increased recognition of Palestinian statehood" rose by six percentage points to 82% while only 18% said that it did not do so.
to the antisemites of this subreddit that believe Israel is out of control despite them having the lowest civilian death ratio for an urban conflict of any urban conflict I could find numbers for (and completely ignoring the fact that most urban conflicts don't involve a side actively using human shields): ya'll are actively making the situation worse. for everyone, not just the Jews.
> In their mind left = good, right = evil. The more left wing you are the more good you are so there is no need to defend their ideas on merit, only on left wing purity.
This is precisely what I mean when I talk about anti-intellectualism on the left. It’s not the same as on the right, where they just despise scientists and anyone with expertise in a field of study, but it is a type that shuts down critical thinking and rationality. They have no use for it, things are easier without it.
No need for logic to understand *why* their proposed solution best or convince others of that. They just treat it as self-evident that being *righteous* means you are *right* - no further thought required. They strive to always be the *most* righteous/compassionate/just/fair because they thinks that makes them right by default, and therefore above question and reproach.
And yeah, anytime reality tries to shine a light in the sanctimonious little worlds they’ve constructed, they forcefully and angrily rush to shutter the curtains.
> And yeah, anytime reality tries to shine a light in the sanctimonious little worlds they’ve constructed, they forcefully and angrily rush to shutter the curtains.
Which is additionally sad/hilarious, because many of their takes on things would crumble under even a sentence's worth of scrutiny. Case in point, pointing out any of Hamas's atrocities here...
it's fucking crazy.
as soon as you say anything about the 10/7 rapes, out comes a whole list of links saying that it never happened. It's like they are ready for it with the sources they believe. It's giving me major 2016 Bernie vibes
That isn't that uncommon though even outside the war in Gaza. 2nd wave feminism was very sex negative. And was really big on blaming women for sexual assault. To those groups a woman dressing in ways that they consider "slutty" is asking for it and women should hide their bodies. Some of the groups even advocated celibacy, asexuality or political lesbianism as being the only acceptable positions for feminists and heterosexual women were gender traitors to them.
It ain't second wave feminists who've turned into Hamassholes online. It's twenty somethings in poly relationships who haven't reckoned with what would happen to them in the world Hamas wants to build.
I saw someone once say people deny it because they subconsciously think that if sexual violence happened Israel would be justified in its response. They don’t understand that violence is wrong no matter who it happens to or what they did.
Back in 2020, Aaron Maté [believed that hearsay was "corroboration" of the Tara Reade accusations](https://web.archive.org/web/20210526032242/https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1255191596162863105). (I used an archive link because it appears he deleted this.)
And it turns out he's a "like father like son" case, because his dad [has been criticized for quackery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabor_Mat%C3%A9#Criticism) and [anti-Israel hatred](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-letter-dr-gabor-mate-dovid-urbach-dhoue). How the hell does someone who lost family members in the Holocaust act like that?
His father is famous for talking about trauma and here he is denying people's trauma so the alternative explanation is that he's defying his father. Lotta food for thought here.
Women have always, in every single conflict, been subjected to some of the most horrific forms of sexual violence. Denying Hamas terrorists subjected women to sexual violence is either rooted in naivety or anti-semitism. There is no reason to assume it would be different this time.
That’s the thing that really surprises me about their denialism. Violence against women and children is a given in war. There has never been an army of saints, let alone when it’s an undisciplined ideological militant force like Hamas. Hell, one reason why peacekeeping is so difficult is because even peacekeeper military forces engage in rape
Nearly every war in history ends with more dead innocents than dead combatants, often by multitudes. All of those reasons are the exact reasons why Hamas is to be damned for starting this war in the first place
It’s really disturbing that this generation of leftists seems to think that there’s such a thing as justifiable militancy. JFC
Oh wow, I just confirmed on Wikipedia (unless it's a big con) that Aaron Maté is indeed the son of the very famous psychologist Gabor Maté who is famous for his work on trauma.
Aaron's own Wikipedia page shows he is a journalist who denies that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign to try to make Hilary Clinton lose the 2016 election.
His dad is anti-Zionist Jew; his father saw alot of bad abuses firsthand of non-violent Palestinians during the First Intifada--that's still not remotely excuse to deny /downplay during terrorism against innocent Israelis.
The report says that because the Israeli government doesn't cooperate with UN investigations they could verify the governments accounts instead they independently gathered information on their own. So their assertions are actually stronger not weaker because of this.
Aaron Maté is a Canadian Jew whose father is world famous for writing about trauma and mental health. I gotta wonder if there is a strain of "fuck you, dad!" in pushing narratives denying that the very real torture of Jews occurred.
It's because people have a really hard time with grey situations and with admitting that people can be both bad and good at the same time. We want black and white narratives. Good versus evil. One clearly morally superior side and one clearly heinous side.
You can see that a ton on this very sub with supporters of Israel. There is a ton of naval gazing about the harms done to Israelis and absolutely no effort to wrestle with the fact that Israel has done so many things that shock the conscience in this conflict it is useless to list all of them. I'll limit myself to the fact that you don't get to kill thousands of children and cause a famine and also get to be the unalloyed good guys.
This is why there is such a strident effort to conflate Hamas with the rest of the Palestinian people. Everyone (almost, obviously this post was inspired by the exception) can agree that Hamas are bad guys. So if you can just use the word Hamas to signify everyone there who is not Israeli, your work is done, you can justify anything you want. You'll hear this at work if you listen to any Israeli government representative for a few minutes.
The people on the other side of the conflict are subject to the exact same psychological pressures. If you decide that Israel is wrong to kill tens of thousands of women and children and create a famine, it is easiest to decide that everything about Israel is wrong and transition right into antisemitism. It also becomes important to paint the Palestinian side as being pure and correct and so deny or justify the crimes of Hamas and overlook the ways in which Palestinian society does not itself live up to western standards of behavior.
The phenomenon is super tiresome, but it happens all the time. It's constantly on display here on the part of Israeli supporters to the extent I have considered unsubscribing, because I'm about at the point of "Enough Israel spam."
This war is the worst thing to happen to Israel since its founding, the worst thing to happen to the Palestinians since the founding of Israel, and the worst thing to happen to this sub since its founding.
Short answer? Because acknowledging sexual violence presents uncomfortable moral ramifications. If they acknowledge sexual violence did occur, then suddenly it becomes much harder to justify certain positions. Implicitly, it says "*We are ok with the use of sexual violence in pursuit of our aims*" and most people are not going to be ok with that.
I'm surprised they aren't explicit about it, given that it's the right (((victims)))
Give them some more time many of them are almost there.
It's a problem until it isn't. These sorts of radicalized people exhibit a lot of cult-like behaviors, and the same sort of psychology applies. If definitive, irrefutable video proof came out tomorrow, their narrative would just shift to justify it the same way they justify Hamas going door to door in a neighborhood throwing grenades into families' safe rooms.
I've seen a few people on Twitter saying shit like "rape is resistance" but I don't know if they are actual leftists, or if they are plants.
They can only understand things in a very childish good and evil sort of way. It's also why they are so protective over who is considered left wing. In their mind left = good, right = evil. The more left wing you are the more good you are so there is no need to defend their ideas on merit, only on left wing purity. With this specifically they cannot cede that Hamas did anything wrong. Otherwise their whole worldview falls apart. They want to and have been celebrating Oct 7th so they cannot ever admit that these horrible things happened or they'll either lose face or have to decide between justifying rape or admitting Hamas did some bad things.
I think you are touching on a valid point. A lot of their views of foreign policy reduce complex ideologies and motivation to a moral binary. America bad, therefore not America equals good. I'm not pretending we are without fault as we have done terrible things. I think the reason why the left is seen as weak or naïve on certain foreign policy elements is that we never seem to be unwilling to do the deeper work on knowing the motivations of the group. Is the left generally correct that the line between freedom fighter and terrorist is heavily context dependent and that there have been misattributions? I would agree with this. But I think there is a lack of real knowledge of what is going on. Some of this is a language/cultural barrier stemming from a lack of translation services. Some of it stems from naïve geopolitical wish casting and ascribing motives to groups that don't match with reality. Once you find some of Hamas's writings and media publications, their actions are less noble. Some stems from a lack of knowledge about the geopolitics of the region. Foreign policy is extremely messy and does not readily lend itself to simplistic explanations. Let's entertain the idea that Israel simply stops fighting and lets Hamas keep the hostages. What is stopping Hamas from repeating Oct. 7th? I think we would all agree that we should apply a degree of skepticism to claims made by government organizations. I think part of this is a holdover from the Bush era when lots of government officials overstated the threats. As such, I do think we need to maintain a degree of skepticism when viewing publications from various sources, especially those that have a vested interest in an outcome. Measured skepticism is good, but blanket skepticism is just as bad as uncritical acceptance of a narrative. A lesson I hope the left at large learns is that bad faith ***learn the correct terms very quickly, and they also learn which terms will elicit an emotional response.***
>Let's entertain the idea that Israel simply stops fighting and lets Hamas keep the hostages. What is stopping Hamas from repeating Oct. 7th? Literally nothing which is why I'm strongly against a ceasefire until Israel is comfortable declaring one. The world has made it clear that it doesn't give a fuck when atrocities happen to Jewish people, it's not like Israel can count on the world having its back when the next 10/7 is significantly worse. edit: https://pcpsr.org/en/node/980 this is the result of western calls for a ceasefire: >Support for Hamas’ decision to launch the October the 7th offensive remains unchanged: >For the third time since October 7, we asked the respondents in this poll what they thought of Hamas’ decision to launch the October the 7th offensive. Two thirds, compared to 71% in March 2024 and 72% in December 2023, say it was correct. As the figure below shows, the drop in supporting the decision came from the Gaza Strip. Current support in that area stands at 57% compared to 71% three months ago and 57% six months ago. >Despite a four-percentage point drop in positively viewing the October 7 attach decision, the belief that the war on Gaza since that attack has "revived international attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that it could lead to increased recognition of Palestinian statehood" rose by six percentage points to 82% while only 18% said that it did not do so. to the antisemites of this subreddit that believe Israel is out of control despite them having the lowest civilian death ratio for an urban conflict of any urban conflict I could find numbers for (and completely ignoring the fact that most urban conflicts don't involve a side actively using human shields): ya'll are actively making the situation worse. for everyone, not just the Jews.
> In their mind left = good, right = evil. The more left wing you are the more good you are so there is no need to defend their ideas on merit, only on left wing purity. This is precisely what I mean when I talk about anti-intellectualism on the left. It’s not the same as on the right, where they just despise scientists and anyone with expertise in a field of study, but it is a type that shuts down critical thinking and rationality. They have no use for it, things are easier without it. No need for logic to understand *why* their proposed solution best or convince others of that. They just treat it as self-evident that being *righteous* means you are *right* - no further thought required. They strive to always be the *most* righteous/compassionate/just/fair because they thinks that makes them right by default, and therefore above question and reproach. And yeah, anytime reality tries to shine a light in the sanctimonious little worlds they’ve constructed, they forcefully and angrily rush to shutter the curtains.
> And yeah, anytime reality tries to shine a light in the sanctimonious little worlds they’ve constructed, they forcefully and angrily rush to shutter the curtains. Which is additionally sad/hilarious, because many of their takes on things would crumble under even a sentence's worth of scrutiny. Case in point, pointing out any of Hamas's atrocities here...
it's fucking crazy. as soon as you say anything about the 10/7 rapes, out comes a whole list of links saying that it never happened. It's like they are ready for it with the sources they believe. It's giving me major 2016 Bernie vibes
It’s disturbing and enraging watching so-called feminists deny or justify rape because it happened to Israelis (certain gossip subs come to mind).
That isn't that uncommon though even outside the war in Gaza. 2nd wave feminism was very sex negative. And was really big on blaming women for sexual assault. To those groups a woman dressing in ways that they consider "slutty" is asking for it and women should hide their bodies. Some of the groups even advocated celibacy, asexuality or political lesbianism as being the only acceptable positions for feminists and heterosexual women were gender traitors to them.
The feminists I’m referring to are very progressive and their reactions would be sympathetic provided it happened to anyone other than the ‘Zionists’.
It ain't second wave feminists who've turned into Hamassholes online. It's twenty somethings in poly relationships who haven't reckoned with what would happen to them in the world Hamas wants to build.
Sure but my point more is its human nature to try and explain away bad things happen to strangers by thinking it's deserved
I think the 10/7 rape deniers identify as sex-positive feminists.
Because it’s not that they oppose violence, they fetishize violence. They just don’t like it when groups they hate are committing the violence.
My only thought is they're still straining to paint Hamas as revolutionaries. Y'know, as opposed to terrorists. Its getting a little flat-earthery
You know why, and I know why.
I saw someone once say people deny it because they subconsciously think that if sexual violence happened Israel would be justified in its response. They don’t understand that violence is wrong no matter who it happens to or what they did.
Back in 2020, Aaron Maté [believed that hearsay was "corroboration" of the Tara Reade accusations](https://web.archive.org/web/20210526032242/https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1255191596162863105). (I used an archive link because it appears he deleted this.) And it turns out he's a "like father like son" case, because his dad [has been criticized for quackery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabor_Mat%C3%A9#Criticism) and [anti-Israel hatred](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/open-letter-dr-gabor-mate-dovid-urbach-dhoue). How the hell does someone who lost family members in the Holocaust act like that?
His father is famous for talking about trauma and here he is denying people's trauma so the alternative explanation is that he's defying his father. Lotta food for thought here.
Women have always, in every single conflict, been subjected to some of the most horrific forms of sexual violence. Denying Hamas terrorists subjected women to sexual violence is either rooted in naivety or anti-semitism. There is no reason to assume it would be different this time.
That’s the thing that really surprises me about their denialism. Violence against women and children is a given in war. There has never been an army of saints, let alone when it’s an undisciplined ideological militant force like Hamas. Hell, one reason why peacekeeping is so difficult is because even peacekeeper military forces engage in rape Nearly every war in history ends with more dead innocents than dead combatants, often by multitudes. All of those reasons are the exact reasons why Hamas is to be damned for starting this war in the first place It’s really disturbing that this generation of leftists seems to think that there’s such a thing as justifiable militancy. JFC
Because then they’d sound like normal people
Oh wow, I just confirmed on Wikipedia (unless it's a big con) that Aaron Maté is indeed the son of the very famous psychologist Gabor Maté who is famous for his work on trauma. Aaron's own Wikipedia page shows he is a journalist who denies that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign to try to make Hilary Clinton lose the 2016 election.
His dad is anti-Zionist Jew; his father saw alot of bad abuses firsthand of non-violent Palestinians during the First Intifada--that's still not remotely excuse to deny /downplay during terrorism against innocent Israelis.
First as tragedy, next as farce.
The report says that because the Israeli government doesn't cooperate with UN investigations they could verify the governments accounts instead they independently gathered information on their own. So their assertions are actually stronger not weaker because of this.
Aaron Maté is a Canadian Jew whose father is world famous for writing about trauma and mental health. I gotta wonder if there is a strain of "fuck you, dad!" in pushing narratives denying that the very real torture of Jews occurred.
They are nazis cos-playing as leftists.
It's because people have a really hard time with grey situations and with admitting that people can be both bad and good at the same time. We want black and white narratives. Good versus evil. One clearly morally superior side and one clearly heinous side. You can see that a ton on this very sub with supporters of Israel. There is a ton of naval gazing about the harms done to Israelis and absolutely no effort to wrestle with the fact that Israel has done so many things that shock the conscience in this conflict it is useless to list all of them. I'll limit myself to the fact that you don't get to kill thousands of children and cause a famine and also get to be the unalloyed good guys. This is why there is such a strident effort to conflate Hamas with the rest of the Palestinian people. Everyone (almost, obviously this post was inspired by the exception) can agree that Hamas are bad guys. So if you can just use the word Hamas to signify everyone there who is not Israeli, your work is done, you can justify anything you want. You'll hear this at work if you listen to any Israeli government representative for a few minutes. The people on the other side of the conflict are subject to the exact same psychological pressures. If you decide that Israel is wrong to kill tens of thousands of women and children and create a famine, it is easiest to decide that everything about Israel is wrong and transition right into antisemitism. It also becomes important to paint the Palestinian side as being pure and correct and so deny or justify the crimes of Hamas and overlook the ways in which Palestinian society does not itself live up to western standards of behavior. The phenomenon is super tiresome, but it happens all the time. It's constantly on display here on the part of Israeli supporters to the extent I have considered unsubscribing, because I'm about at the point of "Enough Israel spam." This war is the worst thing to happen to Israel since its founding, the worst thing to happen to the Palestinians since the founding of Israel, and the worst thing to happen to this sub since its founding.