When Is Rape Not Rape?

The progressive left has come alive. Seeing what Hamas did to Israel, it concluded that the Revolution was imminent and that defeating Israel would lead to the end of the West, the end of capitalism and the end of patriarchy.

The history of the last century has shown that totalitarian dictatorships produce monumental human failures. Yet, those who believe, to the roots of their marrow, that the future belongs to them have needed to find a way to show how strong and powerful they are.

They do so, not by building or even competing in the marketplace or the battlefield. They do so by destroying what other people have built. They want to show that their extravagant display of destructive force will prevail. And that you need to yield to its power. That means, will take over land that they insist is theirs. 

As everyone knows by now, Hamas terrorists do not merely want to have a separate state. Such is the illusion that the Biden administration and its satrap Tommy Friedman are offering to the world.

And yet, if the Palestinian people merely want their own state and their own self determination, that means they do not want to destroy Israel and do not want to destroy Western civilization. They want peaceful coexistence. 

This counts as the big lie in this battle. If October 7 showed us anything, it showed us that Hamas has no interest in a two state solution. For now it is less a battle for territory and more a fight for hearts and minds. Apparently, their extravagant display of brutality was designed to show that they are strongt and empowered. Besides, the atrocities of October 7 were designed to show the world that their cause is righteous. Their strength lies in the ability to destroy.

Threats are one thing. To win hearts and minds Hamas needed to cloak its cause in righteousness, by denying that it had done anything a hideous as systematically raping women. 

Dare we mention that the appalling slander of Israel for committing genocide gives simple-minded idiots a reason to destroy Israel. Once you define Israelis as genocidal you have a right to do anything you want to destroy them. They are Nazis, don't you think?

But then, Hamas wants people to know what it did, but it does not want to alienate progressive Western women, women who purportedly strongly oppose all forms of violence against women.

Bret Stephens explained in the N. Y. Times:

On Oct. 7, Hamas invaded Israel and filmed itself committing scores of human-rights atrocities. Some of the footage was later captured by the Israeli military and screened to hundreds of journalists, including me. The “pure, predatory sadism,” as Atlantic writer Graeme Wood described it, is bottomless.

Hundreds of journalists all came away with the same conclusion. The rapes were real. Hamas needed to show that Israelis were too weak to defend their women:

Yet Hamas denies that its men sexually assaulted Israelis, calling the charges “lies and slanders against the Palestinians and their resistance.” And Hamas’s fellow travelers and useful idiots in the West, most of them self-described progressives, parrot that denialism in the face of powerful and deeply investigated evidence of widespread rapes, documented most recently in a United Nations report released on Monday.

For those who refused to believe, the United Nations has just reported that the rapes did happen. Stephens explains:

For anyone who maintains a reasonably open mind but is still in doubt, the report notes, among other details, “at least two incidents of rape of corpses of women,” “bodies found naked and/or tied, and in one case gagged,” and “clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment occurred against some women and children” during their time as hostages.

Of course, few victims remain alive to testify to what they endured:

Overwhelmingly, the women who could have spoken out are dead, for the simple reason that any Israeli who got close enough to a terrorist to be raped was close enough to be murdered. As for the credibility of Israeli witnesses, who else — other than the early responders who encountered the victims at first hand — should be interviewed and quoted by anyone investigating this? 

Obviously, this is all a form of advanced cognitive dissonance. But, when you ask the salient question, when is a rape not a rape, you need by look at the words of notable useful idiot, Judith Butler. We quoted her is yesterday’s post, when she said that when one’s cause is righteous the rape is acceptable. It is an act of armed resistance, an uprising, a rebellion against the capitalist patriarchy. 

Once you recontextualize the action, it is no longer the action you thought it was. If you have been dumb enough to believe that reality must yield to belief, that chromosomes do not make you either a man or a woman, then you are ready to accept that rape is not rape when it advances the revolutionary cause. That is, it all depends on the narrative. And in the extent to which you believe in the narrative, and allow the narrative to define reality.

Stephens suggests that when progressives oppose rape or when they accuse someone of being a rapist, we need consider the politics of it all:

Wasn’t it progressives who, during the Brett Kavanaugh saga, stressed that occasional discrepancies in the memory of traumatic events are absolutely normal? And since when have progressives insisted that the burden of proof for demonstrating a pattern of sexual assault lies with the victims, most of whose voices have, in this case, been silenced forever?

Israelis are oppressors. Hamas has failed to govern because the Israelis would not let them govern. So, any actions that punish the oppressors are good and just. Such is the narrative.

Stephens writes:

It disturbs the narrative of the war in Gaza as a case of strong against weak, the settler-colonialist Israelis against righteous and indigenous victims.

So, under the circumstances, and for true believers, sometimes rape is an instrument of rebellion, designed to show the world how horrible life has been for the inhabitants of Gaza. That said inhabitants might be somewhat responsible for their living conditions does not seem to register. 

After all, the Jews have not been the victims of genocide. They are currently perpetrating genocide. Change the narrative and you can change reality. It’s beyond appalling, but what did you expect?

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