Investigative Report Undermines Israel’s Mass Rape Claims

Mar 6, 2024

In the weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, there were numerous claims of mass rape by Hamas soldiers of Israeli women. In November 2023, the group Physicians for Human Rights Israel released a position paper claiming there was pervasive sexual violence.

A month later, The New York Times published an investigation making similar claims. The two reports were widely cited to justify Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The United Nations also released a report in early March in the same vein.

Investigative journalist Arun Gupta has debunked the PHRI and New York Times reports with an investigation published exclusively at YES! called “Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation.” He spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about his investigation and also commented on the recently released U.N. report.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.