Aug 16, 2026

Purchase Gaza’s Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places by Norman Finkelstein here.

The modern edifice of international law, and its correspondent institutions, were avowedly designed, after the Second World War, to prevent the recurrence of the unspeakable atrocities of the first half of the twentieth century. The United Nations, with its Security Council and International Court of Justice, was formed in 1945; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Genocide Convention, were adopted in 1948; older international legal texts were revised and expanded by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Some institutions came much later: the International Criminal Court was established in 2002.

Although these institutions are very imperfect, it must yet be admitted that they can discharge useful investigative and political functions, and can prepare the ground for the punishment of international criminals. It follows that, in so far as these institutions are corrupted, and stray from their lofty objects, the cause of justice suffers: the truth is obscured and concealed from the world public, while the criminals are enabled to persist in their evil careers.

The special task of this meritorious volume by Norman Finkelstein is, the exposure of corruption in the international organs of justice and accountability. He has written, not a history of the genocide in Gaza, but a record of “the complicity—born of cupidity and corruption, cowardice and careerism—of officials in high places … Truth cannot be mangled and Justice traduced with impunity” (xxxii). All of Finkelstein’s characteristic intellectual virtues are displayed in this work: the industrious accumulation of evidence, in the shape of long human rights reports and legal documents; the close examination of these documents by a process of practical reasoning, with the castigation of whatever is dishonest or fallacious in them; and the fearless determination to bring truth to view, however painful or inexpedient it may appear to be. Few are qualified for such literary labours; fewer still are willing to undertake them—and it is this sort of assiduous scholarship that has made Finkelstein’s reputation.

The book commences with a synoptic discussion of the 7th October attacks, the ensuing genocide, and the history that preceded both events. Gaza, we are reminded, had long been a hopeless and despondent enclave: it was called, over the decades, a “concentration camp”, including by a senior Israeli official. Israel maliciously aggravated Gaza’s miserable condition by imposing a strict blockade after Hamas won elections in 2006; and massacre was superadded to collective economic punishment by a succession of Israeli “operations”. Notwithstanding the diplomatic exertions of the Palestinians, their appeals to international law, and their employment of non-violent resistance, Gaza still languished, and soon faded into irrelevance. The “Hamas atrocities on 7 October” (xxii) must be understood in light of that history: Finkelstein compares the attack to the bloody rebellion against American slavery led by Nat Turner in 1831. Although, in both cases, serious crimes were committed by the insurgents, the vast preponderance of moral culpability must lie with the oppressors: such was the judgment of America’s abolitionists, and such is the judgment of Finkelstein.

The Israeli genocide was a “national project” (xxii), broadly supported by Israeli society, and largely successful: for “Gaza is … no more” (xxvii). Despite the noble efforts of the genocide’s opponents, Gaza was ravaged. It falls to the living to bring the perpetrators, and their accomplices, to justice: nothing but condign punishment is fit to prevent a repetition of such horrors.

Finkelstein then examines the allegation, anxiously promoted by Israel and lent credibility by the UN Patten Mission, that Palestinian militants committed mass rape on 7 October as a weapon of war. Upon a detailed inspection of the evidence, Finkelstein finds no support whatever for this charge: the Patten Mission, though it enjoyed rare Israeli cooperation, “couldn’t locate a single victim of sexual violence” on 7 October, “or a single piece of direct evidence, be it forensic or digital, of sexual violence” (11). This was despite the large digital record of the attacks in photographs and video footage. Later reports similarly failed to uncover any evidence of mass rape: as Finkelstein concludes, although “it cannot be said with certainty that no rapes occurred on 7 October … it can be said with certainty that Hamas did not commit mass rape as a weapon of war” (34). It is reasonable to infer, in view of its falsity, that the purpose of the mass rape allegation was to vilify Palestinians as a group: the charge derived strength from existing prejudices, and was so sensitive as to discourage ordinary critical scrutiny. For these reasons, the allegation was particularly apt to be credited by Western media and politicians—including in Britain, where it was repeated by both Tories and Labourites. Since this charge was an element of genocide propaganda, the bodies which promoted it, especially the Patten Mission, must account for their conduct. As for Israel’s employment of sexual violence against Palestinians—including sexual torture and rape—it was scarcely mentioned in public discussion.

In his chapter on the UN Commission of Inquiry chaired by Navi Pillay, Finkelstein exposes two injurious tendencies in the Commission’s work: first, until September 2025, the Commission did not accuse Israel of genocide, but limited its strictures to reprimanding Israel for violating the laws of war. Yet since Israel’s object was not to inflict a military defeat upon Palestinian militants, but to exterminate Palestinians indiscriminately; and since this rendered the violation of the laws of war indispensable; the Commission’s reprimands, expressed with reference to more or less frequent Israeli breaches of the laws of war, were inaccurate and unapt. They effectively conceded that Israel was fighting a war when it had in fact undertaken to destroy a people; and in consequence, the Commission diminished the real turpitude of Israel’s conduct. Finkelstein further proves that the Commission often contrived to extenuate or excuse Israel’s actions, a bad tendency which was aggravated by Israel’s refusal to allow the Commission, or independent international journalists, to enter Gaza and investigate incidents in greater detail (69-80).

The finest chapter in the book is the exposure of Julia Sebutinde, a judge of the International Court of Justice and its most enthusiastic defender of Israel. In a series of amusing passages, Judge Sebutinde’s inconsistencies, omissions, irrationalities, and vulgar errors are brought to view.¹ It is shown that her judgments derived their evidence from Israeli sources of the scantiest probative force, while an extensive table compiled by an anonymous scholar from Gaza displays her plagiarism across 48 pages of text. The scope of Judge Sebutinde’s literary fraud is really so great as to defy any more elaborate exposition in the space allotted to us. It suffices to observe that the chapter is a crushing blow to judicial corruption—one of the fullest and best exposures of a preposterous judge in our century—and makes us somewhat optimistic that Judge Sebutinde may be deprived of her high office. Finkelstein winds up his remarks as follows: “The farce is in its last act … Judge Sebutinde is either an Israeli mole or a crazed fanatic (or both) … The longer she sits on the Court, the longer she disgraces it” (198). If this scandalous fraud and imposture are allowed to continue, then no rational being can entertain the slightest respect for the ICJ.

Next Finkelstein comes to Joan Donoghue, the former president of the ICJ, and her odd statement in a BBC interview—and not in a law journal or academic lecture—that the January 2024 Order of the Court over which she presided, in South Africa’s genocide case, did not find that Israel was plausibly committing genocide. The Court, she said, merely found that the Palestinians’ right to be protected from genocide was plausible: “there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide”. It did not decide “that the claim of genocide was plausible” (252). But mark the incoherence of this foggy lawyers’ language: if there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinians’ right to be protected from genocide, that risk can only have been caused by Israel’s plausibly genocidal conduct: for how can a right be plausibly prejudiced, or endangered, if there is no plausible act to prejudice or endanger it? It is as if to say, A has plausibly prejudiced the right of B to life; but it is not plausible that A unlawfully killed B! So mere an absurdity, in the mouth of a distinguished judge, and stated in the course of informal remarks, invites censure; and Finkelstein amply shows, by a close examination of the proceedings in the case, that Donoghue misled her hearers. “Donoghue”, he says, “uttered a shameful and shameless lie” (294). Her remarks were thereafter exploited by contemptible politicians, like David Lammy, the former foreign secretary, to allege that the ICJ had not ruled on “the plausibility of Israel committing genocide” (296).

The final chapter and appendix consider the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court. UNSC resolution 2803, approved in November 2025, endorsed President Trump’s misnamed peace plan, and made Gaza his personal possession as chair of the misnamed Board of Peace. The consequence was, that all the legal principles, resolutions, and deliberations regarding Palestinian self-determination were peremptorily vitiated: “Gaza was reduced by the Security Council … to the extra-legal status of—in the idiom of the European conquest of Africa—res nullius (‘thing of nobody’)” (301). The drift of the Security Council’s resolution can be accurately judged from this: that “except for a single sentence by Algeria, not one State supporting the resolution uttered one word of criticism of Israeli actions after 7 October”—including, of course, Britain (305). In short, “the supreme political organ of the UN immolated itself in order to placate a gangster juggernaut in Washington” (307). The UN, by making itself an accomplice to genocide, overthrew the whole system of laws and institutions that was supposed to prevent and punish international crimes.

The appendix is devoted to the true history of Fatou Bensouda, former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who now finds herself celebrated for her courage in belatedly opening an investigation into the situation in Palestine in 2019, and resisting Israeli intimidation. No celebration is warranted. Bensouda obstinately refused to investigate Israel for its murder of humanitarian activists on the Mavi Marmara flotilla bound for Gaza in 2010: she could not even see a “reasonable basis” to think a crime was committed amid international outrage. Not once, not twice, but thrice she thwarted an investigation, relying largely upon an Israeli report about the incident, and conjuring any fallacious excuse to absolve Israeli forces of wrongdoing. The inhuman blockade of Gaza—the reason for the flotilla’s voyage, and the cause of Gaza’s sorrows—she carefully ignored, in order to pretend that the case was insufficiently grave to be investigated. Bensouda’s years-long obstruction of justice proved ultimately successful when the case was closed in 2020. Although, as a general maxim, it is not true that familiarity breeds contempt—in respect of Bensouda, the saying is apt.

Finkelstein’s work prompts the following general reflections. First, international institutions have proved themselves impotent to prevent and punish—or, worse, have been culpable abettors of—the crime of genocide. The reason for this is, that the law of the strongest continues to be the rule in international affairs: it has been demonstrated beyond doubt that there is hardly a limit to the barbarism which may be tolerated or aided by the vaunted international community, when those with authority support the crimes. At any moment, if ruling classes command or approve the worst of offences, states will be found ready to lapse into the sheerest savagery. Second, and correspondent to that regrettable fact, our hopes should rest upon the consciences (and, indeed, the best interests) of ordinary people. Although Israel has been allowed by the world’s rulers to perpetrate the crime of crimes, it is by no means true that there has been no sanction—even as the sanction is woefully inadequate. Opinion has almost everywhere turned against Israel; and opinion is a force in history. No one can persevere in unconcealed evil without eventually meeting disgrace. Our duty, then, is to seize upon and guide this transformation of opinion: to reveal the vices and iniquities of an international political and economic order which can permit such things to be done, and to displace the ruling classes which have delivered us into this inferno. Third, let it be remembered that the law, unaided by politics, is only a poor instrument for the attainment of justice. Finkelstein has written the indictment. The perpetrators of high crimes will not see justice except by our tireless exertions.

Talal Hangari

* * *

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.

The masses more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. Such a falsehood would never enter their heads, and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation of others.

—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

On 12 May 2026, an Israeli “Civil Commission” headed by Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy published Silenced No More—Sexual Terror Unveiled: The Untold Atrocities of October 7 and Against Hostages in Captivity.1 The nearly three-hundred-page, single-spaced document studded with more than 1,100 multi-referenced footnotes was widely touted as “the most comprehensive report to date” documenting Hamas’s sexual violence.2 It was packaged with effusive praise for its evidentiary rigor from the likes of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sheryl Sandberg, and Rahm Emanuel.3 The Report purported to present a “comprehensive independent evidentiary record” that demonstrated “sexual and gender-based violence was systematic, widespread, and integral to the October 7th attacks and their aftermath.”4 In fact, the Report didn’t contain a shred of credible evidence that Hamas5 systematically committed sexual violence on 7 October 0or against Israeli hostages. On the contrary, if one accepts its central premises, the Report constituted the most compelling proof to date that Hamas did not systematically commit sexual violence. It might be wondered how this can be in light of the sheer bulk of the report and its sprawling scholarly apparatus. But this was an optical illusion. The evidentiary portion of the Report filled less than half its pages,6 and virtually every piece of testimonial evidence adduced in these pages was repeated ad nauseum. Were the repetitions deleted, the Report’s evidentiary bulk would drastically shrink. What’s more, virtually all of the so-called evidence assembled in it is by now stale news: the stories of these allegedly “silenced voices” have already been widely reported multiple times.7

The present assessment parses the prime evidence—testimonial and digital—adduced in the Report. It melds rigorous scholarly refutation with withering mockery of what is, at bottom, not an inquiry into the fraught topic of sexual violence but, on the contrary, a depraved exercise in Hitlerian propaganda. This writer refuses to be browbeaten into adopting a reverential, hushed tone as it would in effect concede that the Report was addressing sexual violence. It is the purveyors of this ridiculous hoax who have trivialized the grave subject matter into a joke.

Preliminary Observations

A) Testimonial evidence

The Report’s evidence overwhelmingly comprised testimonies by alleged witnesses to incidents of Hamas’s sexual violence. Although it at first appears as if the cast of characters and range of situations rivals a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza, the witnesses and incidents quoted in the report prove upon inspection to be small in number, while this cast of characters will be familiar to readers of previous Israeli reports and media coverage. It was in large part a re-released film, albeit colorized. One of the more ludicrous conceits of Israeli hasbara has been that these witnesses were “silenced.” They were about as muted as The Beatles. Whereas the Report is titled Silenced No More, it copiously documented that “[w]itnesses’ accounts and testimonies of sexual violence emerged swiftly after the attack.”8 It was the mind-numbing repetition that fostered the illusion of a vast evidentiary pool: testimonies and incidents were endlessly recounted, more often than not verbatim, on different pages and in different footnotes—even twice in the same footnote or same page of text!9 Stripped of the repetitions, the Report was a supersized nothing burger. (See Table 1.) The testimonies most recycled in the Report (and most publicized by Israeli hasbara) were also the most lurid. The Report tacitly presupposed that if an alleged witness repeated the same testimony in multiple venues, that enhanced their credibility. But couldn’t the witness have just been a chronic or highly motivated prevaricator?

Table 1

RECYCLING WITNESS TESTIMONY AND INCIDENTS

An appendix to the Report laid out its methodology for administering interviews of alleged witnesses. It was “victim-centered” and “trauma-informed” in that it “recognizes the emotional and psychological impact of testimony-giving and implements protective measures throughout the process.” It sought to “ensure that our tone, words, body language, or any other actions do not convey blame, shame, disrespect, judgment, condescension, belittlement, or scorn” so as to “prevent further harm or re-traumatization of the testifiers” and the “risk of re-victimization.” Here’s how the methodological appendix described the desired “atmosphere” of the interviews it conducted:

Still, the Commission purported to uphold “rigorous academic and legal standards,” and to have produced a “rigorous legal, historical, and evidentiary work.” But did it? It avowed to “act in the best interests of the individuals providing the information,” as it “prioritizes their safety, physical and psychological well-being.” One might have supposed that a document aspiring to “rigorous academic and legal standards” would, on the contrary, methodologically “prioritize” and “act in the best interests” of truth. The Commission further stated that “The objective is to deliver justice.”10 But the Commission explicitly declared that truth and justice were not its ultimate goals: “The physical and emotional well-being of the testifier is our highest priority, even if it compromises our documentation efforts” (emphasis added). It would appear that the Commission confounded gathering evidence with group therapy. It noted that “The delicate triangle between therapy, documentation, and justice requires constant balance.” But it itself avowedly upset the balance by placing its thumb on the therapy side of the scale. If it put the premium on assuaging the feelings of the alleged victim, then the Commission’s function was essentially stenographic. It proclaimed that “we are committed to relying only on credible information.” This, however, was manifestly untrue. How is it possible to ferret out “credible information” if an alleged witness is preemptively insulated from aggressive, skeptical interrogation? The Commission went on to declare that it “will not make assumptions about truthfulness based on inconsistencies.”11 It shouldn’t surprise, then, that the Report brazenly included without caveat witness testimony of preposterous publicly exposed fabulists such as Rami Davidian.12

The upshot is that the witness testimonies assembled in the Report and constituting the preponderance of it—in and of themselves and in the absence of corroborative material evidence—lacked even a smidgen of probative value. If nearly every Israeli Jew, being an actual or former member of its citizen-army, has internalized the IDF’s genocidal ethos, and if the Gaza genocide enjoyed overwhelming Israeli Jewish support to the point of psychotic relish, and if demonizing Hamas crystallized into a national project in which Israeli Jews reflexively self-conscripted, then, prima facie, the probative value of these witness testimonies absent material corroboration fell below zero. The Report stated that “victims’ experiences must inform legal and institutional responses and should neither be marginalized nor eclipsed by broader considerations.”13 It further stated that “In all cases, factual determinations relied on multiple independent sources that were compared and cross-referenced for verification.”14 But if one State-worshipping citizen-propagandist echoed the testimony of another State-worshipping citizen-propagandist, that scarcely constituted corroborative, let alone dispositive, testimony, while “broader considerations” of truth and justice most emphatically should have “eclipsed” plausibly tainted testimony. In light of the genocidal poison coursing through the Israeli body politic, shouldn’t the default setting have been that these witness testimonies constituted lying propaganda—as credible as the testimony of guards at Auschwitz that there were no gas chambers? The “reasonable grounds to conclude” standard would require at bare minimum witness testimony that was “supported by digital evidence” (Amnesty International).15 If the Report didn’t adopt that standard, if in the main it relied exclusively on witness testimony, then the reason is not hard to find: no digital evidence has been adduced that Hamas perpetrated rape and other acts of sexual violence. The Report dignified its disposition of witness testimonies as it having “archived” them. The process more closely resembled a hoarder accumulating junk.

B) Digital evidence

The Report stated that the Commission had stored fully ten thousand photographs and digital segments documenting the Hamas attack, and that it would take “well over 1,800 cumulative hours” to view all of them.16 Put otherwise, if a researcher plowed through this digital evidence every day for eight hours, it would take more than seven months to view the entire archive. This vast trove of images caught a narrowly circumscribed space in southern Israel abutting Gaza. Not a lot that unfolded on 7 October could have escaped notice of this collective lens. It was the Report’s mantra that, in order to fray Israeli national and kinship bonds, Hamas recorded and then disseminated its gruesome acts on social media as well as in video messages sent to family members of the hostages. It stated that it had in its possession “the perpetrators’ own extensive video documentation and body camera footage, whether live streamed during the attack, posted online and on social media by Hamas and its collaborators soon after, or found on cameras recovered at the scenes.”17 “The perpetrators did not conceal these acts—they glorified them,” Elkayam-Levy underscored in her preface.

And in the body of the Report:

The Commission coined the neologism “kinocide” and “kinocidal sexual violence” to capture this supposedly novel crime21 and posited that not only the direct targets of Hamas violence but also the recipients of the digital recordings should be reckoned torture victims.22 The oddity, however, is that, even as, according to the Report, Hamas systematically deployed SGBV as a strategic weapon, and even as brazenly perpetrating and then broadcasting its criminal violence was integral to Hamas’s purported gameplan, neither the Israeli State nor the Civil Commission has released even one frame, from among the ten thousand photographs and digital segments it amassed, that depicted Hamas committing rape or other acts of sexual violence. No such image or video footage has been reported, according to Amnesty International.23 Not a single Israeli CCTV, traffic surveillance camera, or individual cellphone captured Hamas committing rape or other acts of sexual violence. The Commission collected “extensive” digital evidence from Hamas digital paraphernalia. Hamas allegedly exploited its gruesome images from 7 October and of the Israelis held hostage as “an instrument of terror.” If inspiring terror was the avowed objective, then, it would seem, the more barbaric the sexual violence it disseminated the better. But not a single confiscated Hamas bodycam, GoPro, or dashcam contained an image of rape or other acts of sexual violence. Not a single Hamas posting on social media or footage transmitted directly to family members of hostages contained an image depicting rape or other acts of sexual violence. The Report effectively conceded, if only by indirection, this critical lacuna:

That is, the Report delineated all manner of violent acts documented by Hamas perpetrators—but these did not include acts of sexual violence, defined by the Report as “the commission or attempted commission of sexual acts.”27 The Report correctly stated that Hamas did post brutal images of an execution and of corporal abuse.28 It also claimed to possess a video depicting “the lifeless, bloodied, body of a woman in a home, with a perpetrator stomping on her head.”29 But no image posted by Hamas depicted it perpetrating rape or other acts of sexual violence. The Report’s own annotated inventory of “Photographic and video documentation of the attacks and of the bodies found afterwards” does not include a single image of Hamas perpetrating sexual violence.30 If neither the Israeli State nor the Civil Commission possessed any digital evidence depicting rape or other acts of sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas, and if, according to the Report, it was Hamas’s strategy to transmit for public consumption its most heinous crimes, yet it didn’t post on social media or privately transmit to hostage families a single image depicting rape or other acts of sexual violence, then Hamas could not have “strategically employed sexual violence as a weapon of war and terror.”31

The Specifics

A) Rape

The Report purported that it “has identified repeating cases of rape, gang rape.”32 What did its evidence show?

1. 7 October

The Report alleged that numerous rapes, including gang and even necrophiliac rape,33 occurred on 7 October. However, it pretended to document the testimony of all of one—male—rape survivor. This one and only alleged rape survivor to step forward publicly has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the Israeli government for negligence. His testimony has been received with less than resounding confidence in Israel.34 Although the Report stated that he was “subjected to a violent gang rape,” his testimony quoted in the body of the Report did not explicitly assert that he was raped: “There were several of them, and they genuinely enjoyed it. They laughed, they were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll. It felt like all boundaries were broken. . . . There were no boundaries. I was completely naked. They did whatever they wanted to me. . . . It felt as though they were on a mission. They laughed at me and humiliated me. They trampled all the human dignity I had left, they trampled my body and my soul.” The Report continued: “He further recounted the perpetrators threatened to kill him and pressed a gun to his head. They threatened to cut off his genitalia and other body parts. The abuse continued until, according to his testimony, he lost consciousness and did not remember what happened to him.”35 If they did rape him, he didn’t tell it to the Commission. Not one single frame from among the ten thousand photographs and digital segments documenting 7 October captured a rape. The preponderance of these alleged rapes was said to have occurred at the Supernova music festival. The attendees were “mainly young men and women.”36 The witnesses to these alleged rapes secreted themselves in hiding places.37 The Report stated that it had collected “numerous photographs . . . from the Nova site and surrounding areas.”38 Not one among the hidden Gen Z witnesses—wouldn’t they reflexively have recorded on their phones a crime unfolding in real time?—thought, however, to capture these rapes occurring all around them in an “open desert area.”39 Strange. And even as the Report alleged that it had “identified repeating cases of rape, gang rape”;40 and even as, according to the Report, the motive behind Hamas’s sexual violence was to make of it a public “spectacle,” “instrument of terror” and “thereby extending the humiliation and amplifying the psychological terror inflicted on victims, their families, and the wider public,” “to document, glorify, and amplify its atrocities,” “these videos were deliberately disseminated on social media . . . to widen the audience”;41 and even as “Hamas commandeered victims’ own phones and social media accounts to post, share, or live stream the brutalities as they unfolded”42—notwithstanding all this, Hamas did not post on social media a single image of rape on 7 October. Also, strange. To clinch its case, the Report fell back on multiple “eyewitnesses and earwitnesses.”43 Its star witness was an earwitness. From within the confines of a vehicle, she claimed to have heard not one, not two, but a trifecta of three discrete rapes, including a gang rape: “I was sitting here in the caravan; I heard rape here, here, and here. I can point to where. It was very distinct. It was on this side, on this side, and on this side—three points.”44 This writer can’t distinguish between a buzzer sounding inside his apartment versus from a passing vehicle outside. But the witness made out three distinct rapes “here, here, and here.” Here’s what else she audibly discerned: “I heard one rape where they were passing her around. She was probably injured, judging by her screams. . . . Another one was that I heard someone screaming, ‘Don’t touch her, don’t do this,’ and then they apparently raped his girlfriend . . . in front of his eyes. And then they killed both of them.” How could she have known any of this? It hasn’t been ascertained whether she also heard the Vienna Boys Choir, the Boston Pops, and The Beatles reunion “here, here, and here.”

2. Hostages

The Report stated that “Hostages were routinely subjected to grave violations, including rape, sexual assaults, severe physical and psychological pain, and sexual humiliation.”45 The nature of many of these acts, however, was cast in the Report not in a legal idiom but, on the contrary, the gauzy language of a trashy Gothic novel. One anonymous survivor recalled these incidents:

The Report stated that a male survivor reticently recalled that a “guard repeatedly attempted to pressure him into performing a sexual act on himself.”47 One of the Report’s key witnesses recounted: “We all know that something happened. You could see it on her face. . . . Then she told us that he touched her, and she told us exactly how he touched her and what he did. . . . [W]e all know. And it’s a nightmare.”48 Even as Israel takes pride in being a sexually libertine atoll amidst a sea of medieval Muslim sexual repression, strangely, these witnesses became coy as a Southern belle testifying in a Black-rape trial, whereas repressed Gazans matter-of-factly described, as if having nothing to dissimulate, the sexual horrors inflicted on them by Israeli captors.49 It’s as if the Israeli witnesses endeavored to inflate the actual crime by tantalizing insinuation and innuendo or by feigning virginal innocence. If the Commission was “committed to relying only on credible information,” then why didn’t it simply ask them what happened?

The Report’s pages are saturated with the Hamas rape accusation. It thus comes as a surprise that, on close inspection, only one hostage explicitly alleged having witnessed a rape (fellatio) and only one explicitly alleged having heard rumors of rape in captivity.50 More surprising still, the one and only hostage who had allegedly survived rape in captivity and then publicly testified to it did not herself explicitly state that she had been raped. Amit Soussana quickly emerged as the poster girl of Hamas barbarism while her recounted ordeal clinched Israel’s case for Hamas rape in the court of public opinion.51 The Report devoted nearly nine consecutive pages to quoting multiple iterations of Soussana’s experience.52 Of the climactic to her abuse, Soussana had this to say: “[I] was forced to act nice to the person who had just sexually assaulted me in the most horrifying way”; “He forced me to commit a sexual act on him”; “[H]e forced me to perform a sexual act on him. A severe sexual act.”53 Whatever happened, nowhere did she purport that she was raped. Even the Report itself did not allege that she had been raped but rather that she was “sexually assaulted,” “forced to commit a sexual act,” endured “a severe sexual assault.”54 The bottom line is this: Whereas the Report alleged that “Hostages were routinely subjected to grave violations, including rape,” it couldn’t substantiate a single instance of any hostage being raped.

B) Other forms of sexual violence

1. 7 October

Witnesses alleged seeing countless disrobed corpses. Further, the Report depicted protracted sequences of their legs spread to expose genitalia as well as breasts severed and played with, hands tied behind their backs, the nude bodies fastened to trees and poles and then shot dead. A search of the words “naked,” “nudity,” “undressed,” and “unclothed” yields a whopping 227 results. Amidst the text’s swirling repetitions, it is impossible to say how many of these alleged instances were discrete. The documentation consists overwhelmingly of testimonies. One horrified witness recalled seeing the burnt body of a woman whose “dress was pulled up, and she wasn’t wearing underwear, not because it burned, because there was no trace. If it had burned, there would have been some plastic residue, some trace, because the dress itself was intact. If the underwear had burned, the dress would have burned too. It didn’t. They removed her underwear. Her legs were spread. Her genitals were exposed.”55 Another witness from the Supernova festival remembered “[w]omen tied with their hands behind their backs. And it was evident that they had been sexually harmed. Very evident. . . . From the fact that they had no underwear. From injuries in the lower areas.” It seems not to have occurred to our amateur Sherlocks that perhaps the victims weren’t wearing underwear.56 Be that as it may, it is credible that bodies were found partially or fully naked: the attack began in the “predawn and dawn hours”;57 the largest massacre unfolded at the Supernova festival that was celebrating “free love.”58 The Report itself stated that Hamas militants killed or took hostage Israelis before they had occasion to dress, and then dragged these scantily clad captives along the ground: “Bodies were abducted fully or partially naked, and victims, both living and dead, were taken while wearing sleepwear or underwear.”59 One returning hostage recalled that when taken captive she was wearing “tiny shortie pajamas. Everything [was] very exposed.”60 In and of themselves, however, none of these various degrees of undress would instantiate sexual violence. Still, the Report also alleged that Hamas militants intentionally stripped their captives’ bodies, sexually degraded them, tied their hands, fastened the naked bodies to objects, and then shot them. That would cross the threshold of sexual violence. But did it happen? The Report touted that it had accumulated fully ten thousand photographs and digital segments documenting Hamas sexual violence on 7 October. The sexually violated bodies were said to have been strewn in the wide open across open fields and highways. But not one single frame in this massive trove captured a Hamas militant perpetrating these consecutive acts of sexual violence. The trove included “extensive” digital evidence from Hamas bodycams, GoPros, and dashcams. But not one single frame from this surfeit of confiscated Hamas footage depicted a militant perpetrating an act of sexual violence.61 It was the Report’s mantra that Hamas posted images of its heinous sexual predations on social media in order to “transform their violence into spectacle and human suffering into an instrument of terror.” But Hamas did not post a single image of a Hamas militant intentionally stripping an Israeli, let alone spreading her legs, severing and then playing with her breast, binding her hands behind her back, pinning her to a tree or pole, and then murdering her. How can this be? Or, put otherwise, if Hamas didn’t post such images, that can only be because it didn’t possess any; and if it didn’t possess any, that can only be because it didn’t commit such acts of sexual violence—let alone that they had been “planned and rehearsed.”62

The Report additionally alleged that Hamas grotesquely mangled bodies. It stated that “first responders” discovered a woman’s body that had “several nails driven into her lower abdomen and groin area, as well as a metal or plastic object embedded in the groin area.” It went on to state that “three forensic pathologists who reviewed the images and videos from the site” confirmed the responder testimony.63 (Were they employed by Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, & Mengele Inc.?) But a Haaretz journalist who has herself purveyed the Hamas rape hoax, as well as multiple independent forensic pathologists consulted by Human Rights Watch, all concluded that the photographic evidence did not confirm this testimony.64 The Report also adduced other first responders. One “recounted that the victim’s body had her legs spread. When he attempted to move and position the body respectfully, he was unable to close her legs and observed that metal cans had been inserted into her vaginal area. . . . ‘I couldn’t close her legs in order to place her into the [body] bag. . . . They had inserted various cans into her. Her legs were spread open. I looked more closely: she was half-naked, and they had inserted tin cans, into her genital area.’”65 Alas, he didn’t specify how many cans, or whether or not they were Campbell’s Soup. Another first responder testified that, upon entering a room, “there was a hospital bed and a body . . . I understood that it was a woman . . . In the room were knives, scalpels, a hammer, an axe, screwdrivers, tools, tools from the household. All of those were embedded in the body.”66 Other first responders testified that “Female bodies were found naked or partially naked, in some cases with aluminum cans, grenades, nails, blunt objects, rods, household tools and spike-like instruments, inserted into genitals and other parts of the body.”67 And yet again just three pages later in this demented Report: “Female bodies were found naked or partially unclothed, with objects, including improvised sharp items, nails and household tools, in their genitalia and other parts of their bodies.”68 And still yet again in the Report’s legal analysis: “The Civil Commission likewise documented cases in which bodies were found with various objects, including nails, aluminum cans and other items, inserted into their genitals.”69 It appears that the witnesses tastefully omitted the kitchen sink, toilet bowl, and corner gas station. The Report quoted this ghastly testimony-cum-philosophical musing on Hamas’ ineffable iniquity:

Another witness “testified that he observed the body of a man with severed male genitalia in his mouth.”71 (With or without condiments?) The Report stated that “first responders . . . provided the Commission with videos and photographs . . . documenting . . . victims’ bodies, including materials relevant to SGBV.”72 It therefore perplexes in the extreme why the first responders didn’t preserve digitally for posterity—and, of course, propaganda—these artifacts of Hamas pathology. If neither Israel nor the Civil Commission has made it publicly available, then it’s a sure bet that such photographic evidence doesn’t exist. Conversely, according to the Report, Hamas sought to sow terror throughout Israeli society by disseminating via social media its sadistic acts. But if the whole point of them was to shatter the Israeli national esprit, why then didn’t Hamas post on the Web images of these foul deeds? Except if they didn’t happen. If credit be lent to these twisted testimonies of Hamas corporal sexual disfigurement, then it should be as projections of and testaments to the pathological Israeli psyche—not least of the Report’s chief author.

2. Hostages

The Report stated that “[t]he accounts of returning hostages and medical professionals treating them indicate that hostages—both men and women—were systematically subjected to extreme physical and sexual violence and sexual torture while in captivity.”73 Specifically, the hostages variously alleged that Hamas had subjected them to touching, groping, ogling (“raping you with his eyes,” “undressing her with their eyes”74), invasive body searches, and severe breaches of personal space. It is impossible to determine, based solely on the testimonies, how much was true, how much exaggerated, how much fabricated; how much was “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” versus being born of the hostages’ vindictive rage or support for the genocidal assault; whether captivity was closer to Sodom and Gomorrah or frottage on the subway at rush hour. One ex-hostage indignantly recalled that she had “refused to wear the clothes” provided by Hamas “because they were very, very small, tight, and revealing.”75 Another anguished that “her captors procured a bra for her, asked about her bra size, and disputed her responses.” (It’s a wonder they didn’t booby-trap it.) “She described this incident as emblematic of the broader pattern of control and humiliation imposed during her detention.”76 The Report is dotted with sexually charged shower scenes, as if Psycho on an endless loop. (Wasn’t there a water emergency in Gaza?) The male hostages repeatedly waxed horror-stricken as Hamas guards purportedly came on to them: “He grabbed me from behind and started touching me all over. . . . Kisses the back of my neck and my back. He told me that he loves me”; “He rubbed his genitals against my anus”; “You go into the shower, and he comes to shampoo you. He puts shampoo in his hand and starts soaping you in the shower”; “once, twice, maybe three times, maybe more . . . [he] would come up behind me and hug me or put a hand on my shoulder.”77 Kinky Hamas gay blades even hooked up a hidden camera in the shower to videotape Israeli hunks, while one male hostage heroically if in vain sought to “avoid [showing his] private parts towards this angle.”78 (How did he know it was a homo peep show and not a humdrum security camera?) It was as if Hamasland meets Manhattan’s Chelsea and Florida’s SoBe. Who would’ve thunk? The testimonies didn’t always cohere upon cursory inspection. A hostage told the Civil Commission that one of his guards “shaved me—he told me before he started that I should undress. So I took off my pants and shirt and sat there in my underwear. Then he told me to take off my underwear. I told him I didn’t want to take off my underwear. . . . So he got angry, called me an idiot, and shaved me.” But in other iterations the hostage’s singular experience multiplied into “more than once” and, whereas his wife also testified that “I will never forget that the terrorist took Keith to the shower and shaved his entire body,” he told the UN Committee Against Torture that the “young terrorists forced me to . . . shave my body.” If this incident—whatever it was—didn’t already shock the conscience, one of the guards repeatedly opined that “I have a large penis and that the other hostage has a small penis.”79 It might be thought, Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Its credulity (cynicism?) knowing no limits, the Commission duly recorded the testimony of an injured ex-hostage that, after being taken to al-Shifa hospital, “They brought me into a room. . . . One man simply starts cutting off all my clothes. One man takes off my shoes, another takes off my earrings, and another removes my jewelry from my body, and I’m just like. . . around 15 people who are touching me, like, all at once, until it gets to the point where they cut off all my clothes. And then I was lying there naked—completely naked.”80 In the middle of a genocide, as hospitals were being targeted and swamped with patients, fully fifteen staff simultaneously went AWOL, engulfed her body, and took turns ravishing her. Could it be that this hostage had viewed, liked, and shared one too many gangbangs on Pornhub? It won’t altogether surprise at this point that the Report alleges on seven different pages that sibling minors were “coerced into performing sexual acts on one another.” The Report also enters this lurid embellishment: “They were reportedly compelled by their captors to take off their clothes, and their captors then touched their private parts and whipped their genitalia.” Alas, the reader will never learn all the juicy details of this pedophile-cum-incest-cum-S&M sicko cum-fest because the case was “anonymized due to the victims’ age and privacy concerns.”81 (It might be wondered why the Report’s author wasn’t also anonymized due to privacy concerns about her mental impairments.) Amidst these flamboyant fantasies, it repays to ponder the understated musings of the hostage with the contested bra size:

The worst of it, then, was the cramped, invasive, unsanitary conditions. A recent UN Commission of Inquiry documenting Israeli crimes against Palestinian children in Gaza observed: “One mother told the Commission about staying with her four young boys in a dog cage with a cover on top to give them some protection from rain and cold. Some recounted sharing mattresses with up to 10 people or sleeping in turns. . . . Temporary shelters, with one toilet for 700 people on average, became centers for disease outbreak.”83 In other words, Israeli hostages had to endure the tiniest fraction of what millions of Gazans suffered during the genocide.

The Report obliquely conceded by omission the lack of digital evidence that Hamas perpetrated rape and other acts of sexual violence on the hostages: “Videos and images filmed by Hamas during captivity, show hostages being tormented, abused, taunted, or humiliated on camera”; “Hamas released multiple videos depicting hostages begging for their lives or showing their bodies”; “Hamas . . . repeatedly released images and videos from captivity for months following the attacks, including visual materials depicting female bodies, children, and abused hostages”; “Hamas systematically staged, produced, and disseminated videos of hostages during captivity. Hamas released multiple videos of female hostages, some of them minors, in a visibly deteriorated physical condition begging for their lives. In one such case, the visual sequence of a young hostage concludes with footage of her lifeless body. Other videos filmed by perpetrators show female captives while ill or injured.”84 Hamas did post distressing images of hostages—not, however, of rape or other acts of sexual violence. But by the Civil Commission’s own logic, if Hamas was premeditatedly waging “psychological warfare and terror” on social media; and if the Report itself purported that Hamas posted “sexualized content”85 and “acts involving SGBV”86—it didn’t, per the Report, shy away from let alone make an exception for such content; yet Hamas, pace the Report, didn’t publicly disseminate images of rape and other acts of sexual violence; then it can’t but be that no such images existed; and if none existed, then it can’t but be that Hamas didn’t systematically perpetrate rape and other acts of sexual violence on the hostages.

Conclusion

In May 2026, an Israeli “Civil Commission” published Silenced No More. It was widely touted as the most comprehensive report to date documenting Hamas’s systematic resort to sexual violence on 7 October and against the hostages. Although running to almost three hundred pages, the Report’s hefty bulk was deceptive. The actual evidence of Hamas sexual violence filled less than half its pages while, if the mind-numbing repetitions were stricken, the actual evidence filled much less than half of the half. The Report rested its case on testimonial and digital evidence. In taking testimony, the Commission prioritized the emotional health of the witnesses over judicial fact-finding. It didn’t interrogate witnesses; it stenographed therapy sessions. The witnesses sprung forth from a genocidal society in which demonizing Hamas was a national duty. Prima facie, the probative value of these witness testimonies absent corroborative evidence fell below zero. The Commission stated that it had in its possession fully ten thousand pictures and digital segments from 7 October. This vast archive didn’t contain a single image of Hamas perpetrating rape or other acts of sexual violence. Prima facie, this constituted compelling a contrario evidence that Hamas did not systematically commit rape and other acts of sexual violence. The Report nonetheless pretended to document that Hamas had repeatedly perpetrated rapes and gang rapes. Its star witness or, more exactly, earwitness alleged that while hiding in a vehicular container she was able to discern sounds outside of three discrete rapes including a gang rape, “here, here, and here.” First responders testified that they discovered sexually mangled genitals such as a vagina stuffed with aluminum cans. Curiously, it did not occur to any of them to digitally document these Hamas bestialities for posterity or propaganda. The Report stated that Hamas routinely raped hostages. Yet, only a couple of the ex-hostages even claimed that they had witnessed or heard rumors of rape, while the ex-hostage poster girl of Hamas rape did not herself allege that she was raped. The Report purported that the hostages endured other acts of sexual violence such as groping and invasive body searches. It’s impossible to determine, based solely on the witness testimonies, whether the allegations were true, exaggerated, or fabricated whole cloth. What’s certain is this: The Report posited that Hamas posted images on social media of the hostages’ wretched state in order to inflict “psychological terror” on Israeli society. It did not, however, post any images of rape or other acts of sexual violence. Applying the Commission’s own logic, if Hamas didn’t post images of rape and other acts of sexual violence, then they didn’t happen. The Report stated that it “applied a tiered evidentiary approach” in which “[f]indings are based at a minimum on a ‘reasonable basis to believe,’ and in most cases meet ‘substantial grounds to believe.’”87 But a close reading of the Report demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that it applied a zero-tiered evidentiary approach in which findings were based on no grounds to believe.

***

Hitler laid out two rules for effective propaganda. First, “it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” Second, the bigger the lie, the more persuasive it is, for, in the simple minds of the masses, even as they themselves lie “in little things,” no one would be so brazen as to concoct an outrageous lie. In Silenced No More, Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy has proven herself to be a worthy disciple of the Führer’s techniques.

The author wishes to thank Noah Kruemmling and O. S. Zinn for commenting on a draft of this article.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza is heavily dependent upon rhetorical obfuscation of facts. From the highest echelons of international institutions and their officials to international human rights organisations, Palestinians in Gaza have been betrayed on several levels.

Norman Finkelstein’s latest book, Gaza’s Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places (OR Books, 2026) meticulously dissects reports and rhetoric to expose a corrupt web of impunity — one which would shame the UN, were it not an instrument of enabling, rather than preventing, Israel’s colonial violence.

Finkelstein commences with historical and political details that place Gaza under continuous scrutiny.

Noting Gaza’s obliteration since October 2023, Finkelstein writes, “But since Gaza emerged as a distinct entity after Israel’s ethnic cleansing in 1948, it’s always been a forbidding place.”

This detail in the book’s prologue is a stark reminder of how Gaza is perpetually portrayed. The more Gaza was portrayed as isolated, the easier it was for Israel to launch its periodic bombardments, which, as the author notes, each “typically picked up where the last one left off except at a qualitatively higher level of death and destruction.”

While Israel carried out its periodic ethnic cleansing, it was also able to sustain its narrative of Hamas as a threat, despite its attempts at diplomacy, cooperation with international law and endorsing popular peaceful resistance.

“By 2023, Gaza had vanished from the stage of international politics,” Finkelstein writes.

Yet what happened since October 2023 would see the continuation of an international endeavour that protected not only Israel’s fabricated security narrative, but also its genocide in Gaza.

From false claims to mellowing genocide into war and violations, international institutions and human rights organisations carried out a large-scale diminishing of Israel’s genocidal atrocities and promoted fabricated claims and assertions, even as the evidence inside Gaza continued to pile up.

One example is the UN’s endorsement in a 2024 report of Israel’s very early, unfounded claim that Hamas used rape as a weapon of war on 7 October 2023.

Finkelstein notes that contrary to Israel’s usual refusal to cooperate with UN officials, this mission, headed by Pramila Patten, enjoyed “full cooperation” from Israeli officials.

The team met with some released Israeli captives but not with any Palestinian survivors of alleged Israeli sexual violence. Israel, which lent its support to the Patten mission, did not give any evidence of mass rape.

Analysing Israel’s genocide in UN reports also followed the institution’s usual practice of providing evidence and diluting it for Israel’s benefit.

With terms such as “counter-offensive” used to describe Israel’s actions, alleged neutrality wrote the script in Israel’s favour.

Rhetoric to describe Israel's military operation exceeding limits does not lend itself to a categorical assertion of Israel committing genocide.

While the Commission, on occasion, did assert that Israel’s destruction of Gaza was on several occasions void of “legitimate military target”, Israel was held to the parameters of the laws of war, which is far from Israel’s objective.

Finkelstein describes the rules of proportionality in war and states, “But military objects in a genocide are ultimately beside the point while the destruction of civilian objects is the whole point.”

Meanwhile, the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry led by Navi Pillay found credible evidence that Israel had perpetrated rape and sexual violence.

“Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination and carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities,” the report stated.

At the International Court of Justice in 2024, Finkelstein draws upon the blatant reproduction of Israel’s propaganda by highlighting the input of Ugandan Judge Julia Sebutinde, who claimed that Israel-Palestine is a political, not legal, conflict, that South Africa failed to produce evidence of Israel plausibly committing genocide, and that therefore the ICJ cannot stipulate provisional measures against genocide.

Finkelstein provides detailed omissions from Judge Sebutinde’s claims, while documenting her stances throughout the case filed by South Africa.

This shows her as first dissenting, then agreeing with the provisional measures in March, which were already indicated earlier in January, only to revert to a pro-Israeli stance in May over the Israeli assault on Rafah.

In the epilogue, which is followed by a postscript on the aberration of the UN Security Council voting for US President Donald Trump’s 20-Point Plan in November 2025, Finkelstein writes that the book “was written to expose lies and restore truth.”

Gaza’s Gravediggers does considerably more than that. It is not merely a chronicle of Israel’s destruction of Gaza, but an examination of the institutional architecture that rendered that destruction politically and legally sustainable.

From UN reports and international courts to the language of human rights organisations, the book traces how evidence was qualified, legal standards diluted and genocide reframed as a “war” governed by proportionality rather than a project of elimination.

Finkelstein writes that, “After 17 November 2025, the UN is a rotting corpse.”

The force of his argument demonstrates that impunity is sustained not by military power alone but by the institutions that claim to uphold international law while failing to confront its most egregious violations.

Gaza’s Gravediggers is, ultimately, an indictment of those institutions and of the language through which they transformed accountability into accommodation.

Ramona Wadi is a freelance journalist and book reviewer. Her writing covers a range of themes related to Palestine, Chile, and Latin America

Follow her on X: @walzerscent

The enablers of genocide

ALEX HALL treasures a meticulous examination of international institutions that have given in to Israeli pressure during their still unfolding campaign of genocide

Mourners carry the body of Palestinian Abdullah Moussa, 30, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike, during his funeral in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, June 27, 2026. [Pic: AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana]

Alex Hall

Gaza’s Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places

Norman G Finkelstein, OR Books, £24.99

MORE than 20 years ago, Archbishop Desmond Tutu remarked that Israel would never achieve safety through oppression: “A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice.” For justice to be done, there must be prosecutions.

Norman G Finkelstein’s latest work joins a growing shelf of recent books — Peter Oborne’s Complicit, Adam H Johnson’s How to Sell a Genocide — that one hopes will be well-thumbed and cross-referenced on the prosecution benches when the time comes.

In Gaza’s Gravediggers, Finkelstein details those who betrayed justice: individuals with power and influence who, if not able to stop the genocide, could at least have refrained from becoming its enablers and apologists.

The epigraph references the fifth labour of Hercules: cleaning the Augean stables. It is worth recalling that Hercules accomplished this by diverting two rivers, washing away the accumulated filth in a single day. Perhaps this expresses hope for a future torrent of truth sweeping aside accumulated lies.

The prologue recounts recent history familiar to Finkelstein-watchers from the many podcasts he has joined since October 2023. He details Gaza’s blockade and Hamas’s political programme since its 2006 election victory, which included diplomacy with the zionist regime, appeals to international law and non-violent civil resistance — all rebuffed, often with extreme violence from Israeli forces. No option remained for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian population.

Finkelstein compares the situation to the 1831 Nat Turner revolt. Destined forever to be slaves, Turner and his confederates put 55 whites to the sword in Southampton County, Virginia, attempting to exact revenge and force a reckoning over slavery’s horrors.

But in Gaza, the crisis also became an opportunity, opening the gates to extermination, ethnic cleansing and the reduction of Gaza to an uninhabitable obliterated hellscape.

With this context established, Finkelstein turns his attention to international institutions that folded to Israeli propaganda and pressure during the carnage. This includes the United Nations, judges at the International Court of Justice, and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.

The October 7 Hamas attack was instantly mobilised by Israeli propagandists as an atrocity, with claims of mass rape as a weapon of war. Denial (or indeed, asking for evidence) was rapidly weaponised as a blood libel. Yet, as many opinion-formers should be forewarned: “Do not presume precisely what needs to be proved.” Alas, the UN’s Pramila Patten report leaned to the presumption rather than the proof.

Finkelstein meticulously sifts the evidence. Despite full Israeli government co-operation, Patten failed to interview any survivor of sexual violence from October 7, yet concluded there were “reasonable grounds” to assume it had happened. The report effectively undermines itself. Multiple other reports similarly found no evidence of sexual violence — unless it was Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Navi Pillay, is similarly eviscerated. Through a category error that minimises Israeli crimes, Finkelstein argues: “The Commission overwhelmingly framed Gaza as a ‘war’ in which Israel occasionally committed crimes, whereas in reality a ‘genocide’ was unfolding in Gaza in which Israel occasionally engaged in combat.”

Both the Patten report and the Pillay Commission — from the United Nations, one of the world’s highest authorities — served as justifications for Israel’s ongoing genocide.

Two ICJ judges stand out as particular betrayers of truth and justice. Only one of 17 judges who determined that Israel was plausibly committing genocide submitted a dissenting opinion. Julia Sebutinde, the Ugandan judge, disagreed with nearly everything her colleagues determined, including the Israeli judge, producing an opinion that took everything Israel claimed at face value and devalued everything submitted by the South African legal team.

Finkelstein devotes many pages to dismantling her opinion in law and examining her affiliations. A 50-page appendix further details that Sebutinde was also lazy: most of her opinion was plagiarised.

Judge Joan Donahue, president of the ICJ, delivered the judgement that Israel was plausibly committing genocide and must stop. Yet in a 2024 BBC interview, she claimed, in a fairly incoherent statement, that the judgement did not really mean the claim was plausible. A verbal subterfuge (and legal nonsense) thus undermined the judgement she herself had delivered.

This bears similarity to the Goldstone report, which Finkelstein examined in his Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom (University of California Press, 2021). Richard Goldstone, a respected South African jurist and self-confessed zionist, produced a report detailing Israeli crimes during 2008-9’s Operation Cast Lead. After a torrent of personal abuse and threats, he recanted in a murky newspaper op-ed.

An appendix details pre-genocide malfeasance. ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has recently suggested she was the first prosecutor to open ICC investigations into Israeli war crimes in Palestine, subjected thereafter to threats and intimidation.

Finkelstein correctly recalls, however, that Bensouda was also the prosecutor for complaints over the Mavi Marmara incident, when an aid flotilla to Gaza was boarded by Israeli forces and ten activists murdered. Like Sebutinde, Bensouda stuck to the Israeli version of events and refused to prosecute. Numerous complaints followed as the prosecutor’s view defied the facts.

Finkelstein can only guess whether bribery or blackmail was at play. And only in the last three months of her term did she open the Palestinian investigation, knowing she would shortly leave office.

Finally, the UN security council’s endorsement of Trump’s Board of Peace plan for Gaza was simply an abandonment of international law, making the UN both complicit and irrelevant. “The council didn’t just issue Gaza a death warrant; it also issued its own.”

Finkelstein’s work provides voluminous detail, fastidious cross-referencing of sources, exhaustive footnoting, and precision which is at times excruciating. It benefits from stark moral clarity: human life hangs in the balance. But it is precisely this exacting approach that demonstrates the contradictions, gives the scholarship its authority, and firmly plants its intention: a draft of history, and the outlines — and much of the detail — of a concerted drive to justice.

One day, the truth will wash through the stables. These are the floodgates.

Gaza’s Gravediggers is released on September 3 2026 and is available for pre-order.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) and Attorney Nasser Odeh warned today (Saturday) that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, is in immediate danger to his life, following new information obtained during a visit by his lawyer, Attorney Nasser Odeh, on July 2 at the Rakefet facility in Nitzan Prison.

According to Attorney Odeh’s affidavit, Dr. Abu Safiya was brought to the meeting shackled by his hands and feet and accompanied by masked prison guards. He bore fresh, severe injuries to his head, around his eyes, and on his ears and neck—to the extent that his lawyer initially struggled to recognize him.

During the visit, Dr. Abu Safiya experienced difficulty breathing and speaking continuously. He appeared extremely weak, struggled to sit upright without falling, and on several occasions seemed on the verge of losing consciousness. Attorney Odeh noted that he appeared frightened, exhibited severe psychological distress and was reluctant to speak freely due to fear of being targeted. Based on these direct observations, Attorney Odeh concluded that Dr. Abu Safiya’s life is in immediate danger.

Dr. Abu Safiya reported to his attorney that shortly after his Supreme Court appeal hearing (which took place on June 10, 2026), while he was held in solitary confinement at Ganot Prison, four or five prison guards entered his cell and assaulted him with a hammer and batons, inflicting injuries across his body. He further detailed that since his transfer to the Rakefet facility on June 24, 2026, he has been subjected to daily beatings, resulting in several instances of loss of consciousness, but without receiving appropriate medical treatment.

He expressed grave fear for his life, stating: “This is the last time you will see me… They brought me here to kill me. I don’t see myself surviving. This is the end.”

Following the visit, Attorney Nasser Odeh urgently appealed to the Israel Prison Service, demanding an end to the harm being inflicted on Dr. Abu Safiya, his immediate transfer to another detention facility, and the provision of urgent medical examination and treatment due to the real threat to his life. In his letter, Attorney Odeh made it clear that should the IPS fail to take immediate, concrete measures for his protection, full responsibility for any further deterioration in his condition or any harm caused to him would rest with the Prison Service and the competent authorities who failed to act.

Concurrently, PHRI sent urgent appeals to Israel’s Attorney General, the Commissioner of the Israel Prison Service, the Chief Public Defender, and the Chairs of both the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. The organization called for an immediate visit by an official body independent of the prison authorities and an urgent independent medical examination due to grave concerns for his life.

Dr. Abu Safiya has been held by Israel since December 27, 2024, under the Unlawful Enemy Combatants Law, without charge and without due process. After the Be’er Sheva District Court extended his detention on April 28, 2026, for an additional six months, he appealed to the Supreme Court, which rejected the appeal last month (June 10, 2026). In parallel, Physicians for Human Rights Israel filed a petition with the Supreme Court on April 30, 2026, demanding his release and the release of other doctors from Gaza currently incarcerated.

Until early June, he was held in Ktzi’ot Prison. Shortly after filing the appeal and the petition seeking his release and the release of the other detained doctors, he was transferred to solitary confinement in Ganot Prison and, last week—on June 24, to the Rakefet facility in Nitzan Prison. According to PHRI and his lawyer’s testimony, the dramatic escalation in the beatings and alleged torture inflicted upon him, which led to a severe deterioration in his physical and mental condition, occurred shortly after these legal proceedings were filed.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel reiterates its demand for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya and the other doctors who are being held without charges.

Rakefet is an underground interrogation and detention facility inside Nitzan Prison, where allegations of violence and abuse against detainees have previously been reported. Physicians for Human Rights Israel warns that, given Dr. Abu Safiya’s condition and the information provided by his attorney, any delay in intervention prolongs the imminent danger to his life, and notes that competent authorities remain fully accountable for the safety of those under their responsibility and custody. Every moment that Dr. Abu Safiya, along with the remaining doctors and medical staff, are held by Israeli authorities without independent monitoring places their lives in jeopardy. The organization urgently demands an immediate and independent investigation to examine their conditions of detention and the torture they are reportedly undergoing.

*Attorney Nasser Odeh, Dr. Abu Safiya’s lawyer*, stated: “I have visited Dr. Abu Safiya several times since his detention, but the individual I encountered during this latest visit was not the same person I had previously met. His physical and psychological state, the severe injuries visible on his body, and his personal testimony leave no room for doubt: his life is in immediate danger. He must be transferred out of the Rakefet facility immediately and granted an urgent, independent examination.”

*Naji Abbas, Director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel*, stated: “The information we have received raises grave and immediate concerns for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s life. Attorney Nasser Odeh’s testimony is among the most disturbing we have heard since the beginning of the war: a man held without charge telling his lawyer that he believes he is going to be killed, after arriving at the meeting injured, struggling to breathe and on the verge of losing consciousness. The severe deterioration in his condition began after he challenged his continued detention before the courts—a sequence of events requires an immediate and independent investigation. When an individual is held in state custody, the state bears full responsibility for his safety, health and life. If the authorities do not intervene immediately, there is a real risk that Dr. Abu Safiya will not leave detention alive. We demand urgent action before it is too late.”

*For further information*

Ran Yaron

Spokesperson, Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI)

Tel: +972-54-668-0857

Gaza’s Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places by Norman G. Finkelstein (OR Books, 2026)

Anti-Capitalist Musings

Jun 09, 2026

Door Maud Effting en Willem Feenstra

13 september 2025, 05:00

https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v/2025/gunshot-palestine-children-israel-war~v1819649/

“The mask has been pulled off : Hamas is Iran, Iran is Hamas! The terror along the security fence is an Iranian mission”

Norman Finkelstein responded to the above tweet by a post with the title:

“The mask has been pulled off: Israelis are Nazis, Nazis are Israelis. The assassins along the concentration camp fence target children for goofs.”