The Staying Power of Lies
Atrocity stories from October 7 were debunked years ago. Many Americans are still repeating them as fact, and that belief is doing serious political work.
Rev. J. Mark Davidson
6/5/20263 min read
In conversations about Palestine-Israel, I’ve found that most people these days express outrage and revulsion at Israel’s brutality since October 7, 2023. This is confirmed by polls (see the IMEU/YouGov poll of 2025 here and the VJP poll of 2026 here) that show ever-larger majorities of Americans disapprove of Israel’s egregious violations of international humanitarian law. This majority expresses greater sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people and declining sympathy for Israel. Cracks are undeniably visible in the supposedly “unbreakable bond” between Israel and the United States. Public opinion matters, and this trendline is a welcome development for advocates of a just and durable peace in Palestine-Israel.
However, there is a deeper, more troubling layer to many of these conversations. A picture emerges: Israel is considered to be fundamentally good, but has behaved horribly lately. Israel has done terrible things to the Palestinians since October 7th. It is, they say, a human tragedy. Hamas, on the other hand, is fundamentally “evil,” even “demonic.” Unlike Israel, their very humanity is denied. They are monsters. To justify this demonization of Hamas, they repeat grisly stories of “beheaded babies” and “systematic rape as a weapon of war” and “babies burned in ovens,” and “fetuses ripped out of pregnant mothers,” etc. They repeat them, even though they are lies, and have been debunked. Immediately after October 7th, ZAKA, an Israeli volunteer search-and-rescue organization, fabricated horrific and uncorroborated “eyewitness accounts” of these examples of unspeakable atrocities. These were then amplified by the Israeli Defense Forces. Israeli and American government officials repeated them as if they were true. Even after the claims were shown to be “atrocity propaganda,” they continued to be repeated again and again.
In December 2023, the New York Times published an article entitled “Screams Without Words,” which purported to reveal how “Hamas weaponized sexual violence on October 7.” Several reputable journalists in Haaretz, The Intercept, The Grayzone, and Democracy Now, among others, panned the article and castigated the New York Times for publishing such a shoddy and dangerous piece. They pointed out that the article relied heavily on unverified “eyewitness accounts,” inexperienced reporters, and an Israeli filmmaker with an agenda and a questionable track record. There was very little forensic evidence or corroboration from independent sources. Moreover, the family of one of the Israeli women the article claimed had been raped publicly repudiated the paper’s account.
In the words of Jewish Voice for Peace, “this mendacious article had far-reaching consequences. It became the anchoring media source for the state of Israel to deepen its dehumanization of Palestinians and solidify its narrative groundwork for its genocide in Gaza. Israel and its supporters also used it as part of its policy justifications for the U.S. to back the genocide.” This debunked, false story was even deliberately included in Biden administration messaging, was referred to as “evidence” in Congressional testimony, and was repeated on numerous occasions in the mainstream media echo chamber. It played a major role in shaping a false narrative that has had astonishing staying power.
The point is not to defend Hamas, or to insist they have never committed any acts of sexual violence. But there is literally no independent, credible evidence that it was widespread or systematic. The same cannot be said about Israeli sexual violence in their prison system. Not only have Palestinians been sexually assaulted by Israeli guards for decades, but several of the flotilla activists from western countries who were illegally detained this spring reported they too were sexually assaulted. Nor is it to say that because Hamas has a right to armed resistance guaranteed to occupied people in international law (which they do) that therefore they are exonerated from any and all acts of violence against Israeli civilians. International humanitarian law rightly insists that all actors, including non-state actors like Hamas, observe the crucial distinction between combatants and non-combatants at all times. Clearly, Hamas’ military and political leaders were guilty of war crimes they committed on October 7th, as were Israel’s and America’s military and political leaders. The point, however, is to be vigilant in order not to be gaslit and propagandized by lies, or blinded to the humanity of Palestinian resistance fighters facing a century of horrendous oppression and now genocide. Routinely smearing them as “terrorists” or “monsters” locks many into hatred and fear. We may decry the use of violence by all participants in the conflict. We may object to some of Hamas’s tactics. But insisting on their humanity keeps open the possibility of empathizing with their oppression, understanding their resistance, and standing in solidarity with their yearning for liberation and self-determination.