Two major reports released within days of each other this week documented sexual violence from opposing sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, revealing not only horrific crimes but also deeply tribal responses that rely on dangerous notions of uniqueness, according to Haaretz political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin.
A heavily researched column by veteran New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof presented stark documentation of sexual abuse of Palestinians by Israeli prison authorities, while the Israeli Civil Commission released its nearly 300-page report on Hamas' sexual violence during the October 7 attacks and against hostages, Scheindlin reports. She notes that the vast majority of responses focused on defending one's own side while attacking the other, with each community treating their victimization as unprecedented.
According to Scheindlin, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian readers "snapped into action like automatons," picking apart flaws in reports about the opposing side without critically examining documentation of abuse against their own people. Israel announced plans to sue The New York Times for defamation over Kristof's column.
Both reports include firsthand interviews with rape victims and direct eyewitnesses, Scheindlin observes, though each also contains at least one source that is less than credible, allowing detractors to dismiss them entirely. However, she argues that both provide exhaustive evidence that widespread systematic sexual violence occurred.
The New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander explained that Kristof's column was "extensively fact-checked, with accounts further cross-referenced with news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups, surveys and in one case, with UN testimony". According to Scheindlin, the Civil Commission report similarly offers heavy documentation that readers can cross-check.
The Danger of Uniqueness Claims
Scheindlin argues that the most dangerous aspect of these debates is the implied claim of uniqueness from both sides. Pro-Israel communities suggest that lies and libel have never been told about anyone else with such low evidentiary standards, while pro-Palestinian communities have latched onto the most gruesome accusations to suggest Israeli perpetrators are the worst in the world, she writes.
"None of this is true," Scheindlin states, citing sexual violence in Tigray, Sudan, Indonesia, Kosovo, and Bosnia. She notes that sexual violence involving physical mutilation, desecration, torture, family assault, and humiliation means that assertions of Israeli or Palestinian crimes being especially brutal "simply dismisses or denies the horrors suffered by multitudes of victims around the world".
According to Scheindlin, Kristof himself wrote that his decades of reporting on sexual abuse taught him that "a combination of dehumanization and impunity can propel people into a Hobbesian state of nature," citing abuses from Congo to Sudan to Myanmar, as well as American crimes at Abu Ghraib and by New York City police.
The Political Function of Suffering Supremacy
"Suffering-supremacy is inseparable from evil-enemy supremacy," Scheindlin argues. The purpose is clear, she explains: if one's enemy is uniquely evil, then extraordinary measures can be justified—whether "finishing the job" against Palestinians in Gaza or dismantling Israel as a country.
Scheindlin concludes by noting that Jews and Israelis "cannot have it both ways," deserving the same protections and human rights as all others while also recognizing that "precisely because we are human beings like all others, we—like everyone—have the capacity for evil".
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