Opinion writing does not exempt columnists from basic standards of factual accuracy. When a columnist makes claims about sexual violence while misrepresenting the very source being cited, this moves beyond the realm of opinion writing and into the dissemination of falsehoods presented as fact.
To the National Post,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East to raise concerns regarding a factual error in the opinion piece written by Barbara Kay titled: “Barbara Kay: How anti-Zionists demonize Jews for remembering their own history.”
The opinion piece states:
For an extreme example of the type, in 2005, Hebrew University sociology student and ardent anti-Zionist Tal Nitzan began work on a Master’s thesis examining the (presumed) systemic rape of Palestinian women by the IDF. To her chagrin, Nitzan couldn’t find a single documented case of rape by any IDF soldier.
However, the claim that the student “couldn’t find a single documented case of rape” by any Israeli soldier is false. To be clear, this is not a matter of opinion, it is an inaccuracy.
The source Barbara Kay hyperlinks to in the article does not support her claim. The source, Israel National News, states that the thesis found that documented cases of rape of Palestinian women are allegedly “rare.” It does not state that the student failed to find a single documented case of rape. The same is said in this scholarly article, saying Nitzan found cases of rape were allegedly a “rarity,” not that they didn’t happen.
Further, a scholarly paper by Revital Madar says very clearly that:
Nitsán (2007) did not claim there are no incidents of sexual violence against Palestinian women, she considered these incidents as “symptomatic military rape” and not a “military, intentional rape” (31). Nitsán's distinction resembles the more prevalent distinction in security studies and international relations between “opportunistic rape” and “rape as a weapon of war.” Underlining Nitsán's claim is the implicit presupposition that if rape is not systematic, it is also rare, compared with large-scale cases of war-time rapes.
Perhaps Kay’s best and most obvious clue should have been the title of the thesis itself, “Boundaries of Occupation: The Rarity of Military Rape in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
We urge the National Post to publish a correction immediately.
Furthermore, Israel’s rape and sexual violence are notoriously underreported due to stigma, fear, trauma, distrust in the judicial system, legal barriers, and fear of losing custody of children according to Human Rights Watch. As Revital Madar wrote:
We cannot consider silence as conclusive proof that a crime has not taken place. Instead, we should be attentive to more than clear-cut testimonies of legally constructed sexual offenses, precisely in cases of sexual abuses in the context of ongoing colonial and settler-colonial occupation. In these spaces, collective fear of rape can, in itself, be indicative (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 1993). It may not serve us in court (although I believe it should), but it should be enough to prevent us from deeming the content of these fears a rarity.
Additionally, there are numerous reports and testimonies documenting sexual violence and abuse committed against Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers.
Israel’s use of sexual violence is not new and dates back to 1948. In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine historian Ilan Pappé recounts testimony from Najiah Ayyub regarding events in Tantura in May 1948:
“I saw that the troops who encircled us tried to touch the women but were rejected by them. When they saw that the women would not surrender, they stopped. When we were on the beach, they took two women and tried to undress them, claiming they had to search the bodies.” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p. 246).
In another documented instance, on May 14, 1948, Haganah and Irgun units occupied Jaffa. Historian Benny Morris writes:
“On 14 or 15 May, a 12-year-old girl was raped by two Haganah soldiers; there were also a number of attempted rapes.” (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 220, citing a report from the IDF archives.)
Opinion writing does not exempt columnists from basic standards of factual accuracy. When a columnist makes claims about sexual violence while misrepresenting the very source being cited, this moves beyond the realm of opinion writing and into the dissemination of falsehoods presented as fact.
I therefore urge you to issue a correction to the article.
Media Analyst
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East