Hamas victim's sister denounces New York Times rape story.

Last week, the New York Times published a major article detailing the brutal rape and murder of multiple women during Hamas’s attack on Israel. ‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,

Israel supporters seized on the story as inconvertible proof that Hamas brutally gang raped and tortured women and girls and that it was a top down directive from the leadership (who’ve denied it). They attacked the international community for failing to denounce rape. Most progressives landed on, “This is an unspeakable horror but it’s not a justification for genocide.”

Today, the sister of one of the victims who died in the attack, and was profiled in the story lede, wrote a comment on the Instagram wall of an Israeli journalist who’d posted a video talking about “the woman in the Black dress”—identified as her sister in the story. From the Times:

At first, she was known simply as “the woman in the black dress.”

In a grainy video, you can see her, lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed. Her face is burned beyond recognition and her right hand covers her eyes.

The video was shot in the early hours of Oct. 8 by a woman searching for a missing friend at the site of the rave in southern Israel where, the day before, Hamas terrorists massacred hundreds of young Israelis.

One family knew exactly who she was — Gal Abdush, mother of two from a working-class town in central Israel, who disappeared from the rave that night with her husband.

As the terrorists closed in on her, trapped on a highway in a line of cars of people trying to flee the party, she sent one final WhatsApp message to her family: “You don’t understand.”

Based largely on the video evidence — which was verified by The New York Times — Israeli police officials said they believed that Ms. Abdush was raped, and she has become a symbol of the horrors visited upon Israeli women and girls during the Oct. 7 attacks.

The sister denies there’s evidence her sister was raped before she died and denounces the Times reporter, claiming he didn’t tell the family — who are featured, heartbroken, in the main story image — that the story would be about rape. She thought they’d wanted to honor her sister’s memory. “Please do not forget that there are 2 children left without parents” she begged. Did they read about it in the Times?

Read her comment below in full:

Anything is possible—it could be a hoax, I guess, but the sister is not a public figure and they don’t share the same last name. Since this is a newsletter you will be getting my ashamed mea culpa if I’m wrong.

If it is legitimate, it’s possible that the woman’s traumatized sister is in denial about the rape. Or that perhaps police officials told her parents but not everyone in the family. Or that, for cultural reasons, the family doesn’t want the information to be public. But then we’re calling the sister a liar. And what was that about believing women? And did the author have to graphically describe the image of her exposed vagina for her family to read about on the front page of the most widely circulated newspaper in the U.S.?