How 2 debunked accounts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 fueled a global dispute over Israel-Hamas war
Volunteers from the ZAKA rescue service remove blood stains from a public bomb shelter on a road near the Israeli-Gaza border in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Nov. 20, 2023. Some allege the accounts of sexual assault were purposely concocted. Zaka officials and others dispute that. Regardless, AP’s examination of Zaka’s handling of the now debunked stories shows how information can be clouded and distorted in the chaos of the conflict. Credit: AP/Ohad Zwigenberg
JERUSALEM — Chaim Otmazgin had tended to dozens of shot, burned or mutilated bodies before he reached the home that would put him at the center of a global clash.
Working in a kibbutz that was ravaged by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Otmazgin — a volunteer commander with ZAKA, an Israeli search and rescue organization — saw the body of a teenager, shot dead and separated from her family in a different room. Her pants had been pulled down below her waist. He thought that was evidence of sexual violence.
He alerted journalists to what he’d seen. He tearfully recounted the details in a nationally televised appearance in the Israeli Parliament. In the frantic hours, days and weeks that followed the Hamas attack, his testimony ricocheted across the world.
But it turns out that what Otmazgin thought had occurred in the home at the kibbutz hadn’t happened.
Updated 58 minutes ago A winter storm is expected to pummel LI as artic air settles in across the region. NewsdayTV meteorologist Geoff Bansen has the forecast.
Updated 58 minutes ago A winter storm is expected to pummel LI as artic air settles in across the region. NewsdayTV meteorologist Geoff Bansen has the forecast.
