Political scientist Norman Finkelstein says his review found no material evidence supporting claims that Hamas systematically weaponized rape on October 7.
Key Takeaways
- Norman Finkelstein said he found “no material evidence” supporting claims that Hamas systematically weaponized rape during the October 7 attack.
- He pointed to an Israeli report citing 10,000 photographs and digital files — some 1,800 hours of material — but said none documented rape or sexual violence.
- Finkelstein said the available forensic, photographic and survivor evidence does not support the sweeping narrative that emerged after October 7.
Political scientist and author Norman Finkelstein has challenged one of the most consequential narratives to emerge from October 7, 2023: that the Palestinian movement Hamas systematically used rape and sexual violence as a weapon during its attack on southern Israel.
Speaking in a lengthy interview with US commentator Tucker Carlson, Finkelstein said he had examined the evidence cited in support of the allegation while researching his new book, Gaza’s Gravediggers.
“There is no question that atrocities of a significant magnitude were committed by Hamas and other militant groups on October 7th,” he said.
“And I am not a denier of any sort of atrocity so far as the evidence shows as of now. It happened.”
His challenge concerned something specific but politically significant: the claim of widespread or systematic sexual violence used deliberately as a weapon.
“I started to go through the evidence and there is no material evidence to support that claim,” Finkelstein said.
“I go through all the alleged evidence, and I find it not only non-persuasive, I find the evidence nonexistent.”
‘Totally Made Up’
Carlson asked Finkelstein directly whether he believed the narrative was “just totally made up.”
“I have to be careful about my words,” he answered. “You asked me the question: is it totally made up? I would say the evidence, based on the evidence that’s been adduced, yes, it’s totally made up.”
Finkelstein pointed in particular to a report produced by an Israeli civil commission led by Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, which has documented allegations of sexual violence surrounding October 7.
According to Finkelstein’s account of the report, the commission possessed approximately 10,000 photographs and digital segments documenting the attack — enough material to require approximately 1,800 hours to view in full.
At eight hours per day, he calculated, a single researcher would need more than seven months to watch all of it.
Then came what Finkelstein described as the central problem.
“There isn’t one single image, one single frame of Hamas committing rape or sexual violence on October 7th,” he said.
He noted that the material reportedly included imagery from Hamas body cameras, GoPros and dashcams, as well as CCTV footage, traffic cameras and phones.
“But none of those images show sexual violence or rape,” Finkelstein said. “There has not been one image, not one, put forth by Israel.”
“How can that be? How is that possible?”
Forensic Evidence, Witness Accounts
Finkelstein also addressed the lack of forensic evidence.
He acknowledged an explanation that bodies were processed rapidly following the October 7 attack because Israel was unprepared for the scale of deaths and because of religious burial practices.
“That seemed plausible to me,” he said.
What he found much harder to reconcile, he argued, was the combination of limited forensic evidence with the absence of visual documentation despite the enormous volume of material collected.
“The only thing they have is witnesses,” Finkelstein said.
He then scrutinized accounts cited in support of the sexual-violence allegations, including testimony from a witness who said she heard rapes while concealed inside a sealed room.
Finkelstein questioned how such testimony could establish the detailed events attributed to it without visual confirmation.
He also said that two people presented in the commission’s report as survivors — one connected to October 7 and another who had been held hostage — did not themselves explicitly state in the cited testimony that they had been raped.
“So we’re stuck with the following problem,” he said. “No forensic evidence, no digital evidence, no photographic evidence.”
Of the survivor accounts he examined, he added, neither explicitly said they had been raped.
Narrative that Went Global
The significance of Finkelstein’s intervention lies partly in how quickly claims of systematic rape became embedded in the international understanding of October 7.
The allegations were repeated by Israeli officials, political leaders and major media organizations and became part of the broader justification offered for Israel’s subsequent and ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Finkelstein also criticized Screams Before Silence, a documentary presented by former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg that promoted the claim of widespread and systematic sexual violence.
Finkelstein argued that the film gave viewers the impression that visual evidence existed when such documentation had not been produced.
“There were no images,” he said.
(PC, The Tucker Carlson Show, QNN)
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