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You are listening to an art media podcast. It's Wednesday, may 13th. This episode was recorded at 8:00pm new york time on Tuesday. I'm deborah pardes and this is arc news daily. Prime Minister Netanyahu has called accusations of sexual violence, violence, Israelis baseless. But my reporting suggests that sexual violence has greatly worsened under Netanyahu in recent years. Two things happened on the same day this week that, taken together, tell you almost everything about the fight over how October 7th is remembered and how it has shaped Israel's reputation around the world. On Monday afternoon, the New York Times published an opinion column accusing Israel of systemic sexual violence against Palestinians. The morning after an Israeli civil commission released the most comprehensive report ever assembled on Hamas's sexual crimes committed on October 7th. Israeli officials are calling the timing of the New York Times piece deliberate. It's called the Silence that Meets the Rape of Palestinians. Written by Nicholas Kristof. The piece generated widespread controversy. It draws on conversations with 14 Palestinians who say they were sexually assaulted by Israeli soldiers, prison guards and interrogators. Several of those cases are the subject of active Israeli investigations. The column contains two significant admissions. The first is, quote, there is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes. And the second is it's impossible to know how common sexual assaults against Palestinians are. Despite those concessions, the column argues that sexual violence has become part of Israel's standard operating procedures. Among the abuse it cites is an allegation that Israel used trained dogs to sexually assault prisoners. Other outlets have reported that, too, citing anonymous sources who say they witnessed it. But no independent investigation has produced physical or documentary evidence on it. A group called the Euromed Human Rights Monitor went even further, saying the use of trained dogs is a widespread practice. The column cites Euromed multiple times. The group has been flagged for having ties to organizations that Israel calls fronts for. Hamas leaders in Israel condemned Christoph's Peace. Israel's Foreign Ministry called it one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press. Israel's US Ambassador Yahiel Leiter says it's reflective of a broader pattern at the New York Times.
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This is characteristic of the same paper that disseminated baseless accusations of starvation, only to publish a retraction on a secondary webpage to hide it. For the New York Times, this is just the next item on a long list of blood libels against the state of Israel.
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Now let's turn to the Israeli report we mentioned earlier. It's called Silenced no More and details how Hamas used sexual abuse to terrorize Israeli society. The report is 300 pages long, built on more than 10,000 photographs, thousands of hours of video, and more than 400 testimonies. The civil commission behind it made it clear that what they found was a recurring pattern of Hamas sexual violence, from gang rape and sexual torture to mutilation. It also introduced a new legal concept, kinocide. Basically, that means forcing family members to witness, or in some cases, commit sexual acts against each each other. The commission's leader said the report reveals that sexual violence was a deliberate strategy carried out with exceptional cruelty. Two and a half years after October 7th, Israel is still holding an estimated two to three hundred Hamas fighters without formal charges. The regular legal system was never built for that. Hundreds of defendants, the thousands of crime scenes and evidence pulled from body cams worn by the killers themselves. On Monday night, the Knesset voted to change that. It moved to create a special military tribunal, purpose built to try the perpetrators of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The vote was unanimous, 93 to 0. That's saying something. This is a Knesset that fights about almost everything. Simcha Rotman co authored the bill.
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This law will bring. This law will create the framework to punish those who did this. This law will tell the world the story of October 7th.
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So what does this new law actually do? The tribunal sits in Jerusalem. Inside the military justice system, trials will be public and broadcast. The charges include genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, terrorism and murder. Sexual crimes can be prosecuted under the war crimes framework, and anyone convicted under this law can be released through a future prisoner exchange deal. That last point is significant. One of the most painful chapters of the hostage crisis has been watching Israel trade convicted terrorists for hostages. This law closes that door permanently. Those convicted of genocide will face the death penalty. The last person executed in Israel was Adolf Eichmann in 1962. The opposition CO author of the bill, Yulia Malinowski, leaned into that comparison directly. She said, these will be the trials of the modern day Nazis. Eichmann trials, but many, many more. And they will go down in the history books. Human rights groups have raised concerns about fair trial standards and about whether confessions obtained during two years of detention can be considered reliable. Those are real legal questions that will follow these trials from the moment they begin. For now, the law is passed, but the facility still has to get built. The Defense ministry wants roughly 5 billion shekels to build the compound and staff it. The finance ministry says 2 billion is enough. Until that gap closes, the tribunal only exists on paper. And one last note. The tribunal will only address what happens to the perpetrators of October 7th. Families of the victims are also demanding more. They want to see a state commission created to examine how it was allowed to happen in the first place. So far, the government has failed to do that for months. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to hold his coalition together long enough to control when Israelis go to the polls. Yesterday, that plan started to unravel. We'll start with the background. Netanyahu's government depends on a partnership with Israel's ultra Orthodox community, the Haredim. Their core demand is a law that would exempt their young men from mandatory military service. Every other Israeli secular, religious, Zionist, Arab is subject to the draft. The ultra Orthodox are not. And that exemption has become one of the most explosive fault lines in Israeli society, especially after two and a half years of war. This week, Netanyahu told the ultra Orthodox parties he cannot deliver the exemption law. There's no majority for it in the coalition. The response was immediate. Rabbi Dov Landau is a leading figure in Israel's Lithuanian Haredi community. He called his faction's lawmakers to his home and handed them a handwritten letter. It said, we have no trust in the Prime Minister. We no longer feel like his partners. Elections are needed as soon as possible. Netanyahu's opposition moved fast. Multiple parties filed bills to dissolve the Knesset and force early election. The first reading for those bills is scheduled for next Wednesday. This isn't the first time Netanyahu has faced a crisis like this. Last summer, the same parties made the same threats and he cut a last minute deal. But this time, the opposition appears more unified and Netanyahu himself is reportedly preparing for early elections. He privately asked his inner circle to get ready, while publicly insisting the government will serve its full term. For Netanyahu, the timing matters. Elections in Israel are officially scheduled for late October. And according to current reporting, that's exactly when Netanyahu wants them, as late as possible. That would give him the most time to rack up wins in Iran against Hezbollah and in Gaza before voters go to the polls. So his plan has always been to run out the clock, hold the coalition together and keep governing. What yesterday did was put the plan under serious pressure. The coalition crisis he expected to manage is now breaking open. As things stand now, the faction that declared war on Netanyahu has four seats. That's not enough on its own to bring down the government. The hinge will come from the larger ultra Orthodox party, shas. It has 11 seats as of Tuesday. Its chairman was still trying to cut a deal with Netanyahu. If the Shast party stays in Netanyahu will likely get to keep his election timeline and perhaps his best chance of remaining prime minister. If Shas walks away, the government could be over and the election calendar would shift out of Netanyahu's hands. We'll see what happens in next week's Knesset vote. I'm Deborah Pardes and this is ARC News Daily. See you tomorrow. It.