Screams Without Words

In December 2023, a New York Times investigation titled " 'Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7" described rape and sexual violence during the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, referring to such violence as having been "weaponized" by Hamas.^[1]

The editorial process behind the article was criticized, with concerns raised including the use of inexperienced reporters, an overreliance on witness testimony, weak corroboration, and a lack of supporting forensic evidence.^[2][3][4] The Times stood by its story, saying that it was "rigorously reported, sourced and edited."^[5]

The investigation was led by Times staffer Jeffrey Gettleman, who had won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012, specializes in reporting conflicts and human rights issues, and has covered Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Ukraine.^[6] Gettleman recruited freelancer Adam Sella shortly after arriving in Israel in October 2023. Sella is a Jewish-American journalist who speaks Hebrew, Arabic and German, and has written for Al-Jazeera and Haaretz. He co-wrote several Times articles, including one with Gettleman on settler violence.^[6] Gettleman later recruited Israeli filmmaker and television director Anat Schwartz,^[7][6] whose partner was Sella's nephew.^[6][2] Schwartz did not have prior reporting experience.^[2]

They spent two months collecting video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews from more than 150 people, and drew the conclusion that there were at least seven locations where sexual assaults and mutilations of Israeli women and girls were carried out.^[1] The resulting article titled "'Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7", was published on December 28, 2023.^[1]

Evidence cited in the article includes accounts of 8 individuals or groups and a video circulated on social media.^[1] The beginning of the article describes a video as showing a murdered victim "lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed"'; she is identified as Gal Abdush.^[5] The article reported that the Times viewed photographs of a dead woman "with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin", and an Israeli military video of two dead female Israeli soldiers "who appeared to have been shot directly in their vaginas".^[1]

Schwartz said in her podcast that she contacted Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centers, trauma recovery facilities, sex assault hotlines, and kibbutzim,^[2]: ¶21 and visited the alleged rape sites,^[2]: ¶6 but found no witnesses to corroborate reports of sexual assault on October 7.^[2]: ¶21 In visits to the Merhav Marpe center, Schwartz didn't find direct evidence of sexual violence.^[2]: ¶38 However, statements of witnesses, including from Shari Mendes, Raz Cohen, and a rave attendee called Sapir, convinced Schwartz that the pattern of sexual violence was systematic.^[2]: ¶50

The NYT investigation concluded that there were "mass rapes" and that these were part of a broader pattern in which Hamas "weaponized sexual violence".^[1][6] The article states that Israeli officials told them that "everywhere Hamas terrorists struck... they brutalized women".^[1]

The article states that Israeli police organization Lahav 433 has "been steadily gathering evidence but they have not put a number on how many women were raped, saying that most are dead—and buried—and that they will never know. No survivors have spoken publicly."^[1] The article notes Israeli police's admission that "zero autopsies" were conducted, as during the "shock and confusion" of the day of the attack, they were "not focused on collecting semen samples from women's bodies, requesting autopsies or closely examining crime scenes", and "many bodies were buried as quickly as possible. Most were never examined".^[1] The article cites experts as asserting that "it is not unusual to have limited forensic evidence" during wartime, quoting law professor Adil Haque stating that prosecution of sexual crimes may be able to move forward years later just based on victim and witness testimony.^[1] Volunteers of the Israeli community emergency response alliance ZAKA serving as witnesses did not take photographs per organizational policy and respect for the dead. Yossi Landau, head of ZAKA operations, later told the New York Times that he regrets having not collected photographic evidence.^[1]

The article cites one Israeli official as stating that at least three women and one man survived sexual assaults during the attack but were not "willing to come physically for treatment", and further cites two therapists saying that were assisting a woman who was gang raped, but she was "in no condition to talk to investigators or reporters".^[1] It then quotes Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI), who says: "don't put this pressure on this woman. The corpses tell the story."^[1] The article also cited rape counsellors as saying that rape survivors do not discuss sexual assault for years due to trauma.^[1]

According to Haaretz, "The report reverberated around the world and was viewed in Israel as a highly significant step in recognizing the atrocities, pushing back against the international community's alleged silence and hypocrisy on the subject."^[6]

On January 3, Mondoweiss published an article by an "anonymous group of Palestinian journalists in Israel" containing a critical review of statements in "Screams Without Words" about Gal Abdush. As described by Mondoweiss, some of Abdush's relatives, including her sisters and brother-in-law, stated that she hadn't been raped.^[10][2] Her brother-in-law, Nissim Abdush, stated that no official party had informed them of sexual assault, saying that "the media invented it".^[10] Her sisters Tali Barakha and Miral Altar pointed out perceived incoherencies in the timing of events, with Altar writing that "[i]t doesn't make any sense that in four minutes, they raped her, slaughtered her, and burned her".^[10] The Mondoweiss article also pointed to a Ynet interview of Gal's mother, Eti Bracha, where she stated that she had only learned about the rape from "the New York Times reporter".^[10][9] However, Bracha, like Gal Abdush's brother and mother-in-law, said they believed Abdush was raped.^[9] Bracha stated that "there are witnesses who saw the sexual assault of my daughter".^[9] In an article published in CounterPunch in early February, media scholar and Fordham University professor Robin Andersen criticized the strength of the investigation, noting major discrepancies between families' testimonies and the article's text.^[18]

In February 2024, Schwartz was found to have liked incendiary posts on social media, including one calling to "turn the strip into a slaughterhouse", "violate any norm, on the way to victory", and that read "Those in front of us are human animals who do not hesitate to violate minimal rules."^[2][19][20] The Times launched an investigation.^[19] The Times was reviewing Schwartz's social media posts, and made a preliminary statement that such activity breaches company policy.^[19][5] Schwartz subsequently locked and deleted her social media posts.^[21]

On February 28, The Intercept published an exposé building on claims by Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada and The Grayzone that there were inconsistencies in the story^[2]: ¶47 and that it relied on witnesses despite questions about their credibility.^[2]: ¶30 The Intercept commented that Schwartz "may harbor animosity" toward Palestinians and felt "conflicting pressures between being a supporter of Israel's war effort and a Times reporter".^[2] Schwartz had told Keshet 12 in January 2024, "I'm... an Israeli, but I also work for New York Times... so all the time I'm... in this place between the hammer and the anvil."^[2][22] Eden Wessely, who filmed Gal Abdush's body, told Ynet in January 2024 that New York Times co-authors Schwartz and Sella had "called me again and again and explained how important [her footage and testimony were] to Israeli hasbara."^{[13][2]: ¶64} Wessely noted that Schwartz and Sella wanted "to know every detail".^[13] She said she understood that "there were disagreements within the [Abdush] family about the publication that she had been raped", but stated her belief that Gal's "voice should be heard, because her whole appearance screamed: 'Look at me, hear me, I was raped, I was murdered.'"^[13] The Intercept concluded that "the bigger scandal may be... the process that allowed [the reporting] into print, and the life-altering impact the reporting had for thousands of Palestinians whose deaths were justified by the alleged systematic sexual violence orchestrated by Hamas the paper claimed to have exposed" and that the "Times's mission was to bolster a predetermined narrative".^[2]: ¶15

On February 29, the New York Times came out in support of the investigation, calling it "rigorously reported, sourced and edited", and sent an email to The Intercept disputing a number of their assertions and seeking corrections.^[5]

In his critique of the controversy, former media columnist at The New York Times Ben Smith wrote in Semafor in early March that he found it "mind-boggling" that the Times "turned over crucial elements of its reporting on one of the most difficult and sensitive stories it has ever published to amateurs, one of whose social media posts would make reasonable people question her ability to be fair". The paper responded by denying this description, stating that Gettleman acted as a supervisor of the other two authors and that he "conducted dozens of interviews alongside them". Smith contrasted the Times article with a similar one in the Wall Street Journal, saying that the latter is "pedantically careful to be silent on two crucially important points: The Journal reaches no conclusion on whether sexual violence was a deliberate strategy of war. And it does not say who committed specific acts of sexual violence — Hamas fighters or other Gazans who may have crossed the open border. A gruesome photograph won't answer that question."^[23]

Per Smith, "Screams Without Words" "played a central role in an Israeli campaign to criticize American feminist organizations and the U.N. for not siding with Israel" in the war in Gaza. He was critical of aspects of the Intercept article, saying that it began with "implication of a government conspiracy but no indication of one". Commenting on the Intercept's assertion "that the departure of the Times' longtime Standards chief, Phil Corbett, was 'tied to the pressure he was under to soften coverage in Israel's favor'", he wrote that Corbett denied this as "completely wrong".^[23]

He further wrote that "the arguments over the Times coverage of both Israel and Gaza can seem hair-splitting and cruel. Few deny women were horribly assaulted amid the slaughter on Oct. 7"; he quoted a veteran foreign correspondent as saying that "the rushed story — and attempt to mechanically take it apart — is a disservice to the actual humans at the center of it." He further wrote that it is "not entirely clear what [the story's claim of 'weaponized sexual violence'] means in a literal sense", and that "[the article] doesn't show that Hamas leaders or field commanders planned or ordered sexual attacks ... though it doesn't rule that out. The story's most conclusive details, taken from photographs of sexually mutilated bodies, can't answer that question."^[23]

The Intercept reported that in March Schwartz was removed from the WhatsApp group used by the Times' reporters on Gaza, and that on 4 April the New York Times international editor informed his staff that the paper had cut ties with Schwartz due to her social media activity.^[24]

The publication of the article was followed by internal worries about the strength of its reporting.^[2][25] The producers of the Times' podcast The Daily had misgivings about the output of the investigation, causing an episode about the story to be set aside.^[26] The Times denied that any defects in the reporting were the cause of this, but treated the tabling becoming publicly known as a newsroom leak and started an internal investigation.^[27][28] Going on for weeks, the leak investigation led to tensions with the New York Times Guild (the paper's union, which is represented by NewsGuild-CWA) and dissention within the organization.^[28][29][26] The union alleged that the investigators had been especially interested in employees of Middle Eastern or North African ethnic origin—and that they had been poring over the membership and communications of an affinity group of these employees—characterizing this as "racially motivated" activity; NYT denied this.^[29] The union further said that employees who had expressed doubts about the report, consistent with the policy of providing feedback within the organization, were required to disclose their private conversations.^[30]

In April 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that the internal investigation was intended to signal "enough" after "years of fights with its workforce over a variety of issues involving journalistic integrity." It quoted Executive Editor Joseph Kahn as saying that "The idea that someone dips into that process in the middle, and finds something that they considered might be interesting or damaging to the story under way, and then provides that to people outside, felt to me and my colleagues like a breakdown in the sort of trust and collaboration that’s necessary in the editorial process."^[31] On 15 April 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that the New York Times had ended the investigation without conclusive findings.^[32]

On 26 March 2024, the New York Times published an article by two journalists not involved in the original investigation about a video which it said undercut the testimony of a ZAKA paramedic whose claims had been included in "Screams Without Words".^[33][6]

On 29 April 2024, more than 50 tenured journalism professors signed a letter calling on the New York Times to "immediately commission a group of journalism experts to conduct a thorough and full independent review of the reporting, editing and publishing processes for ["Screams Without Words"] and release a report of the findings."^[34][35][36] Shahan Mufti, a professor at the University of Richmond, told The National that the statement's aim was to prompt the NYT to “eventually concede that there are problems with the story and retract it or at least correct it” after the publication had so far been "digging its heels deeper and deeper". Mufti said that it was all the more important given the high stakes of the piece in light of the ICJ discussion of plausible genocide and UN agency warnings of man-made famine.^[36] In response, the Times reiterated confidence in the article's quality.^[34]

• List of The New York Times controversies
• Atrocity propaganda
• Screams Before Silence