grayzone

Widely reported Palestinian father-son ‘rape’ confession contradicted by piles of evidence
In Trust We Doubt, The Grayzone, Jun 27 2024

On May 23 2024, Britain’s Daily Mail published what it described as “exclusive” interrogation tapes it had been handed by Israeli intelligence. The Murdoch-owned tabloid claimed the supposed confessions exposed a pair of “father and son Hamas rapists” who had admitted “going house to house carrying out sex attacks and murder.” The proof of this apparent bombshell story consisted of two short snippets of heavily edited footage in which a wide-eyed Palestinian father and son are shown confessing to raping, killing, and kidnapping Israeli civilians from Kibbutz Nir Oz in Israel on Oct 7. In the videos, the pair, listed by the Daily Mail as “Shameless Jamal Hussein Ahmad Radi, 47, and his son Abdallah, 18,” seemingly admit to heinous crimes including a double homicide, kidnapping a mother and daughter, gangraping and murdering a woman, and kidnapping an Israeli resident. In an appeal to emotion aimed at making the very questioning of the confessions’ reliability an act of siding with monsters, the opening distills the essence of the article as a whole:

An evil father and son have revealed how they killed and raped innocent civilians. These confessions further prove that any attempt to deny the horrors of Oct 7 is part of a campaign to promote the justification of terrorism.

This investigation will expose the videos, and the Western media coverage of them, as yet another cynical example of Israeli propaganda designed to manufacture support for Tel Aviv’s assault on the Gaza Strip. Indeed, the claims made in the videos are not only uncorroborated by any evidence gathered by Israel, they are contradicted by copious documentation of the deaths which occurred in Nir Oz on Oct 7. The co-author of the Daily Mail article promoting the supposed confession videos turns out to have been an obscure Israeli-based writer with little prior experience in investigative journalism, stridently anti-Palestinian views and a Twitter timeline featuring a smiling selfie of herself with Netanyahu at an official British embassy gala in Tel Aviv.

Named Natalie Lisbona, the Daily Mail writer has become a key conduit for Israeli propaganda related to sexual violence allegations against Palestinians. Two weeks before October 7, Lisbona was publishing hard-hitting reports for the BBC on protein-packed gummies made from locusts. Days after the Hamas attack, she took to social media to rant against journalists who questioned Israeli claims that “babies were beheaded and burned alive by Hamas,” and to boast of her own plans to propagate the lurid Israeli claims.

“For the last three weeks, I’ve been speaking to the witnesses and families of hostages,” including those who “witnessed the remains of a pregnant woman whose baby was pulled out of her and beheaded,” Lisbona wrote on Oct 28.

Though this claim and nearly all allegations like it have been soundly discredited, including in Israeli news outlets, Lisbona claimed without evidence this March that “Hamas and gangs from GAZA raped CORPSES. RAPED CHILDREN.”

Like the Daily Mail, the NYT relied on a young Israeli freelancer with little journalistic experience and strongly anti-Palestinian views to gather testimony for its scandalous and comprehensively debunked “Screams Without Words” feature alleging mass sexual violence on October 7. That Times writer, Anat Schwartz, has since been fired, officially due to her liking of Twitter posts which expressed support for the mass slaughter of Palestinians. However, the Mail’s Lisbona remains one of Tel Aviv’s most reliable publicists in Western media, regularly pumping out speciously sourced reports accusing Palestinian militants of sexual violence.

The dubious and apparently coerced confessions promoted by Lisbona in her May 23 Daily Mail feature have received front page treatment in the New York Post, a US tabloid also owned by the Murdoch family, as well as in virtually every English-language Israeli outlet.

As we demonstrate in this investigation, none of the alleged crimes described in the supposed confessions align with any known details of actual October 7 victims, or how they died. Other portions of the videos contain significant contradictions which, absent further explanations or evidence from Israel, make it extremely unlikely the confessions are true. Here is a summary of the most significant findings in this investigation:

• The father claims he found a couple in their forties alone in a house in Nir Oz and killed them, but no such couple was killed.
• The father claims he found a mother and daughter alone in a house and kidnapped them, but no mother and daughter were taken in such circumstances.
• The father and son confess to raping and killing a woman in her thirties, but no woman in that age range was killed in Nir Oz in circumstances matching the confessions.
• The location from which an Israeli man was supposedly kidnapped contradicts his final text messages and his mother’s testimony.
• The timeline seems impossible. If, as described by the son, they arrived at Nir Oz at “about 10” am, the acts described in the confessions (10 murders, 19-21 kidnappings, breaking into more than 7 houses, and the rape of 2 women) would have to have been committed in about eight minutes if they were to have kidnapped the Israeli man, who wrote that his captors were “trying to get in” at 10:08.
• Three major contradictions between the confessions were found: The kidnapping of the Israeli man did not happen, according to the father’s confession. The ‘rape victim’ was murdered only in the son’s confession. According to the father, the supposed rape victims was accompanied by 3-4 other men from Gaza when approached by the pair. In the son’s telling, the victim was with an Israeli man, who the father killed.
• No corroborating evidence for any of the alleged crimes has been presented, as Israel has released no videos documenting the father and son’s presence in Nir Oz and has not named the victims described in the confessions.
• The confessions were very likely extracted via torture, which is known to produce extremely high rates of false confessions.
• While the interrogations likely lasted days or more, only 20 minutes have been released and those too are heavily edited with many edits in critical places.
• The confessions describe extremely rare crimes, such as a gang rape by father, son, and uncle. Over-the-top crimes like these are common in atrocity propaganda but are extremely rare in real life. This is not impossible, but as the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

In his taped confession, the father, Jamal Radi, tells an interrogator from Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency that after entering Nir Oz with his son and brother that morning, the first crime he committed was a double homicide, which supposedly occurred inside a home in the settlement. He can be seen saying:

In the first house I found a woman and her husband, and we hit them with fire and killed them. They were in their late 40s.

Per Israeli officials, a total of 113 people were killed in or kidnapped from Nir Oz on Oct 7, but a woman in her 40s is not listed among them. The only two women between the ages of 30 and 60 who were killed in the Kibbutz or who remain in Hamas custody are Tamar Kedem Siman Tov (35) and Maya Goren (56). According to Goren’s sons, she was not at home during the attack, and was alone in the kibbutz’s nursery instead. They testified that she was captured or killed at around 9:55 AM, and that her husband was still alive an hour later, before he was killed outside the safe room in their home. The only other woman anywhere near the age range described, Tamar Kedem Siman Tov, was killed in her safe room, along with her husband, three children, and her mother-in-law. Neither victim fits with the father and son’s supposed admission of killing a man and a woman. After dispatching the phantom couple, the father, Radi, claimed to have moved onto another house. He states in the confession:

I found a woman and her daughter and gave them to Al-Qassam.

But efforts to cross-reference the database of people kidnapped or killed in Nir Oz, with a special focus on mother-daughter combinations, were similarly fruitless. There are no descriptions of victims in Nir Oz that fit with the senior Radi’s description of a mother and daughter alone being taken from the same house. The closest matches include:

• Irena Tati (73) and her daughter, Yelena Trufanova (50), were kidnapped from Niz Oz and subsequently returned in November’s hostage exchange deal. However, Irena and Yelena were taken from separate houses.
• Karina Engel (51) was seized alongside her children, but she has two daughters, not one, and all three were taken together and released together in November.
• Sharon Alony Cunio (34) and her daughters were kidnapped but in an interview with Israeli media she described a drastically different scenario, noting that the family was split among multiple locations, none of which contained a mother and daughter alone. They were returned to Israel in November.
• Daniel Alony and her daughter were kidnapped but the pair was taken alongside her sister and her sister’s husband. According to text messages she sent to other family members the morning of October 7, the family surrendered from their safe room to half a dozen members of Hamas – not a single aging father, as claimed in the alleged confession. The pair was repatriated under the terms of the hostage deal.
• Ruthi Munder (78) and her daughter, Keren Munder (54) were kidnapped but they were taken alongside Keren’s 9-year-old son, from the same house as Ruthi’s husband, Avraham. Hamas returned the three family members in November.
• Doron Katz Asher (34) and her daughters were kidnapped but they were taken together along with their grandmother. They have since been returned to Israeli officials.
• Tamar Kedem Siman Tov (35) and her daughters were killed in the family’s safe room, but there were a number of other victims, including her husband and mother-in-law.

Barring any explanations or new evidence from Israel, the second confession of the kidnapping of a mother and daughter in Nir Oz does not match any of the victims in the Kibbutz. In the supposed confession footage, Jamal and his son, Abdallah, are seen separately, and each claims to have taken turns raping a woman. According to the elder Radi’s alleged confession, the supposed gangrape occurred in a house where he saw “a woman in shorts in the living room with a few other men,” who he claimed were from Gaza. The video shows Jamal saying he took the woman to a different room and raped her at gunpoint, while the would-be victim cried. Initially, Jamal states that he was the only one who participated, but he is contradicted by the interrogator, who insists that he’s lying and informs him that his son confessed to the rape. At this point, the father changes his story, and claims his brother and son raped her as well. Jamal goes on to assert that he personally assaulted the woman for about 15 minutes, and tells his Israeli interrogator that his brother and son spent an additional 10-15 minutes raping the supposed victim, before the entire trio left and returned to Gaza. After their departure, Jamal says:

I don’t know what happened to her, I was there for fifteen minutes and then I left.

Though Jamal told his Israeli interrogator that he does not know what happened to the woman after they left, Abdallah maintains that she was murdered by his father, telling his captors:

My father killed the woman after we finished.

If Jamal’s confession were legitimate, he would have little incentive to omit this final crime, given the extensive list of crimes he had already confessed to. There are numerous other glaring inconsistencies in the tales told by the pair, including the details of the alleged crime, with the son describing an Israeli man being present, who was also “killed” by his father. In the father’s retelling, there is no Israeli man. Instead, he’s been replaced by “three or four” men from Gaza. According to the son’s confession, the woman they raped was “about thirty years old” or “in her early 30s,” an age range which limits possible victims to Tamar Kedem Siman Tov (35), Arbel Yehud (28), Shiri Bibas (32).

• Tamar Kedem Siman Tov was killed in her secure room, along with her husband, three children, and her mother-in-law. This does not fit the confession.
• Arbel Yehud is being held in Gaza. Her parents said in an interview that they’ve received proof of life, so she also does not fit the confession.
• Shiri Bibas and her family were captured on video still alive in Gaza with their captors, and thus do not fit the confession.

By sheer process of elimination, it can be concluded that Jamal could not have killed any woman in her thirties in Nir Oz on Oct 7. According Jamal’s interrogation tape, this was their last crime committed on Oct 7. But the son, Abdallah, testifies that the pair went on to participate in the kidnapping of a high-profile Israeli abductee after the alleged assault. According to Israeli officials, the man in question was Matan Zangauker, who was taken on Oct 7 and is reportedly still held by Hamas today. Zangauker’s kidnapping is the only crime described in the confessions that can be associated with a specific victim. In the video, Abdallah says he “caught” Matan after he found him hiding among the trees in the settlement. But the son claims that he attempted to protect Zangauker from mistreatment by other Palestinians, beginning with his uncle and ending with a group of supposed Hamas operatives. But once again, Abdallah’s story is completely contradicted by the available evidence. During a Dec 2023 rally calling on the Israeli government to negotiate for the release of the Israeli abductees, Zangauker’s mother revealed:

My son Matan and his girlfriend Ilana were kidnapped together from Kibbutz Nir Oz, from the bedroom inside the safe room where they slept on the eve of Shabbat.

Footage published by Israeli state media, which showed the last text messages Zangauker sent to his mother on Oct 7, also indicates that rather than being seized while hiding alone in the trees, Matan was actually taken from a safe room inside a house, and was taken alongside his girlfriend, Ilana Gritzewsky. In the screenshot from Matan’s mother’s phone below, Matan’s parents can be seen telling him to “shut the window,” to which Matan replies: “Everything is closed.”

At 9:45 am, Zangauker responds: “Wait. There are people here. I am holding the door. I can’t write.” His parents urge him to pass along the phone number of his girlfriend, who is with him in the secure room. 23 minutes later, at 10:08, Matan writes his final message: “They are trying to get in.” When asked how long they were in the kibbutz, Abdallah informs his interrogator that “We arrived at about 10 am, something like that,” and “left at 12:30.” Ultimately, the timeline of Matan’s messages and the timeline of his kidnapping as described in the confession simply do not line up. According to the text messages, the Gazans who kidnapped Matan were already inside his house at 9:45 am and were on the verge of kidnapping him at 10:08. When combined with the timeline provided by the father, this chain of events is impossible. Here are the parts of the father’s confession relating to the sequence of events, and the amount of time each crime took:

Q: Tell me what happened in the first house.
A: In the first house I was surprised by a woman and her husband and I shot them. After that there was another house. Hassan went inside one house and I went into another. I found a woman and her daughter and gave them to Al-Qassam.
Q: When you talked with Hamas, where were they?
A: They were walking around.
Q: OK. And the third house?
A: The third house, it’s a house with also a man and his wife, in their 50s, and I handed them over to Al-Qassam.
Q: OK. You went to the fourth house and what happened?
A: No, we found a group of settlers, between 10 and 12 people, men, children, and women. We surrounded them and handed them over to Al-Qassam. After that, while I was walking I saw five guys, boys and girls, that tried to run away so we shot them.And then I went to the house where the woman was. I took her to the next room and I raped her. I laid on top of her, kissed her and put myself inside her, and came. It took about 15 minutes.
Q: And you say that Abdallah and Ahmad stayed in the house. How long were they in the house?
A: Between 10 and 15 minutes. We finished, left, and went home.

The first inconsistency that becomes apparent is that the father makes no mention of having found a man alone or kidnapping him. According to Jamal, after the alleged rape, they went home. This contrasts dramatically with the story recounted by the son, who told his interrogator:

When I left, I saw a settler hiding between the trees, so I caught him. This happened when Hasan and my father arrived.

Even if this extreme discrepancy is disregarded, the timeline still does not fit. According to the father, they shot a couple in the first house, then split up and went into two other houses, kidnapped 5 people, and gave them to Al-Qassam. They then proceeded to another house, kidnapped two more people, and gave them to Al-Qassam. Next, they found a group of 10-12 people, kidnapped them and gave them to Al-Qassam. Then, while walking, they saw a group of 5 people who ran from them, who they shot and killed. Then, and only then, did they arrive at the house where they raped the woman for about 30 minutes, after which, according to the son’s confession, they found Matan hiding in the trees. So this entire chain of events, which entails multiple assaults on houses, dozens of kidnappings and murders, and three acts of rape that purportedly took over 30 minutes, needed to have happened between their arrival time at “about 10” and 10:08, which is when Matan wrote, “they’re trying to get in.” Such a scenario is simply impossible.

Attempts to reconcile the timeline with the son’s confession prove similarly fruitless. According to Abdallah, he killed two people, raped two women (one of which was the 30-minute rape with the father), and broke into five houses, from which they kidnapped people. Again, all of this needed to have happened between their arrival time at “about 10” and 10:08. This, too, is plainly false. Further questions about the authenticity of the confessions are raised by the lack of video evidence of the father and son’s supposed crime spree in the kibbutz. The Israeli government has hundreds of hours of video documenting the attacks on Oct 7, and has shown itself perfectly willing to release it when politically useful, as is the case with a taped confession by two Hamas members, which Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency published after adding security camera footage from Kibbutz Alumim.

Though Israel has had two months to investigate the confessions, and possesses comprehensive video documentation of Oct 7 in Kibbutz Nir Oz, no such videos have been presented. Unless Israel is able to produce further explanations or evidence, there is every reason to conclude that these confessions were false, and coerced through torture. As with already debunked propaganda hoaxes spun out by Israel’s international propaganda apparatus, such as claims of babies beheaded and burned in ovens by Hamas, lurid Western media reports of the murder and gang-rape spree by a Palestinian father and son appear to have been orchestrated by an intelligence service notorious for its use of deception to generate further justification for the decimation of Gaza.