How 2 debunked accounts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 fueled a global dispute over Israel-Hamas war
The United Nations and other organizations have presented credible evidence that Hamas militants committed sexual assault during their Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel
JERUSALEM (AP) — 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.
