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False edit summary justifying the suppression of details in a core source

A UN report in March 2024 concluded, while stating that no tangible indications of rape from video and photo evidence could be identified, and no digital evidence for sexual violence had been forthcoming , [1]

Salomeofjudea cancelled this writing This is not what the report says. This also needs a secondary source. NPOV.

This is blatantly false. Two of the findings of the report say precisely what the removed text paraphrased:

  • 74.In the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified. Further investigation may alter this assessment in the future. Nevertheless, considering the nature of rape, which often does not result in visible injuries, this possibility cannot be ruled out based solely on the medicolegal assessment. Therefore, the mission team concluded that circumstantial indicators, like the position of the corpse and the state of clothing, should also be considered when determining the occurrence of sexual violations, in addition to witness and survivor testimony. P.19
  • 77. The digital evidence discovered during independent open-source review appeared authentic and unmanipulated. While the mission team reviewed extensive digital material depicting a range of egregious violations, no digital evidence specifically depicting acts of sexual violence was found in open sources. p.19

I.e., you censored the text without reading it. If you did read it, then it’s even worse. Your edit summary in either case falsifies what you did in censoring a UN report for two of its findings per, I suppose, WP:IDONTLIKEIT. A reportable offence. NPOV has nothing whatsoever to do with this: it does not mean providing readers with just one perspective. The argument re the need for a secondary source is fallacious since, if you believed that, you would have also removed an eminently good RS of equal status [2] which underwrites the government’s claims, since it states in a prefatory remark that:

‘It is important to note that this position paper does not attempt or aim to meet legal thresholds.’ p.1

Technically, you are under an obligation to revert the removed material back because you made a false edit summary using spurious claims. Nishidani (talk) 12:36, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

  1. ^ Pramila Patten et al., Mission report: Official visit of the Office of the SRSG-SVC to Israel and the occupied West Bank 29 January – 14 February 2024, Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, March 2024 p.19
  2. ^ (Ben Canaan, Ron; Ziv, Hadas (26 November 2023). Grossman, Lital; Shalev, Guy (eds.). "Sexual & Gender-Based Violence as a Weapon of War During the October 7, 2023 Hamas Attacks" (PDF). Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. Proofreading: Nili Alexandrovitz. Background research: Timor Tal. Cover photo: Oren Ziv. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-11-27. Retrieved 2023-12-04.)
I agree with the removal; prior to the removal we were burying the lede, that the UN was convinced widespread sexual violence occurred and is ongoing, instead providing WP:UNDUE emphasis to a minor aspect of the story.
Further, it isn’t an accurate summary; the UN makes it clear that not all video and photographic evidence had been analysed, while the summary does not. BilledMammal (talk) 12:46, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I.e. you agree with a false edit summary. I cite the text, you give your opinion ('the UN makes it clear') The UN experts did no analysis of anything. They made inferences from material presented to them. They spent 2 weeks listening to official Israeli presentations, but had no way of independently verifying or investigating the official claims. That is what they state, at the very end. The UN wasn't convinced, Pramila Patten was. The aspect isn't minor, it has been noted as a glaring admission of methodological incoherence by Norman Finkelstein, who, unlike the rest of us, actually understands the lay of the law, forensic evidence and the history of Gaza. But this threading is pointless. If someone uses a clearly false edit summary that erases a first rate source, they are abusing their editing rights and should not be commended for the practice.Nishidani (talk) 13:28, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
The omitted line reads: A UN report in March 2024 concluded, while stating that no tangible indications of rape from video and photo evidence could be identified, and no digital evidence for sexual violence had been forthcoming,[11] Footnote eleven goes to page 19 of [1].
With regard to the first phrase, the omitted passage from the lead did not reflect the UN report fairly. It stated:
In the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified. Further investigation may alter this assessment in the future. Nevertheless, considering the nature of rape, which often does not result in visible injuries, this possibility cannot be ruled out based solely on the medicolegal assessment. Therefore, the mission team concluded that circumstantial indicators, like the position of the corpse and the state of clothing, should also be considered when determining the occurrence of sexual violations, in addition to witness and survivor testimony.
What I put in boldface is not reflected in that summary. Likewise the second phrase, re the digital evidence, is incomplete in reflecting what the UN says. That is why we go with the secondary sources and don't try to undermine them by "cherry-hunting" through the primary sources. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:13, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
no tangible indications of rape could be identified. Further investigation may alter this assessment in the future … this possibility cannot be ruled out … circumstantial indicators, like the position of the corpse and the state of clothing, should also be considered. Maybe Donald Duck raped Mickey Mouse - the possibility cannot be ruled out … We should consider the possibility - investigation may reveal something one day. This is hardly the ringing endorsement of Israeli claims that editors assert. It says little more than that some of the 'horror stories' may be true - and evidence might surface eventually. This is all reminiscent of Russell's teapot, except we are expected to believe a particular narrative because the possibility that it is partly true cannot be excluded! Pincrete (talk) 17:15, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
That's why we rely on secondary sources. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 17:39, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I don't see the mass of secondary sources giving the ringing endorsements that WP editors claim, nor that the very small number of 'semi-confirmed' instances of gender-based violence somehow establishes a widespread pattern or confirms particular acts. Pincrete (talk) 17:48, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
Another paragraph on the same page states as follows

The reviewed photos and videos revealed widespread mutilation of bodies, involving both attempted and actual decapitation, numerous gunshot wounds, and various other forms of extensive violence. The medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos revealed multiple corpses with injuries, predominantly gunshot wounds, including to intimate body parts such as breasts and genitalia. Because in most instances additional injuries were also seen on other body parts, no discernible pattern of genital mutilation could be established. Given the incomplete overview of evidence at this stage, subsequent investigation, including cross-linking of injury patterns with geographical information, may provide additional insights. Destructive burn damage in at least 100 corpses further impeded the assessment of targeted genital mutilation.

Depending upon what point I wanted to make, I could add a sentence to the lead focusing on either the widespread mutilation of bodies, involving both attempted and actual decapitation, numerous gunshot wounds, and various other forms of extensive violence. or I could cherry-pick no discernible pattern of genital mutilation could be established (omitting what it says bellow about burn damage "in at least 100 corpses" impeding their investigation). Again, that is why we should and must rely on the secondary sources here.
If you turn to the "Conclusions" on page 21 of the UN report it states as follows:

Overall, based on the totality of information gathered from multiple and independent sources at the different locations, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred at several locations across the Gaza periphery, including in the form of rape and gang rape, during the 7 October 2023 attacks. Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, was also gathered.

This is consistent with the secondary sources and justifies exclusion of the text in the edit in question.
Lastly, I request that you not attack other editors on the talk page of this article and accuse them of "false edit summaries" and "abusing their editing rights." This is not the place for that and it's unhelpful. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:41, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
If there was burn damage, it does not mean that evidence of sexual violence was destroyed. It means that only the most detailed, skilled forensic investigation could ever have established whether any sexual violence occurred at all - in plain English it means there is no actual valid reason to believe it did, any more than believing that cannibalism occurred. The evidence hasn't 'been destroyed', there is simply no reason to believe it ever existed and almost no way now to establish whether it ever did. "No discernible pattern of genital mutilation could be established" is pretty explicit! Poor shooting, shrapnel, ricochet fire and multiple other causes may have damaged the midriffs or chests of Israeli women. Unless there is a discernible pattern to the injuries, there is simply no reason to believe that these are anything other than the ugly side effects of modern weaponry. Do we imagine that the thousands and thousands of women killed in Gaza do not suffer 'ugly' injuries to their female parts as much as to the rest of their anatomies? Pincrete (talk) 17:43, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure exactly where you're going with this. We're talking about summary language in the lead. An editor fairly summed up summary language in reliable secondary sources. Another editors dipped into the primary source document and added text in front of it. That text was removed, and I agree with that edit. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 18:58, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I added a key admission in the Patten report that their conclusions, which we were presenting as factual, and not as an endorsement of Israeli government allegations, were not founded on an independent verification of the 'evidence': crucially, the report admitted that what they were looking at had not been corroborated by the kind of proof medicolegal and digital evidence required both in courts of law and neutral specialist analysis.
(2) a flyby edit expunged this admission's qualification with a clearly false edit summary, as proven.
(3) The editor in question did not respond. Billed Mammel mere stated that he was fine with the cancellation, regardless of the flawed motivation. Two egregiouas examnples of a defect in standard wiki method.
(4) Pincrete examined the point, affirming that the primary text states exactly what my edit pointed out.
(5) Figureofnine just presents an impression they have that the point made both by myself and Pincrete doesn't strike them as cogent. No serious argument. Just a vote for retaining the elision on the strength of an opinion. Worse still, they cite as definitive rebuttal the text of the Patten report which uses language that consistently undermines their own conclusions. 'reasonable grounds to believe,' 'credible circumstantial information' underline that they are making inferences that lead to a 'belief' (admitting that the medicolegal and digital proof required in a court of law or in serious historical analysis is lacking to change their belief into a set of facts) that there may be warrant for claiming that some forms of sexual violence did take place in several locations. That is a startlingly silly admission to make since it undercuts what they are asserting in their primary conclusion. To date we have allegations, not evidence, despite the factual insistence of our article title, and Patten's report. The removal of evidence for this in Patten's text is POV pushing for an official narrative that has yet to receive independent confirmation .Nishidani (talk) 08:01, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Witness Testimony

A woman who was sexually tortured by Hamas has finally come forward. I will be adding shortly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/world/middleeast/hamas-hostage-sexual-assault.html SalomeofJudea (Maria) (talk) 17:36, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Warning about edits

A prominent twitter user is telling people to edit this and related articles, in addition to calling out specific wiki editors. Delderd (talk) 21:18, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Another example of a piece of early evidence for such assaults collapsing

courtesy of the NYTs.Nishidani (talk) 09:10, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:RECENTISM rears its ugly head. O3000, Ret. (talk) 15:01, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
The article is a bit bizarre since this particular allegation had been questioned months ago. Which doesn't invalidate the UN findings or the tragic witness testimony released today. SalomeofJudea (Maria) (talk) 17:35, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Several major claims that dominated the first month of reportage collapsed. It is more than probable, as this woman's testimony states, that sexual violence occurred. Rape apart (though even there many similar reports have emerged over the decades regarding Israeli treatment of their untrialed Palestinian hostages) what she says directly mirrors what numerous Palestinian women have claimed of the way Israeli troops treat them in this war. No one is surely claimed that in either case we have a chimaera. What we ask is that, given the exposure of consistently false claims made by Israeli authorities, that editors exercise extreme caution. In this one case, a certain Mohammad (Islamic Jihad, Hamas?) raped an Israeli woman he held hostage in his house. That is way below the minimal threshold for the accusation that rape was a deliberate tactic ordered by Hamas (perhaps it was, but a wide accusation requires strong evidence).Nishidani (talk) 20:14, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
Which doesn't invalidate the UN findings The trouble is threefold IMO. Firstly many of the 'investigators' are not investigating, and have not done so, what they are doing is little more than confirming that witness statements have been made. For many reasons, some totally valid, the UN, some of the Israeli medical and investigative bodies say they CANNOT check primary evidence, and forensic evidence was simply not obtained when available, or has been destroyed. The police (last I heard) refused to give numbers of what they believe occurred and some local organisations are clearly propagandist in intent, mor concerned with weaponising accusations that establishing facts/scale. So who exactly - if anyone - is establishing facts.
Secondly, any partial confirmation (some of the tentative confirmations speak of very small numbers of assaults or assault locations) is being leapt on to 'prove' that the whole 'mass rape/mass sexual violence' narrative is wholly true. Given the scale of incursion, (some of it by oppurtunist non-militants) it would be surprising if no sexual violence occurred, since we know that such normally does occur in 'conflict' situations, but the scale claimed by Israeli govt sources would also be very surprising since such kind of violence has been largely absent from the Isr-Pal conflict (though sometimes a feature of both sides propaganda), since before 1948. Establishing scale is critical to establishing how 'general' this was, but is hardly being critically evaluated at all.
Thirdly, we have little attempt to distinguish degrees of sexual violence. One woman was taken back to Gaza, tied up like a prize cow and paraded to the Gaza populace. This is very humiliating treatment with a sexual element to it, but it isn't mass-gang-rape. There are obviously reasons of sensitivity about what can be disclosed in public, particulary about living people, but the net effect of all this is a barrage of accusation, with little detail and crumbs of evidence to date, coupled with govt clearly weaponising the accusation to detract from its own actions.
We of course need to cover this within sources, but those sources are more cautious than editors here sometimes claim IMO. Pincrete (talk) 04:10, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Women in the black dress section

There is a huge amount of detail of this specific case, compared to the others. Is that simply because it the most reported case and therefore this is due? The case is not mentioned in the article on the massacre at the festival - should some of the detail be removed here and moved there? BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:46, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

In the long run definitely, I would consider waiting for more thorough coverage post war, but that could take time, so it sounds reasonable. FortunateSons (talk) 09:53, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 27 March 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: MOVE. Per consensus at parent page.[2] (non-admin closure) Toadspike (talk) 11:28, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel → Sexual and gender-based violence in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel – The main page for this is 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel. GnocchiFan (talk) 16:49, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Support The child article should align with the parent article, per WP: CONSISTENT. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:01, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
Support for consistency, and to allow for inclusion of violence against hostages without being technically inaccurate. FortunateSons (talk) 09:48, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
Support per Iskandar323 and FortunateSons. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:55, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
Oppose '7 October' is a term strongly connected to the Hamas-led attack on Israel in 2023. As per WP:CRITERIA:
  • Recognizable – '7 October attack' is used in the media and is a common search term. Google' data shows a dramatic increase in searches for '7 October' since the time of attack- worldwide statistics.
  • Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look for and search for. (see above)
  • Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the event, even without specifying the year.
  • Concision – The original title is clearly shorter than the suggested one.
  • Consistency - there are other titles of dramatic events that share similar patterns. September 11 attacks is one. GidiD (talk) 16:40, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
You are relitigating the debate from the parent page. If you think the parent page name should change and you have new evidence versus the last RM, please go and make that case there. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:49, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
Support Doubtful that 7 October will have lasting significance for an average audience and this issue was anyway already addressed at the parent article. Selfstudier (talk) 10:25, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
Support for consistency with parent article. Also, I dare to say that hardly anybody outside the Western world has any idea what "7 October" may stand for; much like most of the population outside India has no idea what "15 August" means. — kashmīrī TALK 11:33, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
Support: The suggested title is consistent with the parent article. --Mhhossein talk 14:48, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
‘’’Support’’’ per parent article. Makeandtoss (talk) 15:37, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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