I am offering this thoughtful piece on the sexual violence of October 7th by Jill Filipovic with a gift link because I really want you to be able to read the whole thing. There’s so much sturm und drang around this topic that it’s hard to ever find clarity. This is one of the rare articles that provides it without pandering, excusing or obfuscating the reality. She discusses in detail how difficult it was to get reliable forensic evidence in the aftermath of the attack and explains why it was important, as a journalist, to wait for the facts. Reporting of sexual violence is war is always fraught and with all discussions of rape it’s important to be precise because so often the reflexive response is to dismiss it. But that’s not the whole story here: But soon after the attacks, the evidence started to come in, and it took the form that evidence of wartime rape often does: accounts from survivors of the attacks, emergency responders, medical personnel, those who examined the bodies and journalists who were permitted to see some attack footage. Some of these accounts have been presented by organizations, including Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. A Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children has been established in Israel […] But even as evidence mounted, so did disbelief. On social media, accounts often flood mentions of Hamas’s gendered violence with arguments that no such thing happened, often insisting that the allegations were invented by the Israeli government as a pretext for war, are simply too unsubstantiated to…