Talk:7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 14 November 2024

(Minor edit): add ONE of them Palestinian political violence, Palestinian violence or Palestinian terrorism into "partof=" 178.81.55.110 (talk) 09:33, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: Requesting user blocked. Bowler the Carmine | talk 17:48, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Attribution of sexual violence in the lede

This edit misleads the reader into thinking that the claims of sexual violence come only from the Israeli side, specifically the Israeli police. This is definitely not the case, the latest UN report says that There are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence — including rape and gang-rape — occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October 2023 and that The team also found convincing information that sexual violence was committed against hostages, and has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may still be ongoing against those in captivity. While there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in the Nova music festival site, Route 232, and kibbutz Re’im. The report doesn't mention the Israeli police at all.

The CNN article based on the report also says The commission said it had “documented evidence of sexual violence” carried out by Palestinian armed groups in several locations in southern Israel on October 7..

We should use these reports based on an independent investigation in the lede, rather than claims made by the Israeli police in the aftermath of the October 7 attack. Alaexis_¿question? 09:25, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

@Alaexis I mean, if you want to have this discussion, this edit misleads the reader into thinking that the claims of sexual violence have no particular source at all. I've added the CNN ref back to the article here, while not omitting the RS-backed information about the Israeli police. Smallangryplanet (talk) 09:49, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for adding it. There is an issue with the text you've added though.

This article is about the 7 October attack. There are no claims in the UN report or the CNN article that there was sexual violence against Palestinians during this attack. It happened later and is mentioned in many other articles but it clearly doesn't belong here. Alaexis_¿question? 09:59, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Sure, but the CNN article is describing the UN report, which was written after 7 October. Nothing we can do about that. Smallangryplanet (talk) 10:21, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

The article says clearly The commission said it had “documented evidence of sexual violence” carried out by Palestinian armed groups in several locations in southern Israel on October 7. The actions by Israel, described in the Sexual violence and inflammatory rhetoric paragraph did not happen during the initial attack but rather after the invasion of Gaza. Alaexis_¿question? 14:41, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Sure, but the next sentence is The commission had also reviewed rape testimonies collected by journalists and Israeli police but said it was unable to independently verify these due to lack of access to the victims or crime sites, and because Israel obstructed its investigations. I don't mind adding that (it's important information!) but it seems like a lot to introduce in the lead. Smallangryplanet (talk) 16:00, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

That's exactly the reason why I made this edit leaving only the information supported by independent sources in the lede. Alaexis_¿question? 21:51, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

I think that it's better to keep facts which are known with higher certainty in the lede. Things that could not be independently verified should be in the body of the article, with proper attribution.

Some claims made in the aftermath of the attack may not have lasting significance and we can remove them if we have more reliable data.

We should summarise the key points of the report related to the October 7 attack in the lede and we can discuss the details in the body of the article. Alaexis_¿question? 22:01, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Alaexis. Andre🚐 22:05, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

@Alaexis @AndreJustAndre okay, I've updated the lead to only refer to the parts of the report that discuss October 7. Smallangryplanet (talk) 09:29, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I've changed the wording a bit. The part about the inability to independently verify the allegations of rape refers to item 26 of the original report. The sentence about sexual violence is based on item 25 of the report in which they describe how they obtained and verified the evidence. As I said earlier, I think that we should only mention verified findings in the lede. Alaexis_¿question? 21:29, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

In that case we should remove any reference to this story at all, since the finding is not verified. (Which your edit implied was the case.) Instead, the commission writes However, the Commission documented cases indicative of sexual violence perpetrated against women and men..., but stops short of ever saying they were confirmed. My edit and description was accurate, matching both the body of this article and the text of the article specifically dedicated to the topic in question. Smallangryplanet (talk) 21:39, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree with @Smallangryplanet per the edit summary, and don't think it will be helpful to add more information to the lede on this to cover all the nuances that are already on the main page and in the body. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 21:44, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Looks like @Raskolnikov.Rev got to the revert first and for largely the same reasons. I'll also add that section 25 does say that one thing was verified - namely verified digital evidence concerning the restraining of women - but does not extend the same phrasing to the other pieces of evidence it describes. Smallangryplanet (talk) 21:46, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I have removed the reference to the Israeli police from the lead. Hopefully we can consider this matter closed? @Alaexis Smallangryplanet (talk) 22:15, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Sexual violence

This is what the report says (item 25)

“ Hamas military wing rejected all accusations that its forces committed sexual violence against Israeli women. However, the Commission documented cases indicative of sexual violence perpetrated against women and men in and around the Nova festival site, as well as the Nahal Oz military outpost and several kibbutzim, including Kfar Aza, Re’im and Nir Oz. It collected and preserved digital evidence, including images of victims’ bodies displaying indications of sexual violence, a pattern corroborated by independent testimonies from witnesses. Reliable witness accounts obtained by the Commission describe bodies that had been undressed, in some incidents with exposed genitals. The Commission received reports and verified digital evidence concerning the restraining of women, including hands and sometimes feet of women being bound, often behind the victims’ backs, prior to their abduction or killing. Additionally, the Commission made assessments based on the position of the body, for example images displaying legs spread or bent over, and signs of struggle or violence on the body, such as stab wounds, burns, lacerations and abrasions. ”

The CNN summarised it as The commission said it had “documented evidence of sexual violence” carried out by Palestinian armed groups in several locations in southern Israel on October 7 which is a good summary. We should use a similar wording in the lede. Alaexis_¿question? 21:48, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

@Raskolnikov.Rev, this doesn't resolve the issue. If we're mentioning the claims made by the Israeli police, we should definitely mention the findings of the UN report. Alaexis_¿question? 21:36, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Rape

This is what the report says (item 26)

“ The Commission has reviewed testimonies obtained by journalists and the Israeli police concerning rape but has not been able to independently verify such allegations, due to a lack of access to victims, witnesses and crime sites and the obstruction of its investigations by the Israeli authorities. The Commission was unable to review the unedited version of such testimonies. For the same reasons, the Commission was also unable to verify reports of sexualized torture and genital mutilation. Additionally, the Commission found some specific allegations to be false, inaccurate or contradictory with other evidence or statements and discounted these from its assessment. ”

The CNN article says that The commission had also reviewed rape testimonies collected by journalists and Israeli police but said it was unable to independently verify these due to lack of access to the victims or crime sites, and because Israel obstructed its investigations which is also a fairly good summary. The level of certainly is much lower. Here they were unable to verify the evidence while in the previous item they explicitly write that they verified it. I'm fine with either omitting it from the lede or making clear that the evidence for this is weaker. Alaexis_¿question? 21:48, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Per my earlier response of avoiding having to add too much information to capture all these nuances (like the distinction between sexual violence and rape), I think it would be best to omit it, so I've gone ahead and done that. I also noted that my revert was for the footnote you added and not your edit, so that also fixes that. If @Smallangryplanet is also fine with that then it's resolved. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 21:56, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Just saw that you made two edits in between. I think this doesn't violate 1RR given that the prior was not a full revert and the one done just now was on consensus, but do let me know if a self-revert is in order, and you or @Smallangryplanet can get to it instead. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 22:01, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

@Raskolnikov.Rev, I didn't notice your second revert. Yes, it does count as a revert, so please self-revert. Alaexis_¿question? 21:31, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

Works for me, thank you @Raskolnikov.Rev! Smallangryplanet (talk) 13:19, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

Events outside of the scope of the article

This article is about the attack on Israel on October 7 and 8 in 2023. The report on human rights during the conflict published by the UN in July 2024 has a broader scope: it deals with violations and possible crimes committed between 7 October and 31 December 2023.

The report mentions "cases indicative of sexual violence" perpetrated by the Palestinian side on October 7 and 8 (see items 24 and 25). On the other hand, the sexual and gender-based violence committed by the Israeli side happened during ground operations in the Gaza Strip which did not start until mid-late October. We have a whole article about this topic, but it's clearly not in the scope of this article which is only about the Hamas attack. Alaexis_¿question? 20:45, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

@Alaexis the page may be about the October 7 led attack. But the UN report and the RS discussing it, aren't. We don't cherrypick information from it (as we should not), we present their conclusions per RS. The same is true of the Sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel page. Also I don't know what the relevance of this is since we decided in the topic above to remove reference to the report? Smallangryplanet (talk) 23:55, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

That's not how it works. The scope of the report is different (7.10-31.12) and events that took place after October 8 should be described in other articles. Alaexis_¿question? 20:42, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

What edit would you like to make, @Alaexis? We cite the report several times in the body:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_October_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel#cite_ref-OHCHR3_142-0

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_October_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel#cite_ref-OHCHR3_142-1

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_October_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel#cite_ref-OHCHR3_142-2

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_October_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel#cite_ref-OHCHR3_142-3

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_October_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel#cite_ref-OHCHR3_142-4

Do we remove all of that information (and anything else that is from a source that is also talking about other days)? I don't see how that's sustainable. Smallangryplanet (talk) 21:10, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

The same one I already made. The abuses described in items 65-69 took place during ground operations in conjunction with evacuations and arrests, so not on October 7 and 8. Alaexis_¿question? 21:22, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Why would we do that here, and not for any of the countless other places in the article where we describe things that happened after October 7 and 8? For example: this sentence A two-month New York Times investigation by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz, and Adam Sella, Screams Without Words, released in late December 2023, reported finding at least seven locations where sexual assaults and mutilations of Israeli women and girls were carried out. It concluded that these were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence during the 7 October massacres. The probe was said to have been based on video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones, and interviews with more than 150 people. is not about the attacks themselves, but about a movie article that discusses the attacks. Not to appeal to policy, but is there a wikipedia MOS or anything at all that disallows discussing things that happened on other days in policies about specific days? Smallangryplanet (talk) 21:30, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

This is also about the events that happened during the 7 October massacres. It doesn't matter when something was published, as long as it describes the events that happened during the attack. Alaexis_¿question? 20:38, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Okay, all five of the existing citations of the report refer to the events of October 7th. Is there anything else that needs to happen? Smallangryplanet (talk) 21:27, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

Not sure I understand the question. We can use this report in this article to describe events that happened on October 7,8 and we can (and do) use it in other articles as a source for abuses that happened later. Alaexis_¿question? 20:55, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

What I've been trying to draw out here is that this feels like an arbitrary policy you've invented, that seems like WP:CHERRYPICKING to me. For example. You did not remove the information related to the hostages from the Patten report even though that is also a set of events that happened later:

• Some of the released hostages also shared testimonies of sexual violence during their time in Gaza.[293] Israel accused international women's rights and human rights groups of downplaying the assaults.[308]

or

• Patten also reported receiving "clear and convincing information" that some of the hostages held by Hamas had suffered rape and sexualized torture and that there were "reasonable grounds" to believe such abuses were "ongoing".[316]

How do either of these sentences describe events that happened on October 7 and 8 (2023)?

You only removed the conclusion of the UN COI report saying Israel also committed sexual violence in the same time frame as the hostages. This by itself violates NPOV. I do not believe we should remove the accurate description of what the UN reports concluded simply because it is awkward.

The whole article is clearly not solely related to events that happened strictly on October 7-8, 2023, and absolutely no other time. There's an entire section, "Reactions", that's focused on events after that period, and there are many references to post-October 7 events throughout the article for what I hope is the obvious reason that things that are directly related to it are clearly WP:DUE for inclusion even if they did not strictly happen in that 24 or 48 hour timeframe. Smallangryplanet (talk) 22:09, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I think that the two statements you've quoted also shouldn't be in this article. Alaexis_¿question? 21:22, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

I've removed them as well. If there are indeed "many references to post-October 7 events throughout the article" then we should remove them too, unless we reach consensus regarding a new scope (and probably a new name too). Alaexis_¿question? 20:58, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

@Alaexis you need consensus to remove long-standing content that does not violate any wiki rules. I've reverted your change per WP:NOCON. I wish you the best of luck on the RfC I hope you'll make to obtain that consensus. Smallangryplanet (talk) 21:53, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Hamas Document

Again, I have to ask why the official Hamas document is not cited or referred to here? Is there room on this article for the actual Hamas statement on the attack - https://twitter.com/pmofa/status/1710630801379922370 - or do we continue with the established tradition of ignoring Palestinian voices? Mcdruid (talk) 03:27, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

See WP:EDITXY for how to write edit requests in a way that increases the chances that they will be accepted. If you include personal commentary like 'do we continue with the established tradition of ignoring Palestinian voices?', editors like me are much more likely to just delete the comment. Sean.hoyland (talk) 04:20, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Goals of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood

What is missing for me in this article is that there no clear statement on the goals of Hamas for Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Could this be added to either the intro? Or maybe a simple as a section between Background and Attacks like the following: Goals of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood The goals of Hamas for Operation Al-Aqsa Flood were to a) capture hostages to exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails and b) end the blockade of Gaza. PJQ33 (talk) 04:39, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

 Not done, no reliable citations provided for this change. --Yamla (talk) 10:56, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Yamla. Thanks for your advice. How about adding a subsection like:

Goals of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood

The goals of Hamas for Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7 were:

1) to arrest the enemy's (Israel's) soldiers for a prisoner exchange deal with Israel (see Our Narrative-Operation Al-Aqsa Flood-Web_compressed (1).pdf)

2) to encourage the international community and UN to investigate Israeli actions in Gaza and West Bank (see Our Narrative-Operation Al-Aqsa Flood-Web_compressed (1).pdf)

3) to end the daily provocations from the IDF into Gaza (see (11) State of Palestine - MFA 🇵🇸🇵🇸 on X: "https://t.co/Gp8gaR3OB4" / X)

4) to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip and the status quo of the West Bank (see https://politicstoday.org/significance-of-hamas-al-aqsa-flood-operation/)

5) to trigger a wider uprising in the West Bank (see https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231009-haniyeh-outlines-context-and-objectives-of-hamas-operation-al-aqsa-flood/)

It is also likely that Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was intended to block progress with the Abraham Accords (see Why did Hamas attack, and why now? What does it hope to gain? | ANU College of ARTS & SOCIAL SCIENCES)

What do you think? PJQ33 (talk) 05:39, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

This is discussed in detail here, which is wikilinked in this article. Here we should have at most a short summary. We should strike the right balance between what Hamas itself said and what experts say. The declared goals are noteworthy but they are not the whole story. Alaexis_¿question? 20:49, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 22 December 2024

7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel → October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel – "October 7" is the order used by virtually every source from every perspective on the subject. No other RM has covered this specific ordering issue. Al Jazeera Times of Israel Mondoweiss CNN Haaretz Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 01:19, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Support MOS:VAR says, When either of two styles is acceptable it is generally considered inappropriate for a Wikipedia editor to change from one style to another unless there is some substantial reason for the change. MOS:DATETIES says Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking country should generally use the date format most commonly used in that nation. For the United States this is (for example) July 4, 1976; for most other English-speaking countries it is 4 July 1976. This article clearly has the strong ties to Israel, specifically. While Israel isn't legally an English-speaking country, English is widely used, it does produce a significant amount of English-language coverage, and I think DATETIES shows that it's Israeli English coverage and usage which most defines the common name. The previous RM in June included a comment that had several examples of coverage from Israeli English-language media, all of which used October 7th- matching what you say about virtually all sources referring to the attacks this way. Matching common usage in the country with strong ties to the article is a substantial reason for change. Many editors in that discussion who supported a move also explicitly referred to it as October 7, or clarified their support was for either format. Note that MOS calls for format consistency throughout an article, so if the name changes, someone will need to go through finding and replacing. Safrolic (talk) 03:23, 22 December 2024 (UTC)