One of the good things I’ve repeatedly heard about Israel’s armed forces is that they rarely rape, but according to this Washington Post article, Palestinians have rarely raped Israelis (until the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel).
Some forces in the Middle East, including those of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State, have used systematic rape as a weapon. But many armed groups consider the act taboo, even in war. The practice has never been used systematically in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to experts.
Many pundits routinely proclaim the non-rapey nature of the IDF but I don’t recall any of them noting that Palestinians have largely abstained from this behavior as well in their battle against Israel.
When I mention this to my Zionist friends (and I consider myself a Zionist), they tend to angrily deny it.
Sam Vaknin claims that the Hamas fighters who attacked Israel October 7 were disciplined, and that the rapes were committed by regular Gazans.
My intuition says that higher IQ people are more capable of empathy and therefore are less likely to rape than lower IQ people.
