The Times has come under fire from family members of Gal Abdush, the so-called “girl in the black dress” who features as Exhibit A in Gettleman and company’s attempt to demonstrate a pattern of rape by Hamas on October 7. Not only have Abdush’s sister and brother-in-law each denied that she was raped, the former has accused the Times of manipulating her family into participating by misleading them about their editorial angle.

“The police are having difficulty locating victims of sexual assault from the Hamas attack, or people who witnessed such attacks, and decided to appeal to the public to encourage those who have information on the matter to come forward and give testimony. Even in the few cases in which the organization collected testimony about sexual offenses committed on October 7, it failed to connect the acts with the victims who were harmed by them.” Why are the Israeli police struggling to find witnesses of sexual assault which your paper confidently described on October 7 as so widespread that it demonstrated “a pattern?”

You describe a 24-year-old accountant identified as “Sapir” as “one of the Israeli police’s key witnesses.” Yet one of Sapir’s key claims undermines the rest of her testimony. According to the Times, “she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.” Given that no record exists of women being beheaded on October 7, why did you include this claim from Sapir? Does such an assertion not undermine her credibility and raise doubts about the rest of her testimony? And why, at minimum, did you not mention that there is no forensic evidence to support Sapir’s claim? According to Haaretz, “investigators were unable to identify the women who, according to the testimony of [Sapir] and other eyewitnesses, were raped and murdered.” Israeli Police Superintendent Adi Edry told the paper, “I have circumstantial evidence, but ultimately my duty is to find evidence that supports her testimony and to find the victims’ identity. At this stage I don’t have those specific corpses.”

Select excerpts and emphasis mine.

I found this speech to be very candid and close to a historical materialist perspective.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues,

Today, I want to discuss a broad range of issues with you.

The Defence Minister [Sergei Shoigu] is back from his official trip abroad, and he will brief us on its outcomes and report on the progress of the special military operation.

Of course, we will discuss the situation in the Middle East and issues related to ensuring law and order in Russia. We will discuss what needs to be done to protect the rights of our people, public safety, civil peace and interethnic accord, including in view of external threats.

As you know, at a recent meeting with religious associations’ leaders, I spoke about the attempts to use the dramatic situation in the Middle East and other regional conflicts against our country to destabilise and divide our multi-ethnic and multi-faith society. For this purpose, many different means are being used, including, as we see, lies, provocations and sophisticated techniques of psychological and information aggression.

I want to repeat that those behind the Middle East conflict and other regional conflicts will be using the destructive impact of these conflicts to sow hatred and cause clashes between people around the world. This is the real self-serving aim of such geopolitical puppeteers.

We remember how the current phase of the Middle East crisis began: it was a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians and civilians from other countries who happened to be in Israel at that time. We see that, unfortunately, instead of punishing criminals and terrorists, they started to retaliate according to the principle of collective responsibility. There is no justification for the terrible events taking place in Gaza now, where hundreds of thousands of innocent people are being killed indiscriminately, without having anywhere to flee or hide from the bombing. When you see blood-stained children, dead children, the suffering of women and old people, when you see medics killed, of course, it makes you clench your fists as tears well in your eyes. There is no other way to put it.

However, we should not, we have no right and we cannot allow ourselves to be carried away by emotions. We must clearly understand who in reality is behind the tragedy of peoples in the Middle East and in other regions around the world, who has been organising this lethal chaos and who benefits from it. In my opinion, it has already become clear to everyone, as the masterminds brazenly act in the open.

These are the current ruling elites in the United States and its satellites who are the main beneficiaries of the global instability that they use to extract their bloody rent. Their strategy is also clear. The United States as a global superpower is becoming weaker and is losing its position, and everyone sees and understands this, even judging by the trends in the world economy. The American-style world, with the hegemony of one country, is being destroyed and is receding gradually but inexorably into the past.

However, the United States is unwilling to accept this, and instead seeks to preserve and extend its dominance, its global dictatorship, which is easier to achieve amid such chaos, because the United States believes this chaos will help it contain and destabilise its rivals or, as they put it, their geopolitical opponents, among which they also rank our country, which in reality are new global growth centres and sovereign independent countries who are unwilling to kowtow and play the role of servants.

Today, Russia is not just actively participating in the formation of a new, fairer multipolar world with equal rights and opportunities for all countries and civilisations. We are not only one of the leaders of this objective historical process, but I will say more, and everyone knows this: Russia is fighting on the battlefield for our future, for the principles of a just world order, for the freedom of countries and peoples. We are fighting consistently, and our soldiers and officers, our heroes, are fighting and losing their comrades-in-arms.

I will repeat again: the ruling elites of the United States and its satellites are behind the tragedy of the Palestinians, the massacre in the Middle East in general, the conflict in Ukraine, and many other conflicts in the world – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and so on. This has become obvious to everyone. It is they who install their military bases everywhere, who use military force on every pretext and without any pretext, who send weapons to conflict areas. They are also channelling financial resources, including to Ukraine and the Middle East, and fuelling hatred in Ukraine and the Middle East.

They are not achieving results on the battlefield, so they want to split us from within, as far as Russia is concerned, to weaken us and sow confusion. They do not want Russia to participate in solving any international or regional problems, including in the Middle East settlement. They are not satisfied at all when someone does not act or speak exactly as they are instructed. They believe only in their own exclusivity, in being allowed to do anything.

They do not need durable peace in the Holy Land; they need constant chaos in the Middle East. Consequently, they are trying hard to discredit countries that are insisting on an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, on ending the bloodshed, and that are ready to make a real contribution to resolving the crisis, rather than parasitising on it. They are even attacking, ostracising and trying to discredit the UN and the clear position of the global community.

I would like to note that, unlike the West, our approaches towards the situation in the Middle East have always lacked mercenary interests, intrigues and double standards. We have stated and continue to openly state our position, which does not change every year. The key to resolving the conflict lies in establishing a sovereign and independent Palestinian state, a full-fledged Palestinian state. We have repeatedly said this openly and honestly during our contacts with the Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

I repeat, the truth is that the stronger Russia becomes and the more consolidated Russian society is, the more effectively will we be able to uphold our own national interests, as well as the interests of the nations that are victimised by the neo-colonial Western policy.

I would like to say once again that we must realise where the root of evil lies. We must know where the spider that is trying to entangle the entire planet and the whole world in its cobweb is. It wants to ensure our strategic defeat on the battlefield, and it is using people on the territory of contemporary Ukraine who have been brainwashed by it for decades. I would like to stress once again that, while fighting this enemy in the course of the special military operation, we are boosting the positions of all those who are struggling for their independence and sovereignty.

The events in Makhachkala last night were instigated also through social networks, not least from Ukraine, by agents of Western intelligences services. I would like to ask myself in this connection: is it possible to help Palestine by trying to attack the Tat people and their families? Tats, by the way, are the titular nation in Daghestan. The only way to help Palestine is to fight those who are behind this tragedy. We, Russia, are fighting them in a special military operation, fighting them for ourselves and for those who seek real, true freedom.

By the way, I never cease to be amazed by the Kiev regime and its overseas masters. We know that Bandera and other henchmen of Hitler have already been put on a pedestal of honour, we know and see how the Ukrainian leadership applauds the Nazis of the Second World War, who were guilty of the Holocaust victims, who personally took part in these crimes, and today, under the guidance of their Western patrons, are trying to instigate pogroms in Russia. By the way, I am not sure whether all the leading circles in the same States are aware of this. It would not be a bad idea for those who care so much about the citizens of Israel to investigate what their security services are doing in Ukraine, whether they are trying to instigate pogroms in Russia. Scum, that’s all. There is no other way to put it.

But those who really stand up for truth and justice, who fight against evil and oppression, against racism and neo-Nazism, which the West encourages, are now fighting at the front – near Donetsk, Avdeyevka, on the Dnieper. I repeat: these are our soldiers and officers. And the choice of a real man, a true warrior, is to take up arms and stand in line with his brothers, to be there where the fate of Russia and, indeed, of the whole world, including the future of the Palestinian people, is being decided.

I want to draw the attention of the heads of all regions, heads of law enforcement agencies and special services to the need for firm, timely and clear action to protect Russia’s constitutional order, the rights and freedoms of our citizens, inter-ethnic and inter-faith accord.

Let us move on to a discussion of all the proposed topics.