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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   24168 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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We are now in the timeline where the journalistic integrity of the New York Times rests upon whether or not it is physically possible to train a dog to anally rape a human.

The New York Times ran an opinion article by Nicholas Kristof wherein a number of Palestinians report being raped or otherwise sexually assaulted in Israeli prisons. There’s not much in the way of physical evidence, but that is hardly unusual in rape crimes. Israel has strenuously denied the allegations, characterizing them as blood libel. It seems to be a he-said/she-said that comes down to whether you believe the Palestinian prisoners (who often have ties to Hamas or other extremist groups, hence why they ended up in Israeli prisons) or the IDF.

Certain enterprising young pro-Israel influencers think they can to better than appeal to untrustworthiness. They puport to have found a smoking gun that proves the NYT published a complete fabrication in order to libel the State of Israel, and by extension all Jews. One of the more salacious anecdotes regards a man from Gaza who alleges that he was raped by a dog.

On one occasion, he said, he was held down, stripped naked, and as he was blindfolded and handcuffed, a dog was summoned. With encouragement from a handler in Hebrew, he said, the dog mounted him.

”They were using cameras to take photos, and I heard their laughs and giggles,” he said. He tried to dislodge the dog, he said, but it penetrated him.

If, in fact, such a thing were impossible, then it would prove without doubt that the paper of record recklessly printed unverified falsehoods. We are now in the “doctors arguing with the author about the medical literature” stage of the discourse. See, even though we have documented evidence that dogs can cause rectal injury to humans, in none of those reports was the initial contact involuntary on the part of the human.

I am not well acquainted with dogs, but my understanding is that it is not particularly hard to get them to hump things. I guess the people making this argument are hoping that others won’t want to think too hard about the mechanics of dog rape.

Despite calls and rumors to the contrary, The Times so far has declined to retract the article.

The claim strains credulity, but it is definitely possible in principle. You would need a system of restraints, a trained dog, and possibly some urine from a female in heat. Likely some additionally actions would be required to prepare the prisoner’s anus, and a handler would need to guide the dog.

The question is not whether it could be done, but whether it makes any sense. While evocative clearly closer to an elaborate gay BDSM fantasy than a practical torture mechanism. If it happened, my guess would be it was the result of one or more fetishists acting on their own rather than official policy. Ask yourself how the dog was trained?

It’s too absurd to function as effective psychological warfare. Enemy soldiers won’t really believe it without strong evidence, even if they pretend to.

My judgment: Almost certainly skin-lamp style atrocity porn. But technically possible.

We are now in the timeline where the journalistic integrity of the New York Times rests upon whether or not it is physically possible to train a dog to anally rape a human.

No we're not. They don't have journalistic integrity. Never have.

In historical analysis, there’s a useful concept called the criterion of embarrassment. If a claim is highly embarrassing to the claimant, then it’s more likely to be true, as normally people are unwilling to lie when they stand to gain only shame, humiliation, and loss of status. For instance, while every holocaust writer talks about the Jews who acted as informers and helpers to the camp guards, no author ever claims that they themselves informed or collaborated, because to be an informant (or moser) against another Jew is the most shameful sin in Judaism. Hence, such a narrative does not exist, as the author would be delivering himself only social approbation. “Raped by a dog” is like this. It is a claim that is maximally shameful to a Palestinian claimant given their unique cultural values. It’s a claim that would arguably harm the Hamas cause by decreasing morale and the enrollment of new recruits. And it’s an unnecessary claim, given that the IDF’s top lawyer already resigned in order to publish a video of the Israeli soldiers raping a prisoner.

Lying about this would not serve an essential function, and according to the criterion of embarrassment, I think it’s likely these prisoners are telling the truth about what they think happened. (Phrasing it this way because they may have been made to think the rape involved a dog, as part of a psychological terror campaign).

If a claim is highly embarrassing to the claimant, then it’s more likely to be true, as normally people are unwilling to lie when they stand to gain only shame, humiliation, and loss of status.

That is not the case here and you are misapplying a very niche concept and trying to sell it as some sort of bayesian reasoning tool.

The Criterion of Embarrassment is mostly used for Biblical apologetics to justify believing in the Crucifixion. It has very limited usefulness elsewhere; it's not some kind of general rule that historians use to evaluate the plausibility of historical narratives.

"This is more likely to be true because it makes the narrator look bad" has a certain amount of general truthiness to it, but it still needs to be balanced against other factors, like plausibility and how the teller stands to gain from it even if it does cast them in a negative light.

There is a very obvious benefit to Hamas lying about Israelis raping Palestinian prisoners with dogs. It is extremely unlikely to decrease morale or enrollment of new recruits--what, they're not afraid of being imprisoned or bombed or run over by tanks, but the rape-dogs will terrify them? Come now. Atrocity propaganda almost always serves to increase morale and recruitment by representing the enemy as unspeakable monsters. Lying about it also serves the very valuable function of generating more propaganda to be repeated by people who hate Jews.

It has very limited usefulness elsewhere

For this to be the case, there would need to be a lot of cases in history where someone lied about something which would lead to overwhelming personal and familial shame. Do you think that’s true?

It is extremely unlikely to decrease morale or enrollment of new recruits--what, they're not afraid of being imprisoned or bombed or run over by tanks, but the rape-dogs will terrify them?

That’s exactly how it is. “What, as a teenager you fantasized about dying a heroic death to save your family or nation, but not being sodomized by a dog?” You can easily socially reinforce males to die in war through patriotism. That comes out of instinct. You cannot make them eager to be sodomized by dogs. There is nothing in Palestinian culture which would allow such a thing. (Imagine you’re the USM commander of the battalion ready to begin the Battle of Fallujah. More than 100 Americans are expected to die. You’re preparing your troops. But wait! Due to unforeseen circumstances, we can actually win the battle if just one soldier is sodomized by a dog and talks about it publicly. Who is the heroic soldier willing to save 100 lives by being raped by a dog? I think every few would raise their hand, maybe your intuition says differently. But now imagine they were all Muslim fundamentalists from a culture where women will not find husbands if their brother was raped and who find dogs ritually contaminated. And this explains the Israeli motive, given that destroying all of their dwellings and starving their children did not significantly curtail their morale. It makes sense why Israel would use dogs for rape because nothing else has reduced Palestinian morale.)

There is a very obvious benefit to Hamas lying about Israelis raping Palestinian prisoners with dogs

How much more important is the “dog” element compared to the previous, evidenced cases of rape in Israeli prisons? Does the “dog” element move the needle?

Atrocity propaganda almost always serves to increase morale and recruitment by representing the enemy as unspeakable monsters

This is 100% true, but you will not find a case of atrocity propaganda in history where a man writes publicly “yes, it was I who was raped by the German Hun when they took Belgium! It was my backside which suffered!”

For this to be the case, there would need to be a lot of cases in history where someone lied about something which would lead to overwhelming personal and familial shame. Do you think that’s true?

You are intentionally avoiding the point. It's clearly true that people are more likely to lie in ways that benefit them and less likely to lie in ways that do not benefit them, but even for Crucifixion, the "Criterion of Embarrassment" is based on a lot of assumptions and convenient omissions. It's a rhetorical tactic, not a historical reasoning tool. Would someone admitting to being raped by dogs experience shame? No doubt, but you are quite capable of reasoning for yourself why they'd lie about it. I also note that I am unable to find any actual named witnesses, just anonymous ones. It's a lot easier to claim multiple accounts by a bunch of names we can't actually put a name or face to.)

That’s exactly how it is.

Really? Do you have some deep insight into the Palestinian mindset? Do you have any evidence that fear of being raped by Israeli dogs is actually impacting their morale? As someone who's been studying Palestinians longer and more deeply than you have (you only care about them because of who they are fighting, not because you have an actual interest or understanding of their culture, history, and language), I am very, very doubtful that these atrocity stories would do anything but inflame them more.

Your hypothetical "What if you could save your comrades by being raped by a dog?" is ridiculous and, of course, dishonest. No one asked a Palestinian to get raped by a dog for Hamas.

If you really want to pose analogies, the equivalent would not be "Volunteer to be raped by a dog" but "Volunteer to claim you were raped by a dog," or if you believe the dog-rape really happened, "Volunteer to fight an evil enemy who might rape you with dogs if you are captured."

And this explains the Israeli motive, given that destroying all of their dwellings and starving their children did not significantly curtail their morale. It makes sense why Israel would use dogs for rape because nothing else has reduced Palestinian morale.)

It explains their motive if you think "reducing their morale" is an Israeli objective, if you think rape-dogs would actually do this, and if you think they have failed to achieve their objective. You are, as usual, just imagining an fantastical "Evil Israelis who do Evil Things because Evil (Jews)." Sitting in their Headquarters of Evil, they say to themselves, "Well, we've reduced Gaza to rubble but those brave Palestinians still haven't surrendered" (what would this even look like, at this point?). "Let's start raping them with dogs- surely this will break their spirit!" (And... what? They will stop fighting? Stop resisting? Throw out Hamas? What is the endgame you imagine the Israelis imagining in this scenario?)

It's pure made-up atrocity porn. Even if rape-by-dog has ever happened in an Israeli prison, it's like claiming Abu Ghraib was part of a systematic plan by US forces to demoralize Iraqis and make them stop resisting. Maybe you believe this was the case, but then you have to believe that from the top on down, the entire US chain of command was not just sadistically evil but extraordinarily stupid.

How much more important is the “dog” element compared to the previous, evidenced cases of rape in Israeli prisons? Does the “dog” element move the needle?

For the Palestinians? Not much. For Westerners? Certainly adds more outrage. Everyone kind of understands/accepts that prisoner rape will happen, whether or not you think it's pervasive and institutionally approved. But rape by dogs? Only evil Jews would do something like that!

This is 100% true, but you will not find a case of atrocity propaganda in history where a man writes publicly “yes, it was I who was raped by the German Hun when they took Belgium! It was my backside which suffered!”

Where is the Palestinian who has done this? From what I can tell, the accounts are all anonymous.

I note this is similar to the situation regarding the gang rapes that supposedly happened on October 7. There are numerous accounts of it happening, claims of footage existing, but because you can't find an individual, named Israeli woman who will go on camera and describe what was done to her, people who hate Jews will claim it's atrocity porn, while simultaneously finding anonymized Palestinian accounts of rape by dogs credible.

It's clearly true that people are more likely to lie in ways that benefit them and less likely to lie in ways that do not benefit them, but even for Crucifixion, the "Criterion of Embarrassment" is based on a lot of assumptions and convenient omissions. It's a rhetorical tactic, not a historical reasoning tool.

For what it's worth, while I agree with you entirely in your dispute with coffee_enjoyer, I would like to nitpick that this isn't true about the criterion of embarrassment.

It's true that the CoE is not treated as absolute. This is why people who deploy it as a gotcha in apologetical contexts are being dishonest. The CoE is probabilistic. In principle, if there's no clear reason to falsify something, it seems more likely to be true, but this is an educated guess based on how well we can model the beliefs and motives of an author. That's a very fallible process, so the CoE is very rarely, in biblical studies, treated as conclusive by itself. It is used alongside half a dozen other criteria to try to build up a picture of what is likely to be true.

I would note that the CoE is not always used in ways friendly to orthodox Christianity. The CoE has sometimes been used to argue in favour of the historicity of the Crucifixion, but it is always used to defend the likely historicity of, for instance, what seemed to be false or mistaken prophecies on Jesus' part. For example, the Olivet discourse infamously contains the claim that this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened (Mark 13:30). It would be highly embarrassing for Jesus to make an incorrect prophecy, and some scholars would argue that there are places in the Bible where the authors seem to be backing off or making excuses for (e.g. the Lukan Jesus chides others for seeking to know the times, or 2 Peter 3:8). The CoE would be used to argue in favour of the mistakes being real, even though this shows a fallible Jesus and is problematic for believers.

It does get used outside of biblical studies as well. My favourite example is the satanic verses - there seems to be very little reason for early Muslims to make up a story about Muhammad being misled, so is it more plausible that the event is historical? It doesn't seem totally unthinkable to suggest that Muhammad, during his lifetime, experimented a bit with optimising his message, and tested out how different ideas went down. There could be argued to be elements of early Islam that are syncretic with re-contextualised Arabian paganism (most famously the Kaaba), and there are undisputed incidents where Muhammad seems to show sympathy toward a pagan custom - the Nakhla incident, for instance, shows Muhammad apparently wanting to observe a pagan custom not to fight in the holy months, until (supposedly) God corrected him. So it seems plausible that maybe Muhammad might have once briefly experimented with incorporating pagan divinities into Islam as something like angels, then changed his mind, and the story of a Satanic suggestion was invented to cover the gap.

However, that theory is still highly speculative - wiki describes a history of debates on its historicity, some of which challenge the idea that there could be no motive other than truth for Muslims to invent the incident. The CoE is very rarely dispositive by itself!

At any rate. I would defend the CoE as having a place in historical and textual study.

I don't really disagree with any of that, but I think calling something "The criterion of embarrassment" is really just giving a lofty name to a reasoning tool that, as you say, is not dispositive by itself. An admission against self interest is a piece of evidence, but it's just one factor. It relies on assuming that our account of who claimed what is entirely accurate, that our understanding of their motives and interests is entirely accurate, and it's rarely the case that you have a single person or entity making a claim that would be unambiguously against their self interest to be believed.

If the the criterion has predictive value then it’s a good reasoning tool. You appear to not want to provide an argument as to why it’s not predictive. There has been atrocity propaganda since time immemorial, yet never have men admitted to being put in such a humiliating position for that purpose. We actually find a trend of humiliating stories being hushed aside so that the nation and soldiers don’t lose morale. Why would the trend be bucked and broken today, just now, in 2026? Why should this be the first case in history of atrocity propaganda where the alleged victims — from a fierce honor culture nonetheless — stand to gain only immense social humiliation, losing all morale?

Do you have any evidence that fear of being raped by Israeli dogs is actually impacting their morale?

Because men all over the world fantasize about dying for their country. Men do not fantasize about being raped for their country. A Hamas militant who dies gains honor for their family. A Hamas militant raped gains dishonor for their family. Unless you think that Palestinians are the only people in the world who bypass basic human motivational thinking, they will be averse to signing up for Hamas if the outcome is rape as opposed to torture. Notice how in action movies, the protagonist may be tortured, but is usually not raped. Do you need a source on the stigma of rape in Palestine?

Your hypothetical "What if you could save your comrades by being raped by a dog?" is ridiculous and, of course, dishonest. No one asked a Palestinian to get raped by a dog for Hamas.

How would you have felt today if you didn’t have breakfast? The Fallujah Dog Rape Hypothetical informs us how humiliating rape is for men, that it is maximally aversive, and thus necessarily reduces morale and recruitment, especially so in an honor culture. The known outcomes of an activity influence the willingness of people to engage in an activity.

If you really want to pose analogies, the equivalent would not be "Volunteer to be raped by a dog" but "Volunteer to claim you were raped by a dog," or if you believe the dog-rape really happened, "Volunteer to fight an evil enemy who might rape you with dogs if you are captured."

Well no, the story is now publicized widely, so Palestinian would-be militants will learn about the story. Hamas telling them they won’t be raped by a dog will not be very convincing, and as they are not yet recruited, they have no reason to believe Hamas once that story has sunk in.

It explains their motive if you think "reducing their morale" is an Israeli objective

Yes? Of course that’s their objective. How could you think that’s not their objective?

if you think they have failed to achieve their objective

I thought this was common knowledge. Hamas is still out there, and they haven’t been able to exile the native Gazans.

You are, as usual, just imagining an fantastical "Evil Israelis who do Evil Things because Evil (Jews)”

Is it your opinion that Israelis have not previously committed evil acts?

It's pure made-up atrocity porn

If they already raped Palestinian prisoners, and the chief lawyer of the IDF had to leak the video to try to bring the soldiers to justice, and then they dropped the charges, then I’m not sure why you’d think it is beyond the Israelis to rape prisoners with dogs. Because the last thing is already 80% evil, and adding a dog is only 20% more evil. Unless you think that this didn’t happen, or would prefer not to think it would happen. Do you think they killed aid workers and hid their corpses? Do you think they destroyed statues of Jesus with a sledgehammer in Lebanon? Did you know there’s a holiday where some Israelis throw puppies on a bonfire?

it's like claiming Abu Ghraib was part of a systematic plan by US forces to demoralize Iraqis and make them stop resisting. Maybe you believe this was the case, but then you have to believe that from the top on down, the entire US chain of command was not just sadistically evil but extraordinarily stupid.

But I pretty much believe this, except for the demoralization part. Abu Ghraib was extremely evil. People were tortured with dogs and there are accounts of rape by guards. This is actually a good argument toward my view I hadn’t even realized: unfathomably evil torture facilities have existed in recent memory.

If the the criterion has predictive value then it’s a good reasoning tool. You appear to not want to provide an argument as to why it’s not predictive.

I have already pointed out that your "criterion" is merely a restatement of the obvious principle that people are less likely to lie in a way that makes them look bad. I have also pointed out why a "predictive tool" is at best a piece of evidence, a p-value, and that there are other factors to consider, e.g., when judging the likelihood of Hamas lying about dog-rape. I have provided arguments, you are just engaging in your usual performance of hyper-focusing on a few words and ignoring all the other words.

Because men all over the world

So you have no evidence. You have no evidence that it is happening, only what you assume must be true (but you don't actually, you are just constructing arguments as soldiers, so let's say, what you are presenting as a self-evident truth) based on axioms you also assume.

Why should this be the first case in history of atrocity propaganda where the alleged victims — from a fierce honor culture nonetheless — stand to gain only immense social humiliation, losing all morale?

They aren't Klingons. They aren't going to "lose all morale" from the world believing Israelis raped some of their men with dogs.

How would you have felt today if you didn’t have breakfast?

You will not like getting into an IQ dick-measuring contest with me. Don't do this.

Is it your opinion that Israelis have not previously committed evil acts?

Are you aware that that there are numbers between 0 and 1? And other numbers besides? Don't ask straw man questions either.

If they already raped Palestinian prisoners, and the chief lawyer of the IDF had to leak the video to try to bring the soldiers to justice, and then they dropped the charges, then I’m not sure why you’d think it is beyond the Israelis to rape prisoners with dogs.

Why do you think it is beyond the Palestinians to lie?

I don't think it is beyond the Israelis to rape prisoners with dogs. I have not said it is impossible that this ever has or is happening. I am very skeptical given the evidence so far, I note the obvious motivated reasoning apparent in who immediately seizes on the story as true despite a level of evidence they would not accept in less ideologically compatible cases, and I question the pervasiveness and the simple logistics necessary for it to be something that is happening as is being reported now. Right now, the evidence of Israeli rape-dogs is considerably less than the evidence for, say, the Holocaust, or Hamas rapes on October 7. Curiously, you are utterly convinced of the first while extremely skeptical of the latter two. Why ever could that be?

But I pretty much believe this, except for the demoralization part.

This I actually believe, because I do think you have a distorted model of the world.

This is actually a good argument toward my view I hadn’t even realized: unfathomably evil torture facilities have existed in recent memory.

Unfathomably evil torture facilities have always existed. Most people know atrocities happen, in peacetime and in war. Some people believe only Those People do those kinds of things.

You have no evidence that it is happening

If I have evidence that humans behave a certain way, then I have evidence that Palestinians will behave a certain way. You were just unwilling to consider the Fallujah Dog Rape Thought Experiment. I know saying “it’s common sense” won’t do anything here, but this is common sense that most guys who would die for their country, or even be torture, would be averse to serving their country if it brought the possibility of being raped by an animal. Because this reduces their honor when the whole reason to fight for your country is honor. Islamic martyr honor culture does not extend to being raped by a dog. This is all quite clear to me. But instead of your explaining your own intuitions, you ask for the impossible, as if I could present a written affidavit from LinkedIn Hamas CEO with a nice bar graph of their quarterly recruitment figures. The absence of evidence here just means that we use what evidence we do have to infer probabilities. Maybe you can ask your favorite AI to gauge the likelihood that an Islamic militant group would face reduced recruitment after a viral story that their militants are getting raped by a ritually unclean animal. I would think it would agree.

You were just unwilling to consider the Fallujah Dog Rape Thought Experiment.

I did consider it. I answered it. I pointed out why your thought experiment was not applicable because you were falsely equating one thing with a different thing. You of course did not refute this, just ignored it and now pretend it wasn't answered.

The problem with your farcical debate tactics is that "thought experiments" is all you have. Not facts. Not logic. Not historical understanding. Not nuance. Just thought experiments, rhetorical devices, and arguments as soldiers.

I note you have not responded to a single other point anyone makes when rebutting you, as usual. Do you actually know anything about Palestinians and Muslim culture besides what you have gleaned from the Internet about dogs and "honor culture"? No, you do not. Do you have an explanation for why these dog rapes are being publicized, if they are so devastating to morale and recruitment? No. Do you have evidence that Hamas recruitment is down and would-be fedayeen are now staying home for fear of Israeli rape dogs? No. Are you able to explain why you find Israeli rape dogs credible, but the Holocaust and Hamas rapes are not credible? You cannot, because the answer would give the game away.

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How much more important is the “dog” element compared to the previous, evidenced cases of rape in Israeli prisons? Does the “dog” element move the needle?

Yes. It adds a blasphemy angle. It moves the needle for the exact reasons you mentioned earlier in the post. Dogs are contaminated. It's a much more horrifying and enraging provocation. Consider the comparative propaganda value of:

  1. The enemy sometimes rapes our people!

  2. The enemy consorts with demons and has institutional programs to feed the demons rape victims!

If they are attempting to persuade a Western audience, why would it matter that the dog is contaminated? We don’t have the social norm. And if this is the most horrifying event they can imagine, why would they want every young Palestinian learning that this could be their fate?

This only helps Hamas in a two-dimensional reading. Hamas is not in need of fabulous tales of torture when there are already real tales of torture. Yet Israel stands to gain an aversive threat that could actually make young Palestinians wary of signing up for Hamas. Americans are concerned about children starved and bombed, aid workers killed, land taken in Lebanon. Arabs might care about the dog part, but this was published in the NYTimes for a Progressive readership which already learned that Israel dropped the charges on that rapist a few months ago. It is not clear that this story is in Hamas’ favor, it requires a dozen men to destroy their family reputation forever, and it is actually more useful for Israel to have this story out than Hamas. If you’re Israel, you realize that you you can’t get to Hamas in any past attempt, so why not use psychological horror?

We in the West still have a social norm against forced bestiality.

There's pretty obviously more of a motivation for Hamas to lie than there is for any Israeli to think it is remotely a good idea to do something cartoonishly evil, if for no other reason than the risk of discovery and blowback.

There are so many documented cases of Hamas and its supports lying that one should be immediately dismissive of any major claim that doesn't come with hard evidence. FFS the fake starving Gazan kid photo just got the Pulitzer.

It’s not sufficient to say that the story vaguely increases anti-Israel sentiment in the West; it needs to be argued that the increase in anti-Israel sentiment is worth it for Hamas when it comes at the cost of enrollment and morale. Which it likely is not. The social norm against starving hundreds of thousands of children is stronger than bestiality rape in the West, anyway. They don’t have such an absence of atrocities which would warrant harming themselves to make up the story.

You're talking about an organization that purposely places children in harm's way so that they might be killed.

It's plainly obvious that Hamas would tell just about any lie they think they could remotely get away with. You are imagining that such a story would hurt "enrollment and morale" for Hamas when lies of Jewish atrocities are commonly used to rally support and incite hatred. Thinking "well this lie would hurt Hamas more than it would Israel" is not a rational take, particularly if you consider that any Israeli with half a brain knows that to actually conduct such torture (beyond the traditional kinds) would be to risk enormous blowback.

It's also curious that the NYT did the story as an opinion column, instead of a full investigative piece.

And it's sure one hell of a coincidence that the story came out just as Israel was publishing more details about the atrocities on Oct 7th.

Absent any hard evidence (and there isn't any, right?), anyone with any sense has to come down on this almost certainly being fabricated.

More comments

The Criterion of Embarrassment is mostly used for Biblical apologetics to justify believing in the Crucifixion. It has very limited usefulness elsewhere; it's not some kind of general rule that historians use to evaluate the plausibility of historical narratives.

I'm pretty sure it is. In fact I'm pretty sure the biblical use is just a specific instantiation of a more general historical use. If one court's historian says "we really kicked their asses that day!", you have no way of telling whether they're bragging, coping, or of it even happened, but if that entry is corroborated by the other court's historian saying "damn, we sure got our asses whooped that day", it's likely the original statement was accurate.

If literally all we have is one side saying "It happened this way," historians do not take the claim at face value, they also look at supporting evidence. Yes, both sides agreeing that side A won a battle would be taken as evidence that there was probably a battle that side A won, but the equivalent here is that one side is claiming a battle occurred, which they lost, and the other side says the battle never happened. Historians would not in that case say "Well, the battle must have happened because who would admit to losing a fictional battle?"

It is easy to bend hypotheticals around a made-up rule, less easy to apply them in the real world.

I don't think this works in a world where western liberals automatically assign moral virtue and correctness to whichever party appears to be weaker and "oppressed". In this world providing evidence of your complete helplessness as well as the cartoonish evil of your oppressors wins brownie points, so I don't think we can assume "this makes me look bad, so it much be true else why would I say it?" obtains.

I think that only works when the informant stands to lose in the face of the embarrassment. In the case of Hamas in Israeli prisons, the entire point of the fable is to paint their enemies as human right violators, thus getting international attention and support. A tale of canine anal rape helps that cause, as it would be a human rights violation, paints Israel as inhumane aggressors, and garners sympathy. It’s a cry bully tactic. Like the woman who invites a man to her house and then claims he raped her, Theres shame in being raped, Theres also power in getting people to turn the male into a pariah.

On one occasion, he said, he was held down, stripped naked, and as he was blindfolded and handcuffed, a dog was summoned. With encouragement from a handler in Hebrew, he said, the dog mounted him.

Another possibility consistent with the victim's statement that doesn't require "trained rape dogs" - they easy could have had the dog jump on him and then penetrated him with some other object. The guy tied up, blindfolded, and panicking is going to have no ability to tell the difference. Letting him believe he was raped by a dog would still be incredibly degrading and traumatizing.

I have to give all of the commenters who believe in dog rapists the benefit of the doubt. You have most likely never tried to train a dog, and therefore don't realize the effort that is required to train a dog to do something, nor have you imagined exactly what would be required to train a dog to rape a prisoner on command.

If, in fact, such a thing were impossible, then it would prove without doubt that the paper of record recklessly printed unverified falsehoods. We are now in the “doctors arguing with the author about the medical literature” stage of the discourse. See, even though we have documented evidence that dogs can cause rectal injury to humans, in none of those reports was the initial contact involuntary on the part of the human.

I am not well acquainted with dogs, but my understanding is that it is not particularly hard to get them to hump things. I guess the people making this argument are hoping that others won’t want to think too hard about the mechanics of dog rape.

Clearly they've never heard of the Toy Box Killer. Anyone claiming "anatomical impossibility" can be dismissed out of hand as a liar or a hack.

If the Israelis really wanted to disprove allegations of abuse at their facilities it would be absolutely trivial to organize some sort of impartial third party investigation. Even the Nazis had the sense to bring in the Red Cross and get out of the way when they were falsely accused of committing the Katyn Massacre.

If the Israelis really wanted to disprove allegations of abuse at their facilities it would be absolutely trivial to organize some sort of impartial third party investigation. Even the Nazis had the sense to bring in the Red Cross and get out of the way when they were falsely accused of committing the Katyn Massacre.

The Nazis even had a "model ghetto" that they invited the Red Cross to inspect.

Clearly they've never heard of the Toy Box Killer. Anyone claiming "anatomical impossibility" can be dismissed out of hand as a liar or a hack.

Not denying the Toy Box Killer was an actual abductor/rapist but a lot of the stuff he supposedly did also lacks much evidence beyond the guilty plea of a massive pervert

We are now in the timeline where the journalistic integrity of the New York Times rests upon whether or not it is physically possible to train a dog to anally rape a human.

I think the reason why what is obviously a piece of reported journalism appears in the "Opinion" section is that the NYT isn't willing to stake its integrity on the existence of trained rape dogs, and the rules of traditional journalism say that blame for factual inaccuracies in opinion pieces lies with the named author and not the newspaper.

If, in fact, such a thing were impossible, then it would prove without doubt that the paper of record recklessly printed unverified falsehoods.

Technically, it didn't. Kristof is careful to distinguish between cases where he has corroborating evidence, and cases where he is recounting uncorroborated allegations from former detainees. If the detainee did accuse the Israelis of using rape dogs (which I assume he did) then the NYT has printed the true statement "He tried to dislodge the dog, he said, but it penetrated him." The world would be a better place if journalists didn't act as stenographers for lying sources, but the current rules of journalistic ethics unfortunately say that it is okay as long as you are clear that you are attributing the lies to the source.

So we have another example of where the logic of bounded distrust applies - the NYT has (almost certainly) reprinted a false claim while staying clearly on the right side of the rules of traditional journalism. This is not going to embarrass them with anyone who hasn't already bozo-binned them.

That said, Why?. The NYT and Kristof don't need the dogs to make their point. "Abu Ghraib-style atrocities against Palestinian detainees are ubiquitous in Israeli prisons and even in the rare cases where there is hard evidence the Netanyahu government proudly refuses to prosecute" is a story they do stand up. The only people who think there is an important moral distinction between raping someone with a carrot or a truncheon and raping them with a dog are PETA, and it might be possible to convince them that the dog enthusiastically consented. A high-reporting-effort piece of long-form journalism about serious atrocities, with corroborating evidence that most of the allegations, was relegated to the Opinion section, and then subject to deserved ridicule, because of a throwaway allegation below the fold that was added for meme value despite the implausibility. An editor should have pointed this out, and Kristof should have made the change and thanked them for saving him from embarrassment.

Also, why did Kristof's editor not click the links? There are five links which are inserted with a claim that they corroborate the trained rape dog allegation, but the two that work in the UK don't - they are links to other articles which say that dogs were used (as happened at Abu Ghraib - it is the most obvious thing an evilmaxxing jailer would do to humiliate a Muslim detainee) as part of the sexual humiliation of naked prisoners, but not that the dogs penetrated anyone.

My opinion of the NYT is not revised downwards because they went to the dogs a long time ago and everyone knows it. Kristof and the IDF both had a reputation to lose - one is shamed by the true allegations, the other by the false ones.

It seems like the original report the NYT is reporting on/linking to is from Euro Med Monitor, a group which has a squeaky clean wikipedia page and zero discussion of bias or untrustworthiness. Or, to speak plainly: there's a lot of allegations about their bias elsewhere, some as always likely overblown and some true, but it seems there's been a dedicated effort to clean up their Wikipedia page even since the last time I was there a few years ago.

For those of you curious, the Euro Med Monitor has also identified the source of the dogs: those dastardly Dutch! Who are, of course, therefore on the hook to pay up:

Lastly, the Dutch government and implicated companies must establish a dedicated compensation fund for surviving Palestinian victims affected by the use of these dogs.

Even Euro Med Monitor don't suggest that they were trained rape dogs though. That part does appear to come from a small number of former detainees who Kristof quotes uncritically.

Might not claim they were trained for it, but certainly claims they were used for it.

The linked article talks about "horrific acts of sexual violence involving dogs" but doesn't say which part of the dog was involved. Without further information, I would assume it was the teeth, and the bit that makes the violence sexual was the part of the human involved.

And indeed, dogs trained to bite the groin are a thing that are widely used.

The only people who think there is an important moral distinction between raping someone with a carrot or a truncheon and raping them with a dog are PETA

I don’t think this is true. Being raped with a carrot is different to being raped by a dog. The latter is infinitely more degrading - it’s being sexually dominated by a far lesser species.

I don’t think this is true. Being raped with a carrot is different to being raped by a dog. The latter is infinitely more degrading - it’s being sexually dominated by a far lesser species.

I agree that dogs are worse, which is presumably why Kristof wanted to keep the dogs in the story, but I don't think fine details matter once you cross the moral event horizon.

They puport to have found a smoking gun that proves the NYT published a complete fabrication in order to libel the State of Israel

Just like pro-Palestinians purport the (admittedly questionable) Screams Without Words was a complete fabrication in order to libel the Palestinians? It is understandable that neither side is enthusiastic watching their respective ingroup's crimes making the headlines. Here we have an establishment newspaper that seriously ran a lengthy, outlandishly gruesome story, that you could in no way read as anything but sympathetic to the harrowing treatment of Palestinian prisoners and IDF overreach (to say the least), and refused to take it down. If this is Israeli hasbara, then the Jews get an F.

IMO the NYT's reporting is simply too establishment in tone, too willing to report Israeli justifications at all, too willing to doubt sources of Palestinian casualty figures, and not ready to abandon post-1967 norms of state legitimacy for one side only, which infuriates pro-Palestinians because they don't swallow the full activist catechism.

Atrocity propaganda happens in every conflict, but this is so over-the-top it's like something someone would make up for an edgy Internet story.

Can I believe Israelis torture Palestinian prisoners? Yes. Can I believe they might even rape Palestinian prisoners? I'm very skeptical that it's SOP or approved, but I believe it happens. But raping Palestinian prisoners with dogs?

If you spend any time thinking about the mechanics (gods know nobody wants to, but here we are), you'd realize that even a large dog would have trouble mounting an unwilling person, who would have to be pretty thoroughly tied up, and then you'd have to think about how you'd train a dog to do that (yes, a dog will hump anything but you can't generally get them to hump in a particular way on command), and it just gets extremely unlikely. At most, I can imagine them getting a dog to jump on a bound Palestinian prisoner and laughing about it. A whole squad of trained rape-dogs? Come the fuck on.

Dogs are considered particularly unclean by Muslims, so this sounds like either something the Israelis made up as a story to scare Palestinians, or something Palestinians made up as a story about how depraved and evil Israelis are, or both.

It is kind of interesting how, even with real atrocities, authority figures sympathetic to the victims almost always publish fiction that is more gruesome than reality. The reign of terror was a tragedy, but many of the stories such as republican weddings were false. Similarly, many Holocaust stories told by survivors were fictitious exaggerations of things such as human skin lampposts. You also have right wingers giving demographically impossible overestimates of Stalinist crimes. Over-exaggerating crimes seems universal.

Is there some Israeli abuse of Palestinian prisoners? Probably. Does Israel have a military department solely dedicated to training dogs to rape prisoners? Only in my AI Generated pornographic novel.

It is a very broad pattern, with atrocity exaggeration being the most shocking example. Once you have established that your enemies are bad people who deserve harsh punishment, it feels like bearing false witness against them is okay.

In particular, it is why the meaning of words with negative affect like "fascist" or "paedophile" tend to expand over time - to defend the original meanings involves saying "this bad person did bad things, but not this particular bad thing", which is party-pooping when your conversation partners just want to clown on the outgroup.

Also nobody got published minimizing the facts and relying on eye witness testimonies is always gonna skew to the extremes. I've recently gotten into Congo denialism and like anybody with a basic sense of numeracy and logistical capabilities of 1000 Belgians in the Congo gotta doubt the most extreme numbers.

I've recently gotten into Congo denialism and like anybody with a basic sense of numeracy and logistical capabilities of 1000 Belgians in the Congo gotta doubt the most extreme numbers.

See what Roger Casement had to say? He also gave an account of abuses against natives in Peru.

The irony here is that he was later prosecuted and executed for being a traitor, so it's not solely a case of "I praise our imperialism because we're British and denounce their imperialism because they're filthy foreigners".

The contrast when once Congolese territory is entered is remarkable. From the frontier to Gondokoro is about 80 miles. The proper left, or western, bank of the river is Belgian. The opposite bank is either under the Soudanese or the Uganda Government. There are numerous islands, and as all these are under British rule—for the thalweg, which, under Treaty, is the Belgian frontier, skirts the western bank of the river—I cannot say that I had an opportunity of seeing a full 80 miles of Belgian territory. At the same time, I saw a good deal, and I noticed that, whereas there were numerous villages and huts on the eastern bank and on the islands, on the Belgian side not a sign of a village existed. Indeed, I do not think that any one of our party saw a single human being in Belgian territory, except the Belgian officers and men and the wives and children of the latter. Moreover, not a single native was to be seen either at Kiro or Lado. I asked the Swedish officer at Kiro whether he saw much of the natives. He replied in the negative, adding that the nearest Bari village was situated at some distance in the interior. The Italian officer at Lado, in reply to the same question, stated that the nearest native village was seven hours distant.

The reason of all this is obvious enough. The Belgians are disliked. The people fly from them, and it is no wonder they should do so, for I am informed that the soldiers are allowed full liberty to plunder, and that payments are rarely made for supplies. The British officers wander, practically alone, over most parts of the country, either on tours of inspection or on shooting expeditions. I understand that no Belgian officer can move outside the settlements without a strong guard.

It appears to me that the facts which I have stated above afford amply sufficient evidence of the spirit which animates the Belgian Administration, if, indeed, Administration it can be called. The Government, so far as I could judge, is conducted almost exclusively on commercial principles, and, even judged by that standard, it would appear that those principles are somewhat short-sighted.

...I have dwelt upon the condition of P* and the towns I visited around Lake Mantumba in my notes taken at the time, and these are appended hereto (Inclosure 3). A careful investigation of the conditions of native life around the lake confirmed the truth of the statements made to me—that the great decrease in population, the dirty and ill-kept towns, and the complete absence of goats, sheep, or fowls—once very plentiful in this country—were to be attributed above all else to the continued effort made during many years to compel the natives to work india-rubber. Large bodies of native troops had formerly been quartered in the district, and the punitive measures undertaken to this end had endured for a considerable period. During the course of these operations there had been much loss of life, accompanied, I fear, by a somewhat general mutilation of the dead, as proof that the soldiers had done their duty. Each village I visited around the lake, save that of Q* and one other, had been abandoned by its inhabitants. To some of these villages the people have only just returned; to others they are only now returning. In one I found the bare and burnt poles of what had been dwellings left standing, and at another—that of R*—the people had fled at the approach of my steamer, and despite the loud cries of my native guides on board, nothing could induce them to return, and it was impossible to hold any intercourse with them. At the three succeeding villages I visited beyond R*, in traversing the lake towards the south, the inhabitants all fled at the approach of the steamer, and it was only when they found whose the vessel was that they could be induced to return.

At one of these villages, S*, after confidence had been restored and the fugitives had been induced to come in from the surrounding forest, where they had hidden themselves, I saw women coming back carrying their babies, their household utensils, and even the food they had hastily snatched up, up to a late hour of the evening. Meeting some of these returning women in one of the fields I asked them why they had run away at my approach, and they said, smiling, “We thought you were Bula Matadi” (i.e., “men of the Government”). Fear of this kind was formerly unknown on the Upper Congo; and in much more out-of-the-way places visited many years ago the people flocked from all sides to greet a white stranger. But to-day the apparition of a white man’s steamer evidently gave the signal for instant flight.

I have no doubt that the Congo was treated horribly (albeit largely by natives acting towarsd other natives in a system topped by a vanishingly small European population) but the frequently-cited 10 million number is literally fanciful and the current scholarship on it has descended towards a vociferous circlejerk in which absolutely ludicrous claims are layered on top of genuine cases of human rights abuses. I'm not saying 'Leopold's Congo was a wonderland for all' but people presenting it as a top 3 genocide of all time are silly.

Mounted! Finding Habibis Red Rocket

He thought he could find paradise through matyrdom, but instead paradise found him. Does Jamal need to seek heavenly rewards when true love is just one doggy treat away?

Next on sick sad world

So edgy it's banned in the United Kingdom!

Wait, I hear techno Euofunk. It... its chuck tingle! He's here to save the UK from the evil censorship bill! Hooray hooray we don't need fake moustaches to go on wattpad anymore!

Chuck Tingle is deep enough on one side of the culture war that he almost certainly is Pro-Palestine. At least he would be publicly.

Its ok, after pounding Jamal in the butt long enough the jewish rape dog sees the error of his ways and tries to hunt down netanyahu, and the book ends with netanyahu on all fours in a gimp suit smirking "who do you think these dogs trained on." fin.

thank you thank you i'll accept my hugo award in straight male tears and romantasy darkweb tokens.

That's "Hugo-nominated science fiction author Chuck Tingle" to you, Sir. "Pounded in the Butt by Jewish Space Dogs" would presumably be more entertaining than the NYT article, and, at least as regards the doggy bits, about as accurate.

my understanding is that it is not particularly hard to get them to hump things

Yeah, one of my first "I have been living in a synthetic Disney World" epiphanies I can recall having is when I was a teenager hanging out with a group of friends at one of their houses, and the host's dog just jumped on one of the guys and started humping him. The host immediately started shouting at the dog, grabbing its collar and trying to pull it off (the dog, not the collar). My first thought was "what kind of crazy dog is this?", immediately overridden by my much-more-rational thought of "wait, maybe this is what all those ads for spaying and neutering services were referring to. This is what animals are actually like when you don't do that!" My next thought was "And why is it doing that to a boy? I was told homosexuality is not natural and never happens except among godforsaken heathen."

Getting your dog fixed doesn't stop them from humping. My female dog, even after being spayed, was still super into humping stuff.

Having had a neighbor who bred dogs when I was younger. Some dogs will continue to be humpers even post-neutering/spaying but it definitely reduces the baseline tendency by a lot.

Surely it helps, no? Part of why it was so shocking to me is I'd been around a fair amount of dogs -- my immediate family had two, and I don't recall ever seeing either of them do that, not even to inanimate objects, much less guests. My extended family lives on a farm, and always had 2-4 dogs, and I don't remember seeing this among them, either.

I'm checking with Google now and it insists this is indeed normal for dogs of all breeds and ages. Clearly Google is not familiar with the level of reality-warping power behind the Disney world I was in, because this definitely did not happen, as I remember being repeatedly shocked and repulsed when leaving our bubble and seeing how the heathens' pets behaved.

It’s all about training. An infuriatingly large (and IME growing) percentage of dog owners absolutely do not give the slightest fuck about disciplining their dogs. They don’t know what they’re doing and have no interest in learning; in many cases they don’t even seem to know it’s possible. They either luck into a naturally obedient one, or, uh, don’t. Having grown up with dogs I find it extremely frustrating.

I'm certain its got nothing to do with fucking and everything to do with dominance. My tiny female dog used to hump my big male dog, and she tried to hump the car hubs too. Its not like they didn't fuck, but the leadup seemed to be entirely irrelevant.

It's funny. I've interacted and lived with alot of dogs, and I've never seen them do what people(and google) apparently consider common.

Also, I think people over-rely on spay and neutering to correct bad behavior. It really doesn't. The most aggressive and protective dog I've seen was nuetered due to being cryptorchid.

I am not well acquainted with dogs, but my understanding is that it is not particularly hard to get them to hump things.

Unless you’re just having fun with it this post reads to me as if it’s way, way, way too credulous of the dog-sleights-man.

The question isn’t if a dog could mechanically rape a human being. (Although it would be a moderately disordered dog that would rape a man: what breed are we talking anyways?) The question is if Israeli jailors would sic a dog on their captive with the intent for the dog to rape him. (Actually, how does that work mechanically: did they tie him head down ass up?)

It’s a fairly unusual accusation. It requires e.g. that the Israelis have rape dogs. Which the jailors are willing to use. Without this being exposed in any provable way. Is it possible? Well, sure, technically, but why haven’t I heard of this sort of thing before? Do the Iranians have rapehunds? Did the Nazis sic specially trained dogs on their victims? I don’t recall anything like this in Leviticus. It’s not in Bernal Diaz.

The alternative, much more plausible event: “It didn’t happen. We made it up. It’s not real.” The story was fabricated because it sounded good. The victim hallucinated. Something was lost in translation. A rumor got out of hand. Those are all explanations consistent with everything I’ve ever observed in human nature.

Extradordinary claims require exorbiditrary evidence? It seems much much likelier that people will believe anything bad about Israel than than the dog didn’t even need any peanut butter.

The previous 'dogs trained to rape people' claims were 1) a canard repeated against Pinochet by actual literal communists who made up quite a lot of other things, although they probably were tortured in conventional ways and 2) the confessions of an insane serial killer who also definitely tortured and raped people but also claimed lots of other improbable falsehoods. So my priors from this are 'Israel is torturing prisoners but not with trained rape dogs'.

The human Israeli soldiers are rapey - recall the protests and rioting when the Israeli govt briefly tried to arrest some of its soldiers for raping prisoners. Apparently the rapist is now a celebrity in Israel, appearing on TV shows.

It's absolutely believable that the same govt who tolerates raping of prisoners also tolerates the use of dogs for rape. It is a very ordinary claim, not an extraordinary claim.

An Israeli parliamentarian on live camera vigorously protested for doing anything to prisoners:

Lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky was asked as he defended the alleged abuse whether it was legitimate, "to insert a stick into a person's rectum?"

"Yes!" he shouted in reply to his fellow parliamentarian. "If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!"

Abusing prisoners also fits into the general Israeli policy of rule by terror and force, their Dahiya doctrine of maximum destruction to civilian targets.

The human Israeli soldiers are rapey - recall the protests and rioting when the Israeli govt briefly tried to arrest some of its soldiers for raping prisoners. Apparently the rapist is now a celebrity in Israel, appearing on TV show

See what the comment you're replying to said: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. See also the rules: "Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be."

None of this is inflammatory or surprising or extraordinary. The same country that goes around massacring, raping, launching various bombing attacks, assassinations and false flag attacks its entire existence continues to do so... stop the presses! They've been torturing prisoners for many years, why would we expect them to stop now?

They did this kind of thing long before 2023, shooting people because they can: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-justification-israel-shoot-protesters-live-ammunition?LangID=E&NewsID=24226

There are videos here of a goofy attempt to cover up rape: https://x.com/ApartheidReview/status/2054208876048679271

https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territory/report-israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territory/

They dropped the charges, it's not politically possible to punish these guys. How would it be possible, when people riot to free them and politicians leap to their defence? What do they have to fear? It's not like America or a Western country where war crimes are taken painfully seriously.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/12/israeli-military-top-lawyer-drops-charges-soldiers-palestinian-detainee-abuse-gaza

Would we be surprised if the Syrian government that went around torturing and massacring and suppressing almost the whole time it existed (Hama for instance) continued to do so? Or if the Chinese government which has been constantly being incredibly authoritarian and repressive for its entire existence continues to be authoritarian and repressive? That doesn't need sourcing, it's ordinary and normal.

It's ironic that there are all these people who cry about leftists holding Israel 'to a different standard' than Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran or Syria - when they are the ones who do so, demanding all this evidence that Israel has done something wrong, as if there aren't mountains of killings and atrocities they dish out... If any other country said 'oh the UNHCR is biased against us, Amnesty is biased against us, all the journalists we keep shooting are biased against us, they're all just anti-Our_Country' they wouldn't get even the most credulous to believe such a nakedly self-serving assertion.

He kinda did by quoting the parliamentarian in question. You think the rapist being invited to a TV show is so extraordinary and inflammatory? Or that some people might have the same opinions as an elected representative?

The claim that a specific IDF soldier is known to be a rapist AND a celebrity in Israel who appears on TV shows does strike me as an inflammatory one, yes.

"Known to" does a lot of heavy lifting, because you can always deny the accusation, and hide behind "it's just an allegation", but sources for claim are not hard to find.

That's all I was looking for, thank you.

@RandomRanger's gloss was highly misleading: he made it sound as if it had been established beyond reasonable doubt that this soldier had raped a Palestinian prisoner, but that this revelation hadn't gotten in the way of his becoming an Israeli celebrity. Whereas according to this article, the investigation is still ongoing, and far from being widely admired, the soldier claims he decided to break his anonymity after being publicly shamed and criticised by an Israeli woman for what he allegedly did.

@RandomRanger's gloss was highly misleading: he made it sound as if it had been established beyond reasonable doubt

Given that the accusation is based on video evidence I think his portrayal of it is fairly accurate.

the investigation is still ongoing,

Again, anyone can deny an accusation. The people inviting him to their shows can claim he's innocent indefinitely.

and far from being widely admired, the soldier claims he decided to break his anonymity after being publicly shamed and criticised by an Israeli woman for what he allegedly did.

I'm not following. He is widely admired. He is being invited to TV shows and is being treated as a celebrity. The specific actions he is accused of (rather than his general conduct under the assumption of his innocence) are being explicitly defended by Israeli representatives. There are also other people who are criticizing him, but that does not detract from the large swathes of people circling the wagons around him.

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Forget it Shakes it's Chinatown.

The question is if Israeli jailors would sic a dog on their captive with the intent for the dog to rape him. (Actually, how does that work mechanically: did they tie him head down ass up?)

I wouldn't have believed most of the things that happened at Abu Ghraib if there hadn't been pictures of it. Some people will do weird shit if they have the oppurtunity.

Abu Ghraib seemed more like "assholes taking an opportunity to do sadistic shit". Rape dogs seems like the kind of thing you'd need training programs for, with like, budgets and performance evaluations.

you'd need training programs for, with like, budgets and performance evaluations.

"true, this dog won't hunt -- but he's very rapey..."

"We kept him in a room with 24/7 streams of Andrew Tate content, he doesn't even understand the concept of consent anymore"

Okay, I laughed.

I don't know, I doubt we will be getting solid scientific evidence on how easy it is to get a big dog without special training to mount an unwilling human who has been tied up in "receptive" position anytime soon, but per the Abu Ghraib example + other better-evidenced Israeli misconduct I certainly would not dismiss this on "these soldiers would not do such a thing" grounds.

Of course, there's no reason it couldn't be made up, either; but then if you think the NYT would make this up or eat it up from a source without properly verifying it by whatever means they have available, I would like you to apply the same degree of skepticism to press-reported atrocities even when you agree with the direction (for many here, I guess that would be Russians in Ukraine e.g. the Bucha story?).

but then if you think the NYT would make this up or eat it up from a source without properly verifying it by whatever means they have available

They have a history of being extremely credulous when making these sorts of attacks, like with the Russian Bounty story.

The Israeli military uses dogs pretty extensively, this is well documented by non-controversial sources. In the context of a large detention center run by the Israeli military, I'd imagine they are particularly useful to search for contraband like drugs, or to incapacitate combative detainees in a non-lethal manner.

This seems like it could easily be a case of "assholes taking the opportunity to do sadistic shit" especially because they know the Muslim perception of dogs, and therefore it would be even more humiliating and degrading than other forms of sexual assault.

Yeah, that’s sort of my point. If you want to sexually brutalize male prisoners there’s a wealth of options easily available with a ton of precedent.

The dog thing is obviously designed to be maximally inflammatory to the intended audience; the red / green alliance of islamists and hardcore leftists and their useful idiots “fellow travelers”.

Plus of course anyone already maximally inclined to believe negative things about da joos.

Hamas livestream themselves via GoPro gang-raping Israeli women on October 7th, numerous Israeli women independently report rape at the hands of Hamas squaddies on October 7th, numerous doctors report injuries consistent with rape and sexual assault, photos are circulated of Israeli women bleeding from their groins, the UN believes Hamas squaddies committed gang rape on October 7th.

Woke leftists: "Well we don't know for sure that Hamas raped anyone on October 7th!"

One Palestinian claims that he was penetrated by a dog while IDF soldiers watched and laughed. He presents no medical evidence nor corroborative testimony in support of this claim.

Woke leftists: "OMG can you believe how depraved Israel is???!"

Hard to avoid the conclusion that there's a double standard being applied here.

And these are the same woke leftists who think that Brett Kavanaugh's career should have been derailed on the basis of an allegation of sexual misconduct (completely devoid of direct or circumstantial evidence) being brought against him three decades after it allegedly occurred.

I thought it was common knowledge that Hamas squaddies committed extensive acts of sexual violence on October 7th (many of which they filmed and distributed as a form of psychological warfare). But some people still refuse to accept this, so in the interests of proactively providing evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory my claim might be, please consult this report.

Dunking on woke leftist strawmen might be a fun past time, but I'm not sure the NYT qualifies in this particular instance. From the opening paragraph of the article:

It’s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape.

Supporters of Israel made that point after the brutal sexual assaults against Israeli women during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu and many U.S. senators, including Marco Rubio, condemned that sexual violence, and Netanyahu rightly called on “all civilized leaders” to “speak up.”

And yet in wrenching interviews, Palestinians have recounted to me a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children — by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.

It seems the author was one step ahead of your critique.

Both sides claim rape is a horrible crime when committed against them. To reiterate the point: Should all parties not be against rape then? And to pontificate further, if we believe one side is not against the rape of their enemies, does that make it OK for us to rape them?

I don't see a double standard. I see two backwards third world populations making appeals to morals and standards that have nothing to do with them. They both play the shivering hurt animal and as soon as they think no one is looking the teeth and claws come out.

I wasn't critiquing the Grey Lady in particular here. I very much doubt the author of this specific article would dispute that Hamas committed sexual violence on October 7th. I'm critiquing the double standard among woke leftists, who demand exhaustive beyond-reasonable-doubt proof when a member of their in-group is accused of sexual misconduct, but when a member of their out-group is accused of sexual misconduct, even hearsay is deemed sufficient to condemn them.

None of this requires you to support Israel, think Israel isn't committing a "genocide", think Israel isn't a settler-colonial apartheid state, think the Palestinians don't have a legitimate grievance etc. You're welcome to think the IDF is just as bad (or even worse) than the people they're fighting. You can sympathise with the Palestinians (even sympathise with Hamas) while acknowledging that Hamas committed acts of unspeakable cruelty on October 7th. But you do, in fact, have to acknowledge that Hamas committed acts of unspeakable cruelty on October 7th. That part is not open for debate.

And it is absolutely not a strawman to say that some woke leftists, pro-Palestinians or Joo-posters will deny to this day that Hamas committed any sexual violence at all on October 7th. I have personally met these people. I may have been dunking on a weakman, but I was not dunking on a strawman and I quite resent that accusation.

Ontological status: If you rape your enemies, they win.

You're not describing a double standard insofar as you can observe this exact same behavior from JIDF posters. Where mass rape on Oct.7 definitely happened and is super important, but these rapes did not, or don't really matter. It's just the standard.

So maybe we are looking at some motivated reasoning that can afflict us all. Rather than a specific trait of the woke left. And perhaps you're not dunking on a strawman, but what are you dunking on, and to what end? The motivated reasoning of one side irks you, but not the other?

So no, the woke left don't have to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed acts of unspeakable cruelty on Oct.7 anymore than the JIDF has to acknowledge that Israel is a a genocidal nazi state that commits acts of unspeakable cruelty in their prisons. You hold no leverage to make that claim. You are just asserting a one sided rhetorical frame on woke leftists. They would be right to recognize what you are doing, call you a genocidal zionist and continue on inside their bubble where Israel is bad and Palestine is good.

Rape denialism is inexcusable coming from anyone, but particularly hypocritical coming from individuals whose catchphrase was "believe women" for the better part of a decade.

And my point would be that it's not particularly hypocritical when those individuals are just playing the same game everyone else is. Including Israel, that is not really concerned with whatever amount of dead or raped Palestinians they leave in their wake. I mean, I don't think the worst part of that is the hypocrisy but whatever.

I, for one, do not assign zero moral value to members of my outgroup. While I accept that the average Israeli is probably more likely to take seriously accusations of rape made against Palestinians than accusations made against Israelis – I do nonetheless believe that the modal Israeli assigns greater moral value to members of his outgroup than the modal Palestinian does. Call me a Zionist shill if you must, that's what I believe.

I do nonetheless believe that the modal Israeli assigns greater moral value to members of his outgroup than the modal Palestinian does.

According to one n>2000 poll, if you're willing to equate judgments of the other side's "humanity" with judgments of their moral worth, the modal Israeli and Palestinian assign each other equal moral worth, namely 0/100:

The results show one of the most symmetrical mirror images – each side almost completely dehumanizes the other, and completely humanizes itself. This is another indication of mutual zerosum attitudes not only towards the conflict but at the human level. When characterizing their side, 83% of the Palestinians selected the number 80 or higher and 17% selected numbers less than 80. On average, Palestinians gave themselves a score of 88 out of 100 on the humanity scale. When characterizing the Israeli side, only 1% selected the number 80 or higher; 71% selected the number 0 and 27% selected a number between 1 and 50. On average, Palestinians gave Israeli Jews a score of 6 out of 100 on the humanity scale.

...However, Jewish Israeli views regarding the humanity of Palestinians show sweeping negative assessments, as a mirror image of the Palestinian view of Israeli Jews. Just 2.7% give a score above 80 for Palestinians. 92% give a score of 50 or lower; and among those, 42% gave the lowest possible score (zero). The average score was 14 (from 0-100). The portion who gave a score of zero to Palestinians regarding levels of humanity is higher among settlers (56%), and highest among the ultra-Orthodox (70%). There is hardly any difference between traditionalists and national religious Israelis – 57% ad 58%, respectively, give Palestinians a score of zero humanity, and 41% of seculars. The age gap is also prominent: 59% of young Israeli Jews (18-34) gave a score of zero, compared to 41% of those 55 and above.

Jewish Israelis are apparently slightly less inclined to dehumanize Palestinians than vice versa, but it's risible to suggest that the average (let alone the modal) Israeli is deeply moved by high-minded European notions about the intrinsic value of human life in their attitude towards Palestinians.

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Hamas livestream themselves via GoPro gang-raping Israeli women on October 7th

Did they? Where is the proof of this?

Here (Ctrl-F "Filming and digital dissemination of SGBV"):

A highly disturbing and recurrent pattern documented by the Commission is the extensive use of digital technology and social media, particularly perpetrator-generated images and videos, to document, glorify, and amplify acts of SGBV [sexual and gender-based violence]. Perpetrators documented themselves during the attacks, including while assaulting, humiliating, abducting, and killing women and desecrating their bodies.

Footage circulated by Hamas and its collaborators depicts women and girls being violently dragged, humiliated, and abducted; female corpses being abused, mocked, or burned; and female hostages being tormented, abused, taunted, or humiliated on camera.

Footage circulated by Hamas and its collaborators depicts women and girls being violently dragged, humiliated, and abducted; female corpses being abused, mocked, or burned; and female hostages being tormented, abused, taunted, or humiliated on camera.

None of this is "rape", let alone "gang rape".

Also with the possible exception of the abuse/mocking/burning of female corpses basically all of these accusations would hold true if you replaced "Hamas" with "Israel".

Hard to avoid the conclusion that there's a double standard being applied here.

I feel like it's really not that difficult to make the cognitive leap from the assertion in one sentence "Hamas filmed and distributed themselves committing acts of sexual and gender-based violence", to the inference that the word "assault" in the following sentence is referring to sexual assaults. In fact, it's such an obvious cognitive leap that I think not making it could only be the product of motivated reasoning.

But if you insist on me excerpting other relevant portions of the report for you, you lazy sod, then so be it:

From the section "key findings":

Hamas and its collaborators used sexual torture to maximize pain and suffering. Victims endured brutal acts, including burning, mutilation, rape, restraining, forced insertion of objects into the genitalia, shootings to the faces and genital area, killings and abuses in front of family members, and executions.

Hamas and its collaborators inflicted SGBV in multiple locations, employing recurring patterns of abuse. The Civil Commission identified at least thirteen patterns of abuse across multiple sites, including: 1) Rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual assaults; 2) Sexual torture, including intentional burning and mutilation; 3) Deliberate shootings to the head, face and genital area; 4) Killings and executions following or committed in conjunction with SGBV; 5) Postmortem sexual abuse, humiliation, and desecration of bodies; 6) Forced nudity and exposure; 7) Handcuffing, binding, and restraint of victims; 8) Public displaying and parading of women and children; 9) Abduction of mothers and children; 10) SGBV inflicted in the presence or near vicinity of family members; 11) Filming and digital dissemination of SGBV, including use of social media to document, glorify, and amplify the atrocities; 12) Threats of forced marriage; 13) Rape and other forms of sexual violence against boys and men.

From the section "operational preparation prior to the attack":

A wide range of documentary material seized from the bodies and homes of perpetrators, and recovered from October 7th sites, demonstrates that the attacks were not a spontaneous outbreak of violence but rather were planned and rehearsed with specific instructions to kill, kidnap, and humiliate civilians.107 The Civil Commission has reviewed extensive operational materials, notebooks, checklists, maps, phrasebooks, and tactical guides that guided perpetrators on how to enter civilian communities, how to control victims, and what commands to use in Hebrew during abductions... These materials further include Arabic‑to‑Hebrew phrase lists with imperatives and humiliating commands (for example, commanding victims to “take off your pants/take your clothes off,” “lie down,” “spread your legs”), as well as kits containing zip ties and other materials to physically restrain victims.

The word "rape" appears 309 times in the report, 29 of those as part of the phrase "gang rape". The section "Rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual assault" is five pages long, while the section on "filming and digital dissemination of SGBV" is three pages long. None of this is open for debate.

Also with the possible exception of the abuse/mocking/burning of female corpses basically all of these accusations would hold true if you replaced "Hamas" with "Israel".

It is so, so tiresome how you immediately pivot to arguments-as-soldiers mode. You demand evidence that Hamas did the things I claimed, I provide it, and you instantly pivot to "well Israel is just as bad so who cares". We weren't debating whether Israel was just as bad as Hamas, or who is worse: we were debating whether Hamas really did the things they filmed themselves doing and disseminated. It is a simple factual question, not an ethical one.

Hard to avoid the conclusion that there's a double standard being applied here.

Only if your worldview depends on you failing to understand what's right in front of your nose. The rape, gang rape, sexual abuse, torture and humiliation committed on October 7th was exhaustively documented, perhaps an outright majority of it by the perpetrators themselves. If this Palestinian man really was raped by a dog belonging to the IDF, that event was not exhaustively documented by anyone, including the alleged perpetrators. Joo-posters have no trouble believing that the dog-rape occurred, but it seems no amount of documentary evidence will persuade them that Hamas really did the things that they filmed themselves doing and proudly disseminated. (By contrast, if the IDF filmed this Palestinian man being raped by a dog and distributed it on their own channels as a form of psychological warfare against Hamas and the Palestinians, I would have no trouble believing that it really happened. I'm not the one with the double standard.)

Look, you literally said

Hamas livestream themselves via GoPro gang-raping Israeli women on October 7th

I ask for evidence of this happening and it turns out that, in fact, you have no such evidence whatsoever. No such livestream exists. You lied. You made it up. Why did you do that?

Instead you pivot to an "investigation" by an Israeli "Civil Commission" which, if we're being objective, should really be given about as much credibility as an "investigation" by the "Hamas Health Ministry". Yet even the "Civil Commission" doesn't claim Hamas live streamed themselves raping anyone; in the section actually covering "Filming and digital dissemination of SGBV" they don't even make that claim. They claim to have found secondary evidence of rape after the fact but even this dubious Israeli investigation isn't claiming to have it on video, let alone on livestream.

The word "rape" appears 309 times in the report, 29 of those as part of the phrase "gang rape". The section "Rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual assault" is five pages long, while the section on "filming and digital dissemination of SGBV" is three pages long. None of this is open for debate.

Why are we expected to unquestioningly believe Israeli war propaganda without debate, exactly? Putting aside the fact that it isn't even claiming what you claimed.

It is so, so tiresome how you immediately pivot to arguments-as-soldiers mode. You demand evidence that Hamas did the things I claimed, I provide it, and you instantly pivot to "well Israel is just as bad so who cares". We weren't debating whether Israel was just as bad as Hamas, or who is worse: we were debating whether Hamas really did the things they filmed themselves doing and disseminated. It is a simple factual question, not an ethical one.

Nope, you made a false claim, you provided "evidence" from a dubious source that doesn't even back up your false claim and now you're going on a hysterical rant about things I never said.

Only if your worldview depends on you failing to understand what's right in front of your nose. The rape, gang rape, sexual abuse, torture and humiliation committed on October 7th was exhaustively documented, perhaps an outright majority of it by the perpetrators themselves.

I mean, if Hamas livestreamed themselves committing gang rape then surely a link to it exists somewhere, right? Why are you unable to provide this clear, irrefutable evidence that would instantly resolve this dispute, rather than paging through entirely secondhand Israeli war propaganda reports?

I mean, if Hamas livestreamed themselves committing gang rape then surely a link to it exists somewhere, right?

AIUI that would be considered rape porn and nonconsensual* porn (usually given dysphemistic legal names) in basically all jurisdictions, and therefore illegal to (host, view, download, link to) (maybe strike out the last one in the US), and therefore purged from all legal websites including the ones that normally function as anti-Orwell archives. I suspect that @FtttG doesn't want to literally commit crimes trawling darknet sites in order to commit more crimes supplying you with a link to illegal material.

I get that this is a bit frustrating when the illegal material is also (if it exists) critical historical evidence.

*As in, not all the people in the video consented to the publication of the video.

LiveLeak has been shut down (news to me), and apparently its successor website is ItemFix. I did do a cursory search of ItemFix which didn't return anything relevant: it seems pretty light on war footage across the board (it seems police bodycam footage is their bread and butter). I didn't look any further than that; besides LiveLeak, I don't know where one would locate this kind of footage, nor do I especially care to find out. If respectable academic researchers have watched this footage and confirmed that it depicts what I believed it to depict, that's good enough for me.

It's not like I even want to watch gory footage of Hamas raping and torturing people, but it sure would be nice if their Western apologists could see exactly what it is they're defending instead of retreating into these "false flag" muh Hannibal doctrine evasions.

If you'd prefer me to amend my comment to "Numerous witnesses independently witnessed Hamas squaddies gang-raping women on October 7th; Hamas squaddies filmed and publicly disseminated footage of them assaulting, humiliating and sexually torturing women; but they did not, strictly speaking, livestream themselves gang-raping women", then fair enough. But this seems like just about the most macabre kind of hair-splitting I've ever encountered.

Even then, if a group of armed men surrounded a woman and collectively forced her to undress before humiliating and sexually torturing her, I think few people would object to characterising that as "gang rape", even if technically none of the men forcibly penetrated the woman with his penis. Likewise if the men in question were wearing GoPros on their person, I think few people would object to characterising that as "a group of men filmed/livestreamed themselves committing gang rape", even if, again, none of the men forcibly penetrated the woman with his penis.

But why am I even saying any of this? You've preemptively decided that any factual claim that makes Hamas look bad and portrays Israelis as victims is "Zionist propaganda". You've preemptively decided that any organisation advancing any factual claim that makes Hamas look bad and portrays Israelis as victims is therefore a sinister Zionist organisation. I might as well argue with a brick wall.

I ask for evidence of this happening and it turns out that, in fact, you have no such evidence whatsoever. No such livestream exists. You lied. You made it up. Why did you do that?

If this specific claim turns out to be untrue and you want to accuse me of having been duped by Israeli war propaganda, then go for it. But I didn't "make up" this claim. It did not originate with me.

you're going on a hysterical rant about things I never said.

Dude, it's right there. You said "Also with the possible exception of the abuse/mocking/burning of female corpses basically all of these accusations would hold true if you replaced "Hamas" with "Israel"."

I mean, if Hamas livestreamed themselves committing gang rape then surely a link to it exists somewhere, right?

There is the film Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre, which edits hundreds of hours of Hamas-produced footage into a 47-minute documentary. According to people who've seen it, some of the Hamas-captured footage implies sexual violence has recently taken place. Netanyahu defended the decision to publicly screen the footage on the grounds that, without doing so, people would deny or downplay the extent of Hamas's brutality. Sadly, it didn't have the desired effect, if your reaction is any indication.

In addition, the Civil Commission maintains a more extensive archive of footage, although for obvious reasons it isn't a publicly accessible database. They are planning to give access to academic and legal professionals over time. I look forward to the day when several of these individuals watch the footage, confirm that the linked report described its contents accurately, and get immediately dismissed as "Zionist shills" by you and your ilk.

Andrew Fox claims to have seen footage which was not included in the aforementioned documentary:

Back in 2024, with a visiting group of senior military officers, I was shown part of the sexual crime evidence discussed in the Civil Commission report released today; evidence far beyond the infamous 47-minute reel. It remains the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my life, which to this day causes my voice to hoarsen and the hair to stand up on my arms when I talk about it.

There are things that permanently alter your sense of what human beings can do to one another. There are images and details that do not fade, because they are not merely violent; they are desecrations. They are crimes against the body, against the dead, against the living, and against the idea that humanity has limits... the rapes are what [Hamas] are most desperate to deny. Every time I have written about what I have seen, the response has differed from the usual abuse. The bots arrive in far greater numbers. The replies are filled with smears, mockery, deflection and outright denial. The purpose is not persuasion. It is intimidation. It is to make bearing witness so exhausting, so poisonous, and so socially costly that people stop doing it.

But I know you've already dismissed his account as lies.

entirely secondhand Israeli war propaganda reports

I have a very hard time believing that the only reason you don't believe this report is that it's "secondhand information". I don't think you would immediately change your mind and accept that Hamas really did what they're accused of doing if you personally spoke to the people who attended Nova and confirmed to you the things they'd witnessed.

this seems like just about the most macabre kind of hair-splitting I've ever encountered

Yes, but it's still important. There is a significant value in truth and precision. If nothing else, it prevents people from saying, "Aha! You were lying or exaggerating about this, clearly I can disregard the rest of your claims equally!"

If you're not prepared to stand behind a claim, you shouldn't make it.

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This is exactly what I would expect. Of course both sides do it. "Law and order is good, except jan 6th does not apply."

"Police shooting unarmed civilians is bad, except jan 6th does not apply."

There's a whole internet joke about white women liking to have sex with dogs, which is a good sign that it's possible to get dogs to fuck someone without having to look it up myself. And once you get to "horny dogs will fuck humans" level, I'm not sure why its unbelievable that you could train them to do it. Heck, you probably don't even need to train them much, fucking is a natural instinct if they haven't been neutered and tons of animals commit rape. Hell bottlenose dolphins apparently even form rape gangs together. If you believe you can train a dog to chase someone down and hold them in place, why not rape?

That doesn't mean the NYT story is true, but "a dog would never do that" seems like extreme innocence at best. Yeah, a dog would never maul a child to death either I suppose.

It's possible that the internet joke is, uh, false.

Having had and trained dogs before, my suspicion is that male dog on human bestiality cases involve adolescent dogs and that adult males require the stimulation of an ovulating female canine- a quick google search shows that introducing one is de rigeur for canine artificial insemination. 'Dogs trained to rape people' is a standard lefty accusation at regimes they don't like(Pinochet, Israel, etc), but as a particular torture method it seems odd that it crops up in every regime the left is mad at and only regimes the left is mad at, rather than also being eg a Cuban thing.

It's possible that the internet joke is, uh, false.

Having had and trained dogs before, my suspicion is that male dog on human bestiality cases involve adolescent dogs and that adult males require the stimulation of an ovulating female canine- a quick google search shows that introducing one is de rigeur for canine artificial insemination.

If you spend 10 minutes looking on the internet in earnest, it's trivial to find amateur pornography videos disproving this.

It's possible that the internet joke is, uh, false.

It's possible but you must excuse me for not wanting to find any actual proof for this particular thing. Do not want to see that. But there does seem to be secondary evidence it might have happened before

Thankfully it doesn't describe in detail what exactly they did, but also that means I don't know if intercourse between male dogs and humans happens since sexual activity could be other things.

but as a particular torture method it seems odd that it crops up in every regime the left is mad at and only regimes the left is mad at, rather than also being eg a Cuban thing.

Ya know what fine, let's find some other examples.

Apparently the serial rapist (and suspected serial killer) "Toy box killer" was also accused of using his dog to rape victims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Parker_Ray

Ray used soundproofing methods on a semi-trailer, which he called his "Toy Box", and equipped it with items used for sexual torture. He would kidnap about four or five women a year, holding each of them captive for two to three months. During this period he would sexually abuse his victims and often torture them with surgical instruments, sometimes inviting his friends, wife, or even his male dog to rape the victim.

And here's one of a pitbull raping a child

When she got in the room, she told Lockport Police the dog, named "Bear", had sodomized the toddler. The mother screamed, scaring the dog out of the house, but the dog was still attached to the baby. One neighbor told WGRZ-TV she heard the mother screaming "The dog is raping my baby." Neighbors ran to help, but only one man was able to get the dog and child apart.

Well time to go clean out my brain of this awful imagery.

AFAIK Toy Box had a ton of absolutely insane claims and it's somewhat hard to tell where what he actually did stopped and what he fantasized about doing started.

That there are some stories of dogs penetrating humans doesn't really tell us much about this particular story. There are going to be extremes in every species, much as the existence of Usain Bolt doesn't demonstrate that every human can run a 10-second 100m.

The question is: can you train presumably multiple dogs to do it on command? Can they even do it, given the size and difficulty of anal penetration? The extent to which the woman+dog meme is true it would very likely involve vaginal penetration.

That there are some stories of dogs penetrating humans doesn't really tell us much about this particular story.

Yeah, we don't know if this particular accusation is true. We just at least have good reason to believe that dogs penetrating and even raping human orifices is a thing that has happened.

Never imagined I'd be posting this on a Wednesday morning, but I think applying the word rape to animal behavior is unnecessarily anthropomorphic. A dog doesn't rape, it just goes with its instincts. Rape is a human term involving consent, etc.

On the one hand, yes, on the other hand, there are two not counter- but attentuating examples:

  1. You can rape someone with a broomstick. So technically, you can rephrase "a dog raped a human" to "a human raped another human with a dog they trained"
  2. If a mentally impaired adult human male violently restrains an unwilling adult human female and copulates with her, what should the female say happened to her?

In your second example (God help me for discussing this) the male has acted willfully to con/re strain the woman, thus his act can be considered rape, impairment or no. By me, I mean. I am certainly not a lawyer and cannot adjudicate this in any sort of legal sense in any jurisdiction. It wouldn't even matter if the restraint was violent. As long as she was unwilling, rape is the word. And importantly, he's human. He's acting on human impulses and has restrained her.

To answer your 1, yes that sounds about right. The human used the animal to violate/rape.

This is just my take but I honestly see it as the reasonable take. Change my view if you're (anyone) up for it. Or just let this discussion die.

Your comment makes me think now, of when, if ever, will androids gain whatever human qualities are required in order to be capable of raping a human? This seems like a potentially important threshold to cross in the realm of sex bots, given how common rape fantasies are among humans.

Never imagined I'd be posting this on a Wednesday morning

So what date/time would you have imagined?

Past five on a Friday is more typical.

In this context, there would pretty clearly be a human involved, so the term seems appropriate.

That's just my point though, calling it rape suggests a volition, a willful act against the consensual, as opposed to simply instinct. A human can rape, because rape is a human act, defined within human terms. A dog (or whatever we're talking about) cannot be defined within those terms, even if the human is unwilling. Presumably a dog would only have sex with a human if coerced or duped. I guess. I don't particularly want to know. Even if it did make it with a human, it would not be rape as such, though it would be a violation, and certainly unseemly and profane, if we can use those terms.

This reminds me of a time around 20 years ago sitting in a local dive, a college bar devoid of college students, with a friend of mine, he was flipping through a magazine, one of many the owner had left at the bar, some biker/art/alternative magazine. On one page was a blonde Japanese woman showing a good deal of leg, walking what appeared to be a Pyrenees or Samoyed. I was an idiot and had been drinking and made a stupid joke: "Turn the page and she'll be fucking that dog."

He turned the page. I hadn't got it quite right, as the dog was humping her. Not her leg, if you understand my meaning. I never looked at that bar's magazines after that. Anyway they closed their big swinging door about a decade later.

You can disagree about the word rape here, it's fine, it's not something I care that deeply about, just my sense. I used to be annoyed at the reddit crowd when someone would remark on dolphins' mental capacity and the tendency to be protective of humans in open water, then to many thousands of upvotes someone would counter testily "Yeah but fuck dolphins, they're rapists." This seems the same kind of naïve misconstruing of animal behavior as the people who keep chimpanzees as pets and call them "part of the family".

apologies, my phrasing was ambiguous; obviously there's a human victim, but also a human perpetrator. A human raped another human, using a dog as a tool.

Your distinction seems reasonable, but the dolphins thing I've heard before and still is a bit horrifying. I think you're right that it's assigning far more moral agency than a dolphin can actually support, but on the other hand the idea that dolphins are approaching human-smart is endemic in most contexts, and I've heard rumors of them getting nonconsensually amorous with humans. There's an element of "it doesn't matter if they don't understand why this is wrong, I do".

I guess that's just another reason to stay clear of deep water.

I love the argument that dogs have sex with humans, yes, but they can't rape humans because they have an instinctual understanding of the Oberlin model of consent.

You know I always just assumed the vast majority of dog beastiality was like receptive oral where the human smears peanut butter on their genetalia or the dog is the receptive one either vaginally or anally.

I suppose training an adolescent dog to be the one penetrating is possible but it seems extremely difficult; aren’t dog members not nearly as stiff as humans? I don’t know how much anal sex you’ve had but it’s an “out” hole and it fights back more than a bit when compared to a vagina, unless it’s been really “trained up” so to speak.

Someone up thread described this as essentially a blood libel and it seems more likely; dogs are a very specific Arab / Muslim taboo so it smells like a maximally offensive myth made specifically to inflame an already maximally uncharitable audience primed to believe basically anything.

To my mind it reminds me of the 19th century Indian revolt against the British Empire. One of the precursors was a rumor spread amongst Indians serving as auxiliaries that the rifle cartridges were stored in beef fat. And crucially for my point, they told the Muslims that they were stored in pork fat. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?

Plus, if you wanted to sexually brutalize prisoners there’s a lot easier ways to do it. We got a ton of examples of this.

Ironically this reminds me a bit of that old /pol/ bit about holocaust survivors talking about nazis freezing Jews with dry ice and putting them on mine carts so that they smash into a million pieces looney toons style. Way too baroque to be true but the ones spinning the yarn are given maximum charity due to their “victim” status.

The “Dogs raping prisoners” schtick is a double blood libel as well as it’s a pretty standard lefty canard against any unfavorable regime; I believe the same accusations were leveled against Pinochet, Franco, the Greek Military Junta, etc, etc. usually the CIA is invoked, as is tradition.

A final point; this to me is also illustrative of how certain sexual topics that are politically explosive are difficult to discuss because people are understandably reluctant to engage with the mechanics of the subject. I think for example the backlash against LGBQT ideology only could grow because increasing numbers of people were willing to frankly describe, outside of the gatekeepers eye, the physical acts being performed routinely in great detail. The rest followed.

frankly describe, outside of the gatekeepers eye, the physical acts being performed routinely in great detail

Oral and anal sex? Non-monogamy? I know they do that. "They" being a portion of gay men. You got something more scandalous?

”Quantity has a quality all its own.”

Very few people are scandalized by anal sex nowadays, it’s the fact that the average gay men has an astronomical amount of sexual partners compared to heterosexual men, and the most sexually active 10% of the population are essentially the male version of Bonnie Blue.

This combined with the prevalence of PreP usage, which is shockingly high to the average heterosexual, are the things that as they become common knowledge dismantle a lot of the “shucks, they’re just like us” line that the 90s and the 2000s cultural era built up so carefully.

In urban settings you can get a blowjob off of grindr faster than you can get a goddamn pizza delivered.

In the 90s and 2000s politically active homophobia used to be basically just the province of right wing religious types, that ship has sailed as we learn a lot more things than we wanted to know about each other via social media. Now it’s increasingly normal for secular people to be disgusted by this sexual culture, even if they keep it to themselves in public.

The whole monkey pox episode was a microcosm of this, once it seemed obvious it was sexual transmitted and certain people couldn’t stop sucking and fucking bareback at an extraordinary rate in order to actually combat the outbreak, it was dropped as a story. But people noticed, and remembered.

My favorite line about hyper partisanship in the social media age when magical “algorithms” are brought to be the ritual scapegoat in the divided society, I simply say “No, we just know a lot more about each other because we volunteer what would have been private or semi-private information freely to huge audiences. Certain groups were encouraged and told no behavior from them can be shameful. So now we know much more about each other and have collectively decided we don’t like each other much.”

Or to put it another way “They’re not confessing, they’re bragging.

What physical acts, outside of the gatekeepers eye?

[cw: exactly what you think from the block quote]

I suppose training an adolescent dog to be the one penetrating is possible but it seems extremely difficult; aren’t dog members not nearly as stiff as humans?

Dogs, like most non-primate mammals, have an os penis bone. When fully aroused, the combination of bone and hydraulic pressure makes the penis very firm even compared to the typical human erection, though the root of the knot is flexible. Much of the complication comes because canine sexuality has some process difference such that full erection rarely happens before penetration.

((There's a lot of very life-like furry fandom sex toys and discussions and images out there. Actual zoosexuality is rare and Frowned On, to be blunt, but the line gets fuzzy when a major vendor sells lifecast toys. I'll avoid going into more detail for the sake of anyone wanting to keep down their dinner.))

That bone also makes them extremely vulnerable, as for a whole lot of complicated biomechanical reasons both the penis membrane/skin itself and the bone is very delicate.

I'm... aware enough of certain scandals to suspect that at least some dogs could be trained to mount a specific person without a massive level of other infrastructure, but I'm skeptical it could be done at the scale, organization, and direction claimed here. And then you need the motives on top of that.

I'm... aware enough of certain scandals

Colby 2012 #NeverForget

“Zoophilia: Much more than you wanted to know!”

... the awkward part is that there's probably a lot of untapped ground in an essay like that: since most writers either approach the topic from both moral and disgust opposition, or from the derpitarian position that ignores the moral issues by waving at the disgust reaction, actually engaging seriously with the moral ramifications while not being disgusted by the physical mechanics could be genuinely novel ground.

But by definition, it's the sort of story no one actually wants to read. Which probably answers is a bigger change to the "backlash against LGBQT ideology only could grow because increasing numbers of people were willing to frankly describe, outside of the gatekeepers eye, the physical acts being performed routinely in great detail".

I don't like that we're describing every accusation as a blood libel now. I'm not a fan of creeping woke rhetorical norms.

The doctor above objected that while they had seen cases of dogs anally penetrating humans, it was always consensual. This is an absurd assertion: the dog has no concept of consent.

I remain blissfully ignorant on the practicality of this entire episode.

Not every accusation against the IDF is a blood libel, but this one seems bang on.

It has all the right texture; It combines religious / social taboo with maximally inflammatory claims with little to no regard for practicality or realism. It relies on Jews having almost a cosmic quality of evil to them, it’s borderline magical thinking.

For a counter example; the accusation of the IDF blowing up that school in Iran. Not a blood libel, just a plain old accusation of atrocities. Textbook stuff, the same type of propaganda and counter propaganda you might see for example in the Irish war for Independence or the American Civil War. Much more mundane.

For a counter example; the accusation of the IDF blowing up that school in Iran. Not a blood libel, just a plain old accusation of atrocities.

And here's the Free Press:

It was unsettling to watch California governor Gavin Newsom on Monday spouting off a rejiggered blood libel this week, and not simply because Democrats have mostly succumbed to a fashionable Jew hate.

The term Blood Libel is used constantly in the Pro-Israel press to refer to anything that anyone accuses the Jews of having done wrong. Accusations of Antisemitism have become the new thought terminating cliche.

Yep! You’ll get no argument from me that it’s overused almost as much the antisemitic tropes it’s being leveled against. People do indeed use the word for cases that don’t fit.

However, the “IDF Training dogs to anally rape Muslims” is almost a platonic example of a modern blood libel. It’s basically a perfect case.

That’s my point.

Exactly. Commentary from Jews about anti-semitism is generally so tedious and hysterical, it feels like I am living in a world where NPR never gave up their ridiculous campaigns against "anti-AAPI hate."

Which is why it is so dismaying to me to see this obvious lie about dog rape published in the New York Times; for once I am unable to roll my eyes when Jews claim "blood libel."

"Lord, protect me from my friends sympathetic press; I can handle my enemies on my own."

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