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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.
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.
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).
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.
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?
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.)
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?
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!”
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:
The enemy sometimes rapes our people!
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?
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