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"It's a real outcome" != "a modal recruit's priority".
"Alright, there are approximately 0.1% odds I'll get captured, per year... They might sodomize me with a chair leg, but I can risk that if it's to defend my homeland. ... wait, what's that? They using DOGS now?! Absolutely no chance then!"
It works much better as atrocity porn to rile them up than to deter them.
You are not modeling the modal recruit accurately.
The 13 known rape cases are not the minimum bound of rape cases, as the author notes.
The chance of being captured is at least 2,350 out of 20,000, given figures on the number of Hamas militants.
Humans respond to stories more than statistical probability. Humans will decide not to swim if they hear a story about shark attacks. The chance of a shark attack is much less than the chance of being placed in an Israeli rape dungeon, where there is the continual fear of being raped.
You are not imagining being a human in a social ecosystem which values familial honor more than anything and where rape is shameful, such that some families would kill their own child if they were raped. You are not imagining being a 75-90iq Hamas recruit. We live in “mattress girl” country where being a rape victim gives you support and arguably honor. It is very hard for us to imagine the mindset of an Islamist in Gaza.
All the rape stories are aversive. The dog rape is just extra subversive.
I keep having to say this: they do not need to be riled up in a demoralizing way when they are already riled up in better ways. The starvation, the land grabs, the grandmothers killed, the aid workers killed are all better focuses. This is why nations in history have never used “they’re raping our POWs” as their propaganda of choice, even in non-honor cultures. When Caesar was sent off to another king, the rumor of his being raped stayed with him his entire lifetime, harming him. And Islamic culture is even more rape averse than Ancient Rome, by a lot.
The 90 IQ Hamas recruit I'm imagining is not going to be moved by a dog rape story noticeably more than a regular rape story. They are both beyond the pale.
The explanation that best fits what I observe is that this story is intended for credulous Westerners primed to see Israel as a country uniquely evil even among the rest of warmongering nationalist states.
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