Debunked accounts of Hamas’s sexual crimes fuel debates over Israel’s war

Chaim Otmazgin's initial claim of sexual violence during a Hamas attack was debunked, sparking a global debate on the truth.

Chaim Otmazgin had tended to dozens of shot, burned or mutilated bodies before he reached the home that would put him at the center of a global clash.

Working in a kibbutz that was ravaged by Hamas’ October 7 attack, Mr. Otmazgin — a volunteer commander with ZAKA, an Israeli search and rescue organisation — saw the body of a teenager, shot dead and separated from her family in a different room. Her pants had been pulled down below her waist. He thought that was evidence of sexual violence.

He alerted journalists to what he’d seen. He tearfully recounted the details in a nationally televised appearance in the Israeli Parliament. In the frantic hours, days and weeks that followed the Hamas attack, his testimony ricocheted across the world.

But it turns out that what Mr. Otmazgin thought had occurred in the home at the kibbutz hadn’t happened.

Beyond the numerous and well-documented atrocities committed by Hamas militants on October 7, some accounts from that day, like Mr. Otmazgin’s, proved untrue.

“It’s not that I invented a story,” Mr. Otmazgin told AP in an interview, detailing the origins of his initial explosive claim — one of two by ZAKA volunteers about sexual violence that turned out to be unfounded.

“I couldn’t think of any other option” other than the teen having been sexually assaulted, he said. “At the end, it turned out to be different, so I corrected myself.”