[firefoxd]

The language in the article would be fascinating if it wasn't such a horrible thing.

It's not that the Israeli soldiers are sexually assaulting Palestinians, instead they are using Sexual Assault.

Later they say "Sexualised violence is used...", "men and boys were Targeted..."

It's like there is a gun shooting people, or someone using a gun. But we can't connect fully understand how or who is perpetuating it.

Edit: some more:

"Israeli soldiers present during abuse had repeatedly failed to prevent it..." Who was abusing?

[fwipsy]

I don't think the passive voice is meant to protect the perpetrators. Instead, they are presenting sexual assault as a deliberate tactic or policy, or at least a common pattern. If true, this is a much bigger story than isolated incidents of violence. But sixteen reported cases over three years seems very low. Likely there are more cases they missed. Mainly it seems like they have very little data.

[datsci_est_2015]

As the sibling comments point out, in isolation your argument would be reasonable, but within the context of the decades-long conflict, and English-language media in general, passive voice is very much used to soften the blow of damning reports against figures of authority and other privileged peoples.

[sillystuff]

The passive voice and dishonest language is often used by British and US corporate and state media when describing atrocities committed by Israeli Jews.

"Some Palestinians are dead." Implying, "They seem to have just died. Nobody knows what happened." To describe the countless massacres of Palestinians by Israeli Jews

E.g., the BBC reported an IDF soldier, in uniform, who was captured as a prisoner of war as, "A young girl was kidnapped by Hammas." The BBC also reported on an 8 year old little girl who was kidnapped by the IDF and held as a hostage as, "a woman who was detained."

The BBC is still at it with the Israel-US illegal war of aggression against Iran. They reported that "180 people died" in the triple-tap strike on the school that murdered 165 young children, mostly little girls. The BBC also did not mention that it was a triple-tap strike where subsequent strikes killed rescue workers, parents coming to find their children, and 10s of children who had survived the first strike.

The UK (and Germany) are as bad as the US for media and government controlled by Zionists.

[Hikikomori]

See it in EU news as well. They're essentially free PR for IDF.

[appreciatorBus]

More likely, they already knew what they wanted to say, data or no data: Israel/US, bad: global revolution, good. They have to keep the pressure up so they need to write papers and get articles written about those papers and then get them posted on hacker news regardless of what actually happened. It’s a constant grind, but I suppose it will all be worth it for them if they get appointed on the committee of the vanguard or something like that.

[Tostino]

So you don't view the genocide that's happening right now as bad? Or the US support for it? Noted.

[insane_dreamer]

Most likely the settlers. If you start researching the violence by settlers in the West Bank and what they do to try to push out Palestinians and grab more of their land, it's horrifying. And the settlers are not your average Israeli -- they are the most hard-core Zionist Israelis (many of them foreigners)--that's explicitly why they are there in the first place. The pattern has been repeating for decades: Israeli army occupies some land in the WB, gives the land for free plus subsidized living to hardline Zionists who are armed and willing and able to defend and hold the land. Those people abuse the neighboring Palestinians to drive them away, and the now "empty" land can be occupied, the illegal settlement expanded, bring in more people. Rinse and repeat. Even though the settlements have been declared illegal over and over again by the UN and even previous US governments, Israel just ignores all of that. As long as there are "talks" going on, it can continue to slowly gobble up the WB and push the Palestinians into Jordan or an ever shrinking piece of land, just like Gaza.

[woggy]

Look up the article in Ha'aretz recently "IDF Soldiers Talk About the 'Moral Injury' – and the Silence" for another example of this. I mean, I am glad they are talking about it, but the way it is framed is maddening.

[culi]

The settlers. They are there illegally and do illegal things but the soldiers are there to provide them with functional immunity

[sillystuff]

> Who was abusing?

Israeli Jews. Both IDF soldiers and civilians.

Rape was always a weapon by the Israeli Jews. Remember that every accusation made by the Israeli Jews is an admission.

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/report-of-the-commission...

Israeli Jews recently got out into the streets to protest for the right to rape, after some soldiers were prosecuted for a recorded rape of a Palestinian prisoner where a long knife blade was inserted into body orifices during the rape. The whisleblower was condemned while the rapists were celebrated.

https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/israelis-rio...

[throw_a_grenade]

> Who was abusing?

It's possible that in some cases it was settlers. So technically not soldiers. But soldiers protected them, incl. from any resisting abuse.

[ojbyrne]

The article starts with “Israeli soldiers and settlers” so presumably the answer to your question is settlers.