‘Holocaust Denial’: Yale Campus Newspaper Removes Claim That Hamas Raped Women, Beheaded Men

Yale’s campus newspaper, the Yale Daily News, the oldest college daily in the United States, removed claims from a column in its paper saying Hamas raped women and beheaded men in its murderous attack on Israel October 7, saying they were “unsubstantiated claims.”

Following Hamas’ attack on Israel, Yalies4Palestine posted a statement on its official Instagram page holding “the Israeli Zionist regime responsible for the unfolding violence,” The New York Post reported.

The October 12 column, written by Yale sophomore Sahar Tartak, who also serves as the editor of the Yale Free Press, was titled, “Is Yalies4Palestine a hate group?”

At the end of a column by @sahar_tartak, editors at @yaledailynews affixed a “correction,” saying claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men are “unsubstantiated.” @Yale’s student newspaper is running cover for Hamas. https://t.co/NPIrIXcdqf pic.twitter.com/6YopEnG50X

— Zach Kessel (@zach_kessel) October 30, 2023

I'll add that they removed references of women being raped from not one, but two articles. https://t.co/szLVpCu5lf

— Sahar Tartak🇮🇱 (@sahar_tartak) October 30, 2023

This is Holocaust denial in real time at @yaledailynews. https://t.co/tK0gAZ2EoN

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) October 30, 2023

“You weren’t one of the 3,500 present, and you fortunately weren’t one of the 260 murdered,” Tartak wrote of the music festival in Israel that was one of the targets of Hamas. “You fortunately weren’t abducted by Hamas fighters (if you’re a woman, child or elderly person), or shot or beheaded or killed in some other creative way on the spot (if you’re a man). You certainly weren’t Shani Louk, the young woman with a bullet in her head depicted stripped to her underwear with her legs ‘bent at unnatural angles’ in the back of a pickup truck driven by the men.”

“This sort of barbarism went on throughout Israel this weekend, committed by Hamas terrorists from Gaza who seemed intent on killing as many Jews as possible,” she continued. “Yes, they kidnapped children. Yes, they cheered the whole time. It’s all on video.”

“You can imagine my horror to find that Yalies4Palestine decided that the murderers are absolved of their responsibility in an Instagram post that holds ‘the Israeli Zionist regime responsible for the unfolding violence,’ thereby justifying the use of unlawful violence against civilians (again: terror),” she noted. “An original Y4P post called on ‘the Yale community to celebrate the resistance’s success.’”

“Anyone with eyes can see that streets lined with dead civilian bodies are a bad thing,” she commented. “Mothers screaming for their children? Bad thing. Do I have to go on? Watch the videos before you celebrate ‘the resistance,’ I urge you. If you’re any sort of human being at all, they’ll make you sick. Imagine it’s you or your mother or your little brother. Would you call that resistance? No. Who would you blame? I’d blame the perpetrator — not the victim. Campus hate groups, which I define by their support for terror, are free to disagree. But you don’t want to be a part of that.”

“There is no place for student organizations who publicly celebrate the murder and kidnapping of innocent civilians. Y4P glorifies terrorism, cloaking it in the language of justice and human rights to feign innocence. For shame,” she wrote.

“You were not at the music festival. You didn’t open your door to a man with a gun zip-tying your hands behind your back and shoving you into his car. Your corpse isn’t being desecrated and spat on. Neither is your grandmother’s. Your little siblings are safe at home,” she concluded. “You have a choice. You can mourn with us. Or you can celebrate.”

Update: After substantial backlash, the Yale Daily News retracted the editor’s notes which claimed that the statement “Hamas raped women” was “unsubstantiated.”

“These corrections erroneously created the impression that, as of late October, there still was not enough publicly available evidence for those horrific acts,” the the paper’s note said. “The News therefore retracts those editor’s notes in their entirety and without qualification. The notes have been removed from the columns, and the original text has been restored.”

“It was never the News’ intention to minimize the brutality of Hamas’ attack against Israel. We are sorry for any unintended consequences to our readership and will ensure that such erroneous and damaging material does not make it into our content, either as opinion or as news,” the note continued.