Day 208 roundtable: Debunking new 7 October "mass rapes" hoax; Israel insists on Rafah invasion

Last week, billionaire former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg released a sensational film purporting to document the mass rapes Israel claims were carried out by Hamas fighters on 7 October.

“Screams Before Silence,” as the film is called, has already garnered more than 600,000 views on YouTube alone.

It is being heavily promoted by such figures as former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ostensibly progressive Congressman Ro Khanna, the Israeli government and countless lobby groups and media figures.

Ali Abunimah broke down Sandberg’s film and showed how it is full of fabrications, distortions and lies, and does not present any credible evidence to support Israel’s atrocity propaganda.

Jump to Ali Abunimah’s segment here.

Meanwhile, as Israel vows to invade the southern city of Rafah, the American-backed genocide in Gaza looks set to escalate far beyond the indescribable levels of death, atrocity, depravity and suffering the world has been unable or unwilling to stop for 208 days.

We were joined by our contributor Donya Abu Sitta, who reported on the current situation on the ground in Gaza for her family and community.

Jump to Donya Abu Sitta’s segment here.

In the second hour, Jon Elmer analyzed the military situation, including the latest videos from the resistance in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen.

Jump to Jon Elmer’s segment here.

Ali, Jon, Asa Winstanley and I discussed the insistence by Israeli officials of a full-scale, catastrophic invasion of Rafah and the violent crackdowns by police on student organizing in the US.

We talked about how students and faculty demanding an end to the genocide are being smeared as anti-Semites by President Joe Biden.

Their own universities are punishing them and setting police and state troopers on them to violently break up peaceful protests, in scenes of government brutality not seen on college campuses since the 1960s.

Jump to the group discussion here.

And I began the show with a news report from over the past few days in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as campus protests in New York and California.

Jump to the news report here.

These are just some of the many topics we cover on The Electronic Intifada livestream. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

With Ali Abunimah, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Jon Elmer, Tamara Nassar and Asa Winstanley