Anti-Israel speakers at Republican event deny Hamas atrocities

One of the speakers denied that Hamas raped women, calling it a ‘psy-op’ concocted by Israel.

By Alan Goodman, The Washington Free Beacon

A group that sponsored an anti-Israel event at the National Republican Club in Washington, D.C., defended the event and questioned whether Hamas killed children and sexually assaulted women during the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.

The Committee for the Republic, which hosted speeches by anti-Israel activists Max Blumenthal and Miko Peled at the Capitol Hill Club in January, said the event was aimed at building an “informed public.”

They also requested “documentation of any Hamas rape” and “documentation that Hamas killed Israeli babies,” in an email to the Washington Free Beacon.

The email was in response to a Free Beacon report about the event, during which Blumenthal denied that Hamas raped women, calling it a “psy-op” concocted by Israel and argued that “no babies were killed on October 7.”

The news comes after multiple Capitol Hill Club members criticized the club for providing a platform for the speakers. The Capitol Hill Club’s membership includes nearly every Republican in Congress, as well as lobbyists, political staffers, and GOP donors.

“While the Committee for the Republic does not endorse statements made by speakers, we are committed to optimal factual accuracy. In that spirit, we invite you to provide sourced documentation of any Hamas rape of an Israeli woman on October 7,” wrote the Committee for the Republic vice chairman Bruce Fein in an email to the Free Beacon. “We invite you to provide us documentation that Hamas killed Israeli babies on Oct. 7.”

The group also asked the Free Beacon to “provide documentation that the ‘Israel lobby’ does not control members of Congress.”

During his Capitol Hill Club speech, Blumenthal called pro-Israel senator John Fetterman (D., Pa.) a “cyborg” whose brain had been “hacked” by the “Israel lobby.”

Hamas has denied allegations of sexual assault. That denial is contradicted by dozens of victims who reported witnessing rapes, testimony from medical officials who viewed bodies with signs of sexual assault such as torn genitals and pelvic fractures, and reported photographic evidence of female victims who were sexually mutilated.

While Hamas has denied killing children, that claim is also controverted by extensive evidence. Medical officials reported examining the bodies of dead babies as young as three months old among the 1,200 Israelis killed in the terrorist attacks. The Israeli government released photographs of two infants killed in the attacks, including one whose body was charred. A running list of victims whose names have been released includes a 1-day-old girl, a 10-month-old girl, and a 2-year-old boy.

A spokesman for the Capitol Hill Club told the Free Beacon that the statements made by Blumenthal and Peled do “not reflect the views of the great majority of our members,” and said the club wasn’t alerted to the views of the speakers until hours before the event. He said the issue is being handled internally.

During Blumenthal’s speech, he claimed Israel lied about the atrocities by Hamas in order to “compel Western support for what it was about to do, which was going to be essentially a convening of an Einsatzgruppen and reenactment society in Gaza.”

The Einsatzgruppen were Nazi death squads sent to eliminate the Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Peled also appeared to praise the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, saying that “every time [the Palestinians] dare, they succeed. The Israeli military was proven, clearly, to be nothing more than a paper tiger.”

“Every time [Israel is] put to the test, they’re humiliated, and they fail,” he said.