This June 8, 2026 “CAMERA Eye on the Media” Op-Ed by CAMERA’s Tamar Sternthal appeared in JNS.
“Rape is a more heinous crime than murder since the rape victim dies throughout the period she lives,” Indian author and psychologist Dr. Amit Abraham reportedly said. The rapist completely strips his victim of any agency, dehumanizing the victim into nothing more than an object of sadistic cruelty.
What kind of parent would choose to subject their children to such horrors?
A May 29 article in the Associated Press, “War and displacement in Gaza are fueling a rise in early marriage,” blames child marriages and rape of young Palestinian teens in the Gaza Strip not on the Palestinian adults responsible for those crimes—their parents, who agreed to these unholy unions, along with the mothers-in-law who pinned the children to the wall as their rapists sons allegedly consummated their marriages to 13- and 14-year-olds—but on Israel.
“The devastation that Israel’s campaign has wreaked in Gaza has helped fuel an increase in marriages of young girls, according to experts and official data,” write AP’s Toaq Ezzidin and Wafaa Shurafa. “With almost the entire population driven from their homes, most living in squalid camps and dependent on aid, some parents have sought some financial stability for their teen daughters by giving them away in marriage.”
The article alleges that Israel’s post-Oct. 7 war against Hamas is responsible for the horrific fate of the children featured in the story: “All the parents said that if not for the war, they would have never resorted to marrying off their daughters so young.”
Media watchdog CAMERA has long faulted the AP, a leading international news agency, for stripping Palestinians of any agency or responsibility for their own plight.
Read the rest of CAMERA’s Op-Ed at JNS.