What has happened
The Telegraph has published an article which misrepresents comments I made last week on Twitter and used that misrepresentation to defame me as a denier of the rapes that occurred during the Hamas attacks on October 7.
Archive: https://archive.is/dPEV4
Why I am writing this
I am asking all those who support my work or have a principles objection to people being deliberately misrepresented for political purposes, to write a complaint to The Telegraph.
The complaints form is here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/contact-us/editorial-complaints
The complaint should be made under violation of the IPSO Editor’s Code of Practice, which The Telegraph is signed up to.
What I Want
I want The Telegraph to remove my name entirely from the article, because given its theme there is no amendment that could be made that would not constitute the implication that I am a rape denier.
I would also like them to publish a retraction and an apology, and I would like Nicole Lampert to tweet her acknowledge of that retraction.
Substance of the Complaint
I have written a thread also detailing the misrepresentation https://x.com/janeclarejones/status/2055717244261257417?s=20
1. On May 15 The Telegraph published an article by Nicole Lampert titled ‘Why do feminists refuse to believe that Hamas raped Jewish women?’ I am cited in the article:
“On being asked why she, and some other prominent British feminists, had failed to even tweet about the report, Dr Jane Clare Jones wrote: “We think it’s flagrant racism and dehumanisation being used in order to justify war crimes and ethnic cleansing.””
2. This is a deliberate misrepresentation of the context of my tweet.
This is the actual question I was responding to:
If you summarise the two conversations next to each other the significant change in meaning becomes evident.
3. In the context of the discussion of October 7 and the response in Gaza, I was effectively responding to a question about why some women would deny that Palestinian/Muslim men are worse than other men/Israeli men. I argued that presenting Muslim/Palestinian men as uniquely barbaric is racist and is part of the mechanism of justifying the excessively violent response of the Israeli state to those attacks.
This conversation took place following the release of The New York Times piece by Nicholas Kristoff on the rape of Palestinians by Israeli forces:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/opinion/israel-palestinians-sexual-violence.html Archive: https://archive.is/BpYvK.
Many pro-Israeli women dismissed this article and made a performative demonstration of cancelling their NYT subscriptions on social media. Given the amount of investment in claiming that some women have dismissed the rapes by Hamas, this seemed like a pretty egregious double standard.
My position on this issue is informed by the historical facts, and the feminist analysis of rape, which maintains that rape as a war weapon is used by men of all ethnicities, nationalities and creeds. My position is not that Hamas did not commit rapes. It is that they did, and that so did the Israelis, because this is a feature of how men behave in wars, and especially wars marked by territorial/ethnic conflict. My belief, as a laid out in the tweet below, is that asserting that this is a feature of only some men, or that the men of ‘the enemy’s’ tribe are uniquely barbaric, is a feature of tribalism, and is not consistent with the feminist analysis of rape.
4. Lampert’s deliberate misrepresentation was designed to present me as saying that reporting of the crimes on October 7 is de facto racist. The larger purpose of this is to present me as a rape denier or rape apologist.
This is made clear by my inclusion in an article on this theme, and by the positioning of my quote directly below a sentence about “all those who denied the rapes [On Otober 7].”
5. Deliberately misrepresentation of the context of my quote in order to accuse me of rape denial is a baseless lie. I have never denied the occurrence of the rapes on October 7, and nobody will be able to provide any evidence to substantiate the claim that I have.
6. This is a direct attack on my reputation as a feminist thinker and writer. It is a particularly egregious attack given that rape is my area of academic expertise. My PhD is on the philosophy of rape, and I have written extensively on the role of rape in territorial and ethnic conflicts, and in far-right thinking.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/2493
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jul/27/breivik-anti-feminism
https://kjonnsforskning.no/en/2015/10/ideals-purity-create-misogyny
https://www.academia.edu/129012140/Dehumanizing_Women_and_the_Territorial_Logic_of_Rape
Example of Compliant
Here are some examples of complaints put in by friends.
Zoe Strimpel’s Article
Following Lampert’s article, The Telegraph has now published another article by Zoe Strimpel on the subject of feminists denying the rapes on October 7.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/16/why-i-can-no-longer-call-myself-a-feminist
Archive: https://archive.is/0rvex#selection-3567.84-3571.27
The only direct quote given to evidence Strimpel’s claim that “Anti-Zionist rape denial is the biggest cluster of the red lines I’m talking about” is from Reem Alsalem, who is cited as saying that “No independent investigation found that rape took place on October 7.” This is also cited in Lampert’s piece.
Other evidence is a direct link to the piece in which I was defamed by Nicole Lampert, which is here glossed as a “perverse phenomenon” that “reared its ugly head the moment alleged feminists started denying Hamas’s sexual torture of Israeli women on (and after) October 7.” Therefore, a comment I made last week, which was not a denial of the rapes by Hamas, is effectively being used as evidence of a phenomenon that happened directly following October 7, 2023.
The third piece of evidence used by Strimpel refers to a statement at https://stopmanipulatingsexualassault.org/ which very clearly condemns all rape, and reiterates that condemnation multiple times. Strimpel claims this statement “stooped so low as to condemn Israel for “weaponising the issue of rape”, heavily implying that stating simple facts about the appalling crimes committed by the terrorists against women was racist and colonialist.”
Political Context and Stakes
The political issue here is the use of the horrific crimes on October 7 in order to justify the horrific crimes that have taken place subsequently during the Israeli assault on Gaza.
I have not denied or justified the events that took place on October 7, and all feminist women would be correct to be horrified by other women doing so.
What I have not done is expressed the view, either explicitly or implicitly that the crimes of October 7 are justification of the response.
What is happening here, both with respect to the deliberate and defamatory misrepresentation of my comments, and Strimpel’s misrepresentation of the statement against the ‘weaponisation’ of October 7, are instances of a concerted campaign to defame feminist women who oppose the atrocities in Gaza and oppose the use of rape to justify those atrocities, by accusing us of rape denial, or rape apology.
The fact that there have been two pieces in The Telegraph this week dedicated to the narrative of feminists as rape deniers, and that those narratives are so poorly evidenced, and depend on such clear and deliberate misrepresentation and defamations, is indicative of both how invested pro-Israeli feminist are in propagating this narrative and the significant political function that it serves. That function is to smear feminist women who oppose the actions of the Israeli state in Gaza, render the expression of that opposition politically and personally costly, and this to silence feminist criticism of events in which nearly forty thousand women and children have been killed. https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/press-release/2026/04/more-than-38000-women-and-girls-were-killed-in-gaza-between-october-2023-and-december-2025-un-women
Feminism, Rape and Patriarchal Violence
Feminism is a project committed to the humanity and rights of all women. Beyond that, it is an analysis of the mechanisms of domination which should stand against patriarchal and militaristic violence in all its forms. It must be committed to the assertion of fundamental humanity of all women, and indeed all men. Tribal and hierarchical mechanisms which rely on the dehumanisation and justification of violence against any group of human beings is inconsistent with feminist thinking and practice and are artefacts of the mechanisms of patriarchal domination.
As feminists we should be committed to the recognition of the humanity of both sides of the Israel/Palestine conflict, we should honour both sides needs and interests, and recognise that like all human beings, both sides are capable of grace and of engaging in heinous brutality.
It is our job to stand with the peacemakers, and to resist the mechanisms of tribalism, and manipulative lies, that are intended to make us take one side and dehumanise the other.
There are no conditions under which it is acceptable to dehumanise entire groups of people and justify violence against them.
That is patriarchy, not feminism.
Resist. Do not comply.
Jane Clare Jones 