The latest Oct. 7 rape hoax propaganda piece from The Daily Mail insists that the only reason a woman at the Nova music festival wasn’t raped by Hamas members is that she had a scar – and falsely claims that “scars have a spiritual significance in the eyes of the terrorists.”
In one of its most brazen disinformation efforts in years, the British tabloid The Daily Mail has published a fake news story claiming that an Israeli woman who was permitted to leave by Hamas militants only avoided being sexually assaulted by showing her captors her scar.
According to the woman in question, May Hayat, she had been taken prisoner by “terrorists” at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, when she began to detect “an energy and look in their eyes that every woman knows what’s going to happen next.”
However, she insists the men declined to rape her because Muslims subscribe to a belief system under which “a scar like [hers] means a strong woman,” and “if something happened to her because of them, the 72 virgins they are promised will not come looking for them in heaven.”
This claim contradicts all known Islamic jurisprudence, including the mainstream Sunni doctrine espoused by Hamas – which forbids fighters (and men more generally) from carrying out sexual violence against women, and which does not in any way single out women with scars for special treatment.
But The Daily Mail article, entitled “October 7 survivor reveals how a childhood scar saved her from Hamas terrorists,” fully endorses Hayat’s extraordinarily suspicious claim. Hayat, the outlet states credulously, was later “told that such scars have a spiritual significance in the eyes of the terrorists.”
Hayat’s story, in which she now claims she narrowly avoided being raped, has changed significantly over the years. One month after the attack, Hayat alleged that she escaped her supposed Hamas captors, telling Reuters : “I could see how they were fighting over whether to kill me or not, and I ran away.”
Now, however, The Daily Mail writes that Hayat was actually freed when “the leader” of a Hamas cell acknowledged her scar, and “shook his head at his fellow terrorist before telling May she was free to go.”
It’s not The Daily Mail’s first attempt to launder Israeli rape hoax propaganda. In June 2024, The Grayzone revealed that what the tabloid billed as an “exclusive” story confirming Palestinians raped Israeli women on October 7 actually consisted of coerced confessions which were so full of contradictions about nonexistent victims that they are all but guaranteed to be false.
The author of that debunked report, Natalie Lisbona, has been photographed smiling with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for his involvement in war crimes in Gaza.
The author of this fake article, Natalie Lisbona, is an Israeli asset
She’s reported discredited claims that Palestinians burned babies on Oct 7 and ripped fetuses from pregnant women, claiming to have spoken to witnesses who didn’t exist
Here’s Lisbona with her de facto boss https://t.co/d3PjOngLRN pic.twitter.com/oBHzTmri1X
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 12, 2026
The latest article comes amid ongoing efforts by Israeli propagandists to downplay media coverage of the country’s documented systematic rape of kidnapped Palestinians by reviving the false narrative that Hamas members engaged in widespread sexual violence on October 7.
Read the full article at The Grayzone →
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