Haaretz sparked outrage online after a reporter tweeted, ''IDF soldiers don't rape Arab women due to racism."
Journalist Naama Riba was responding to a user who wrote: "I can't understand how people repeatedly connect rape to appearance instead of understanding that it's an act of the strong over the weak."
Riba wrote: "Principally, that's correct. In this case, IDF soldiers don't rape Arab women due to racism."
Editor of the Hashiloach journal, Sagiv Barmak, responded to her: "Or maybe, just maybe, IDF soldiers don't rape because they understand that rape is a horrific crime. Have you thought about that?"
One user responded: "Naama, how do we get to such a twisted state that allows you to write such a thing? What nonsense do you have to be exposed to during life for your brain to think like that?"
Another user added: "Why are you so sure? Even when Jews do something good or refrain from doing something bad, it's because they're bad? In the eyes of Hamas, we are the offspring of apes and pigs, that's real racism in my opinion, yet that didn't prevent them from raping."
In 2007, Hebrew University awarded a prize to a student who wrote a paper theorizing that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers' eyes.
At the time, Arutz-7 wrote: "Can't it just be that Israeli soldiers come from a culture that very much condemns rape? And why not mention the much-touted 'purity of arms,' i.e., the high moral conduct, of the Israeli Army?"
Amnon Lord, then editor of the Hebrew Makor Rishon newspaper, commented that: "It is noteworthy that Palestinian propaganda around the world frequently falsely accuses Israelis of murder and rape. Such that this situation is unique: An army is found blameworthy of rape, and is also blameworthy of not raping."