Freshmen college students felt “disgust” after a professor told them that the mass rapes committed by Hamas during the October 7 attacks were a “hoax” and “fake news.”
Sujatha Fernandes, a professor of sociology at the University of Sydney, told her class in April that the media had “distorted” the war, The Australian reports.
“The Western media has played the role of an ideological state apparatus by suppressing coverage of atrocities and peddling fake news,” Professor Fernandes said.
“(The media) promoted hoaxes that Hamas beheaded babies and carried out mass rapes, in order to shore up support for Israel, and distort events.”
The United Nations (UN) has said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Hamas carried out mass and gang rapes on October 7.
Sydney University sociology lecturer Sujatha Fernandes (pictured) shocked first-year students after claiming the mass rapes committed by Hamas on October 7 were a “hoax”.
Professor Fernandes continued her lecture by alleging that Israel had engaged in “ethnic cleansing, collective punishment and forced starvation,” the report also states.
Several students, who wished to remain anonymous, said they were shocked by Professor Fernandes’ comments.
One said they did not commit to spending four years and thousands of dollars on college classes taught by professors who “blatantly promote lies and foster an unsafe and threatening environment.”
Another student who identified as Jewish said this reflected a “growing trend of anti-Semitism” at the university.
They added that it was particularly worrying that a professor “denied undeniable evidence of the events of October 7, which Hamas proudly filmed themselves doing.”
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Professor Fernandes and the University of Sydney for comment.
His students said they were “repulsed” by the professor’s claims that fly in the face of a UN report that found “compelling information” about widespread sexual violence.
Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said they witnessed “scenes of unspeakable violence perpetrated with appalling brutality.”
Patten said the acts committed on October 7 were “a catalog of the most extreme and inhumane forms of murder, torture and other horrors”, including sexual violence.
His team found “compelling information” that sexual violence had been committed against hostages and people in captivity.
They reached the conclusion after reviewing more than 5,000 photographic images and about 50 hours of footage of the attacks.
However, part of the report also found that at least “two allegations of sexual violence at Kibbutz Be’eri, widely reported in the media, were unfounded.”