(Warning: This story describes deeply disturbing events and testimonials in graphic detail.)
A report analyzing numerous testimonies from the October 7 massacre specifically relating to Hamas’s sexual violence revealed that families and friends were forced by Hamas terrorists to watch their loved ones be raped and sexually assaulted at gunpoint.
The report, presented by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, analyzes confidential and public testimonies, eye-witness accounts, and interviews with victims, first responders and witnesses. It was sent to “decision-makers” in the United Nations to leave “no room for denial or disregard.
“The terrorist organization Hamas chose to harm Israel strategically in two clear ways – kidnapping citizens and committing sadistic sexual crimes,” said ARCCI CEO Orit Sulitzeanu. “Silence will be remembered as a historical stain on those who chose to remain silent and deny the sexual crimes committed by Hamas.”
The report revealed that Hamas terrorists threatened victims, often injured women, with weapons in order to rape them violently, often collectively with collaboration between multiple terrorists.
Partners, family, and friends were forced to watch to “increase the pain and humiliation for all present.”
Most of those sexually assaulted by Hamas terrorists were killed afterward, and some even during the act of rape. Others still were found dead later, their genitals mutilated beyond recognition or penetrated with weapons.
The full extent of Hamas's sexual crimes will probably never be known
The report highlighted that it cannot provide the full numerical measure of the extent of Hamas’s sexual violence, “most of which resulted in the victims' deaths, making their full extent unknown and possibly unknowable.”
The sexual assaults occurred in four main locations: At the Nova Festival, in kibbutzim, on IDF bases, and in captivity.
Severe sexual assaults were reported on multiple occasions by eye-witnesses and first responders in the Nova Festival, including group rapes. On kibbutzim, women and girls alike were brutally assaulted, including at least one case of a knife being hidden in the genital organ of one such victim.
Soldiers on IDF bases were victims of sexual violence, as well, their bodies clearly indicated. Hostages who have returned from Gaza have revealed grotesque sexual violence towards the hostages, as well.
“As the scars in our hearts refuse to heal, and the souls of our sisters and brothers cry out to us from the depths of the earth, a significant portion of those we considered partners responded in silence and denial of these horrors,” the report’s authors, Dr. Carmit Klar-Chalamish and Noga Berger, wrote. “We call on you to raise your voices and not allow the cries of these victims to fade away.”