There is a moment in every conflict when denial becomes not just dishonest but grotesque. That moment has passed.
After more than a year of survivor testimony from Israelis held captive in Gaza, the continued denial that Hamas fighters carried out sexual assaults – or that such violence was incidental rather than systematic – is no longer a position grounded in skepticism. It is a refusal to see what is directly in front of us.
Romi Gonen’s testimony, aired on Thursday on Uvda, is among the most detailed and harrowing. Kidnapped from the Supernova music festival at age 23, wounded, operated on in Gaza, and held alone with male captors, she described repeated sexual assaults and escalating control: being touched under the guise of “care,” being forced to sleep beside her captor, being handcuffed at night, and finally being assaulted at gunpoint.
“If you tell anyone,” she was told, “I will kill you.”
Her account is not vague, not rhetorical, not filtered through advocates. It is specific, chronological, and devastatingly human.
Survivors’ evidence of Hamas sexual violence in Gaza
Amit Soussana told The New York Times she was sexually assaulted at gunpoint by the man guarding her in Gaza in late October 2023. She described being beaten, threatened, and forced to perform a sexual act.
Medical professionals who treated her within 24 hours of her release confirmed she had described the assault to them at the time.
This is corroboration, not allegation.
Rom Braslavski, speaking on Channel 13’s Hazinor, described being stripped naked, tied up, and abused in a way he explicitly identified as sexual violence whose purpose was humiliation – “to crush my dignity,” as he put it.
Guy Gilboa-Dalal testified that a captor dragged him naked from the shower, threw him onto a couch, touched him all over, and threatened him with a gun and a knife if he spoke.
Alon Ohel described a captor entering the shower with him, touching him under the pretext of “help,” after he had been left alone in the tunnels.
Nor do they stand alone. Aviva Siegel testified months ago that she saw young women return from showers trembling, later disclosing that they had been sexually abused by guards; she described being forbidden to comfort them.
Agam Goldstein-Almog has spoken of being held alongside women who bore clear physical signs of severe sexual abuse.
Internationally, these testimonies have been reinforced by investigation. In March 2024, a UN team led by Special Representative Pramila Patten reported “reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred during the October 7 massacre, and that hostages in Gaza were subjected to sexual violence. This was not a political statement. It was a forensic conclusion.
Against this, Hamas's denial – that sexual violence did not occur, or that it was not part of the attack’s character – collapses under the weight of lived experience. So does the claim, still echoed in some international discourse, that these acts were isolated deviations rather than part of a broader system of domination, terrorism, and dehumanization.
When sexual violence recurs across locations, captors, genders, and months, it is not incidental. It is instrumental.
And yet, even as survivors struggle to reclaim their bodies and lives, many have said the support they receive from the State of Israel is shockingly inadequate.
Several freed hostages have spoken publicly about bureaucratic obstacles, insufficient financial assistance, and a sense that the aid offered is symbolic rather than rehabilitative, or “a joke,” as more than one survivor has described it in interviews with Israeli media.
These are people emerging from prolonged captivity, physical injury, starvation, torture, and sexual trauma. They require long-term medical, psychological, and economic support. Too often, they are left to fight for it.
The moral burden does not rest only with the international community, which must continue to recognize Hamas’s sexual violence as a war crime and a crime against humanity. It rests with Israel as well.
Bearing witness is not enough. Survivors must not be forced to relive their trauma to justify their worthiness for care.
These testimonies do not serve a narrative. They dismantle one. The survivors and their testimonies are not symbols. They are individuals. They did nothing to deserve what was done to them, and their suffering cannot be contextualized away, balanced against geopolitics, or absorbed into abstraction.
Listening to them is no longer optional. Acting – seriously, materially, and with urgency – is the minimum that justice now demands.