Israel: All women of all ages were raped before being executed in the October 7 attack

Three months after the October 7 attack, authorities are collecting evidence of rape by Hamas.

The Guardian in a revealing report cites evidence and testimonies documenting the atrocities suffered by women in Israel’s gibbutzim by the Palestinian organization.

Families were burned alive, tortured and mutilated, children and the elderly were taken hostage.

Emergency responders risked their lives in the fighting on October 7 and several days later to rescue the wounded and recover the dead.

In the chaos that ensued, evidence of the rape of women considered a weapon of war by Hamas was lost.

Israel’s top police investigative unit, Lahav, it is still collecting over 50,000 visual evidence and 1,500 eyewitness accounts and says it is unable to determine how many women and girls suffered gender-based violence.

Cross-checking statements given to police, published interviews with witnesses and photographs and videos taken by survivors and first responders, the Guardian is aware of at least six sexual assaults for which there is ample corroborating evidence. Two of these victims, who were murdered, were under the age of 18.

At least 7 women who were killed were raped also in the attack, according to Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a legal scholar and international women’s rights advocate, from her review of the evidence so far.

The New York Times and NBC have identified more than 30 killed women and girls whose bodies bear signs of abuse such as bloody genitalia.

Overwhelmed by the sheer number of victims and the burnt or disfigured state of some of the bodies, doctors at the morgues were busy with identification and did not have the time or ability “to see if the victims had been rushed”, the police spokeswoman said Mirit Ben Mayor.

The lack of trained staff was also a problem: according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, there are only seven coroners in the entire country.

Zaka, Israel’s emergency response organization, usually works with police at the scenes of terror attacks so authorities can gather evidence before Zaka.

Most Zaka workers are conservative ultra-Orthodox men who said at the time that they “didn’t think about the rape at all.”

The bodies of the victims they were given to their families, for the speedy burial required by Jewish tradition.

Although a post-burial post-mortem examination may take place, it is not certain that the full extent of the gender-based violence committed on October 7 can be ascertained.

The Guardian spoke to a Zaka volunteer, Simcha Greeneman, who said at a kibbutz he came across a woman who was stripped from the waist down, bent over a bed and shot in the back of the head. In another house he discovered a dead woman with sharp objects in her vagina, including fingernails.

At the Shura military base in central Israel, where most of the dead were taken, reservist Shari Mendes, who was in charge of washing the women’s bodies and preparing them for burial, told France-Presse news agency: “We have seen women who have been raped, from minors to the elderly”

“We were in such a state of shock…Many young women arrived in bloody rags with shrouds in just their underwear, and the underwear was often very bloody. Our team commander saw several soldiers who were shot in the crotch, in the private parts, in the groin or shot in the chest,” he added.

The most detailed eyewitness account of rape is from a young woman who attended the Supernova music festival, where more than 350 young people were killed. The witness, who was shot in the back, said she was hiding in the vegetation just off Route 232 when a large group of Hamas gunmen arrived, who between them raped and killed at least five women.

“They laid a woman down and I realized he was raping her… They handed her over to another person,” he told officers in a video seen by the Guardian. “And he cuts off her breast, throws it in the street and they play with it.”

A raped woman was “dismembered” and another “repeatedly stabbed in the back while being raped,” said the same witness in an interview with the New York Times. The witness gave police photos of her hiding place, and another survivor hiding in the same spot testified that he saw at least one woman being rushed.

One of the festival’s organizers, Rami Shmuel, who returned to the scene the day after the attack, described finding the bodies of three young women “naked from the waist down, with their legs open”.

“One had burned her face,” he said. Another was “shot in the face” while the last one was “shot all over her lower body.”

A woman who survived a gang rape at the rave was being treated for serious mental and physical trauma, police said, and was in no condition to speak to investigators.

In addition to gender-based violence committed on October 7, there are concerns for the safety of women still held captive by Hamas in Gaza.

Renana Eitan, head of psychiatry at Ichilov Tel Aviv Medical Center, told the Guardian that of the 14 freed hostages still in her care – including children – several have been sexually abused or witnessed sexual abuse.

The US State Department said a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas in November collapsed because the militants refused to release the remaining women in its custody, fearing they would speak publicly about sexual violence.

Orit Sulitzeanu, director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, said: “Everyone is looking for that golden piece of evidence, a female survivor testifying publicly about what happened to her. But think about it: someone suffering from this kind of trauma, why would they put themselves through it? Sexual violence is implied everywhere. This is no different.

“I don’t think it’s currently in the survivors’ best interests to go to the police and I think the investigations into all the atrocities will take a long time.”

Rape and sexual assault are considered war crimes and a violation of international humanitarian law. Hamas has denied allegations of sexual violence.

On Monday, independent experts appointed by the UN said that “given the number of victims and the extensive pre-planning and planning of the attacks”, the growing evidence of rape and genital mutilation points to potential crimes against humanity.

Israeli intelligence officials, experts and sources with direct knowledge of the interrogation reports of captured Hamas fighters believe that the attacking units were given a text in advance that was based on a controversial and contested interpretation of traditional Islamic military jurisprudence, arguing that the captives were “ spoils of war”. . This potentially legitimized the abduction of civilians and other abuses, without being an explicit directive to do so.

In at least two videos, purported members of Hamas are heard giving instructions to rape women.

Linking detained suspects to specific crimes was likely to be very difficult, Halperin-Kandari said, although Israel intends to open criminal proceedings as soon as possible.

Individual victims will be able to file complaints for crimes against humanity against Hamas at the international criminal court in The Hague, while the court is also expected to launch a special investigation into sexual violence on October 7.

Halperin-Kaddari said: “An international investigation has more potential because the standard of evidence is not as high as that of a criminal procedure, where you have to have a specific person and a specific victim and prove what happened beyond any reasonable doubt.

“To prosecute the total scope of the atrocities and the degree of cruelty … We already have enough of that.”