As Hamas barbarians went on a murderous rampage in southern Israel on October 7, they sexually assaulted and mutilated dozens of women.
Contrary to Hamas’ lame denials, we know this to be true. It is not a figment of anyone’s imagination.
On December 5, U.S. President Joe Biden condemned the “unimaginable cruelty” of Hamas attackers who raped and mutilated women on that darkest of days.
There is already an abundance of irrefutable evidence that such crimes occurred. The proof lies in forensic examinations, videos posted by the terrorists themselves, confessions extracted from perpetrators, and a searing video of an Israeli woman, her hands tied behind her back, with bloodstains on the crotch of her pants.
“There was humiliation through rape on the morning of October 7,” Israeli police chief Kobi Shabtai told The Washington Post recently. “There was worse evidence that we were not able to show,” he said. “They cut limbs and genitals, they raped, they abused corpses. There were sadistic sexual acts.”
Meni Binyamin, the director of the Israeli police’s International Crime Investigations Unit, has begun examining these atrocities.
Several days ago, the British newspaper The Sunday Times published a report about the onslaught, which mainly took place at a music festival near Gaza.
Yoni Saadon, a survivor, said he hid under corpses for hours to evade being captured and killed by Hamas terrorists. During that interregnum, he witnessed atrocities that still haunt him.
Haim Outmezgine, a member of an Israeli rescue service, said the terrorists were intent on “trying to spread as much horror as they could — to kill, to burn alive, to rape. It seemed their mission was to rape as many (people) as possible.”
A woman identified only as Shari spent two weeks as a volunteer preparing the remains of female victims for burial. “Opening the body bags was scary as we didn’t know what we would see,” she said. “They were all young women. Most in little clothing or shredded clothing and their bodies bloodied, particularly around their underwear and some women shot many times in the face as if to mutilate them. There seems no doubt what happened to them.”
This incendiary issue is bound to gain further traction as fresh information is released. It was addressed at a conference in New York City yesterday organized by Jewish women’s groups and arranged by Israel’s diplomatic mission to the United Nations.
Until now, however, it has been given little credence by the United Nations and organizations dedicated to combating sexual violence.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, underscored the depravity of Hamas’ crimes when he accused it of using rape as a weapon of war. “These were not spur-of-the-moment decisions to defile and mutilate girls and parade them while onlookers cheered,” he said. “Rather, this was premeditated.”
Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief executive officer of Meta, attacked Hamas as well. “On October 7, Hamas brutally murdered 1,200 souls, and in some cases they first raped them,” she said. “Rape should never be used as a tool of war, no matter what march you are attending or flag you are flying.”
As Erdan and Sandberg both noted, the world waited far too long to acknowledge and condemn Hamas’ sexual crimes.
“Sadly, the silence of international bodies that are supposedly defenders of women has been deafening,” said Erdan.
“We have come so far in establishing that rape is a crime against humanity and have come to believe victims of sexual assault,” said Sandberg. “That is why the silence is dangerous, it threatens to undo a movement and decades of progress.”
The secretary-general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, immediately condemned Hamas’ slaughter, but strangely enough, he waited about a month before calling for an investigation of its sexual crimes.
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, known as UN Women, was excruciatingly slow to react to reports of sexual assaults.
Late last month, it posted a condemnation on Instagram decrying “the brutal attacks by Hamas” on October 7, only to delete that message shortly afterward.
On December 1, UN Women released another statement. It affirmed the right of Israeli and Palestinian women to live their lives “in safety and free from violence,” “unequivocally” condemned Hamas’ “brutal attacks,” and expressed alarm at “the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks.”
Yesterday, UN Women went further, condemning “the abhorrent attacks by Hamas against Israel” and saying it had been “closely following reports of brutal acts of gender-based violence against women in Israel since they first came to light.”
UN Women added, “We believe a full investigation is essential, so that perpetrators at all sides can be held accountable and justice can be served.”
Israel has been less than impressed by UN Women’s indifference. According to Erdan, it has reacted only in response to pressure and has paid merely “lip service” to condemning Hamas.
“In every other massacre in which such heinous sexual crimes are committed, UN Women has issued an immediate and harsh condemnation,” he said. “But when Israeli women are the victims, (UN Women) casts doubt on the allegations.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen is also miffed. So much so that he has called for the resignation of UN Women’s executive director, Sima Sami Bahous, a Jordanian diplomat.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller believes that Hamas is holding female Israeli hostages because it fears what they might say about their experiences during captivity. “There is very little that I would put beyond Hamas when it comes to its treatment of civilians, and particularly its treatment of women,” he said in an understatement.
Hamas has committed horrendous crimes for which it must pay a very heavy price.