In horrifying expose, NYT details Hamas’ weaponization of sexual violence on Oct. 7

Warning: Graphic descriptions.

By Adina Katz, World Israel News

The New York Times has published an in-depth and extremely graphic report revealing the widespread sexual violence inflicted on Israeli women and girls by Hamas terrorists on October 7, citing witnesses, medical professionals, first responders, and government officials.

The two-month investigation also involved an examination of videos, photos, and cellphone GPS data, the paper said.

The report begins by describing a graphic video from October 8, showing a woman’s charred remains, later identified as 34-year-old Gal Abdush, a mother from central Israel. Abdush was found half naked and with an incinerated face next to a torched car on Route 232, close to the Gaza Strip, an area that saw many fleeing the Supernova festival, where Hamas terrorists killed around 360 out of 1,200 victims. Abdush’s husband was also killed, with his body discovered days later, burnt to the extent that DNA testing was necessary for identification.

The Times’ investigation uncovered at least seven locations in southern Israel where sexual abuse or mutilation of women and girls occurred. Over 30 women were found dead near the Supernova festival and nearby kibbutzim, showing signs of sexual violence similar to Abdush’s case.

Disturbing images reviewed by The Times included a woman with nails embedded in her thighs and groin and footage of two Israeli soldiers who appeared to have been shot in their vaginas.

One paramedic described finding two teenage girls, seemingly sexually assaulted, in Kibbutz Be’eri. Another medic, Jamal Waraki, recounted discovering a woman’s body at the rave, bound and partially naked.

Yinon Rivlin, a member of the rave’s production team and a survivor, recalled seeing a young woman’s body, brutally mutilated, along Route 232. Her vagina area appeared to have been sliced open, he said, “as if someone tore her apart.” In the Be’eri and Kfar Aza kibbutzim, at least 24 bodies of women and girls were discovered in a similarly gruesome state, tied up to furniture or bound with zip ties.

Eyewitness accounts detailed around 100 terrorists along the festival’s road, with one witness, Raz Cohen, describing a horrific scene where a woman was raped and then slaughtered. “They all gather around her… She’s standing up. They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.”

Another witness said she saw at least five women being gang raped. The women, all of whom were wounded, were passed from one terrorist to another along with weapons.

A 24-year-old accountant named Sapir who spoke at length with the Times said that she witnessed three women being raped, adding that the terrorists beheaded some of their victims, with the terrorists involved in the rapes she witnessed carrying three severed heads of female victims.

While most rape victims were killed, a few survivors are unable to seek treatment due to their trauma, Welfare Ministry spokesman Gil Horev said. Therapists treating a gang-rape survivor from the festival confirmed her inability to discuss her ordeal.

The Times highlighted the difficulty in collecting rape evidence due to the quick burials customary in Judaism. As a result, potential evidence of sexual abuse now lies buried.

Mirit Ben Mayor, a police chief superintendent, said the acts of sexual brutality were driven by twin anti-Jewish and misogynistic motives, “the hatred for Jews and the hatred for women.”

Last week, World Israel News reported on a separate expose that cited Israeli doctors as saying that at least 30 of the freed hostages, most women and girls but also some males, were sexually abused during their captivity in Gaza.

In early December, after initial examinations by medical professionals at least 10 freed hostages were reported to have been sexually assaulted by Hamas terrorists, but this number has been revised upward to at least 30 with additional examinations and as released hostages open up about their experiences, USA Today reported.

The hostages who were sexually abused range in age from 12 to 48 and the females been given pregnancy tests and have been screened for sexually transmitted diseases.

Although the doctors did not go into detail about the nature of the abuse, they noted that many of the freed hostages showed physical evidence of sexual abuse as well as signs of PTSD and “came to us as patients with the trauma of those who witnessed very severe sexual assaults.”

One doctor said that people who have been sexually abused typically have a mortality rate four times higher than someone who has not been sexually abused.

The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forums released anonymous quotes from meetings between released hostages and their families and members of the war cabinet.

“First of all, they touch our girls.”

“My mother almost fainted here (during the cabinet meeting), because she knows what’s going on there. She saw what was done to men,” said the daughter of a freed hostage.

Just as it was known the women at the Supernova music festival were raped, “We know they were raped in Hamas captivity.”

hamas hostagesHamas sexual crimesOctober 7th massacre