Sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel
During the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas on Israeli towns, Israeli women and girls were reportedly raped, assaulted and mutilated by Hamas militants. Hamas was accused of committing acts of gender-based violence, war crimes and crimes against humanity in keeping with the recognition of The International Criminal Court (ICC) that sexual violence is a war crime and a crime against humanity. Hamas has denied that its fighters committed rape and assault against women.
It was reported that some released hostages' testimonies indicated that both female and male hostages had been subjected to sexual violence by their captors while being held by Hamas in Gaza.
UN Women condemned the acts of rape by Hamas in early December, two months after the October 7 attacks. The International Criminal Court court is scheduled to initiate a specific probe into sexual violence on October 7.
Events
The October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israeli communities, in which 1,139 people were killed and 240 hostages were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, reportedly involved widespread sexual violence. In a review of evidence mainly provided by the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli officials, NBC News stated that the evidence "suggests that dozens of Israeli women were raped or sexually abused or mutilated". Hamas fighters infiltrated Israeli towns, where witnesses said they tortured, raped and sexually assaulted many women and girls of all ages, and some men. Most of the dead were civilians killed in their homes and at an outdoor music festival, and soldiers stationed in bases near the border.
Evidence collection
Following attacks, Israeli police, Shin Bet and Israeli military began to collect evidence, take witness statements and to interrogate captured Hamas militants concerning the alleged sexual violence perpetrated during the October 7th attack. Police recorded the difficulty in collecting physical evidence in a war zone. For that reason, the full extent of Hamas’s sex crimes may never be known. Authorities retrieved video evidence, photographs of victims' bodies, and militants' testimonies which they said confirmed accounts of sexual assault. Autopsies of victims also corroborated these accounts, according to the Israeli police. Survivors, witnesses, first responders, and military personnel provided accounts of the alleged sexual violence inflicted by Hamas militants. These accounts included allegations of rape and mutilation. An official from Lahav 433 told the Knesset that 1,500 testimonies had been collected. Shelly Harush, the police officer leading the investigation recounted to The Times on 2 December 2023: "It's clear now that sexual crimes were part of the planning and the purpose was to terrify and humiliate people."
According to Tel Aviv University professor Tamar Herzig, the militants were heard discussing plans to rape specific girls. Herzig also said that they were also seen "parading the rape victims" with their clothes ripped off and blood between their legs. She said that testimony was taken from survivors who were brought to Israeli acute response centers. Herzig said that, over the next few weeks, forensic evidence collected from bodies of Israeli girls indicated that they had been raped, sometimes so violently that their legs and pelvis bones were broken. Survivors also testified to instances of gang rape and the breasts of young women being chopped off. Rescue team members attested to the genital mutilation of dead girls who were found stripped naked and covered with blood and semen in their own bedrooms.
An IDF Captain who was a dentist and member of the medical forensic team identifying bodies said that she had encountered several bodies showing signs consistent with sexual abuse. She said, "I can tell that I saw a lot of signs of abuse in the [genital region] [...] We saw broken legs, broken pelvises, bloody underwear". Ina Kubbe, a scholar specializing in gender and conflict at Tel Aviv University, said that these signs align with sexual violence. However, she emphasized the necessity of a forensic investigation for an official determination of rape. Hamas was accused of systematically using rape as a weapon of war. Shari Mendes, an IDF reservist stationed in the Shura morgue, provided similar testimony based on her observations of the dead, conveyed in a recorded video, which has been verified by the IDF.
Cochav Elkayam-Levy, an Israeli law academic appointed to head the commission investigating crimes of sexual assault on October 7 confirmed that Hamas weaponized sexual violence in order to harm Israeli morale. The New York Times viewed photographs of a woman’s corpse found in a kibbutz that had dozens of nails driven into her groin and thighs.
ZAKA
The mostly ultra-Orthodox ZAKA volunteer paramedic and rescue group began collecting bodies immediately after the Hamas attacks, while the IDF avoided assigning soldiers with training to carefully retrieve and document human remains in post-terrorism situations. Zaka spokesman, Simcha Greeneman, said in one kibbutz he came accross a dead woman with sharp objects in her vagina, including nails. However, as part of the effort to get media exposure, Zaka spread accounts of atrocities that never happened, released sensitive and graphic photos, and acted unprofessionally on the ground, often mixing up remains of multiple victims in the same bag and creating little or no documentation about the remains.
Interrogations of captured militants
Israeli security agencies released video footage, which they said showed, the interrogation of seven Hamas militants captured following the October 7 attack. In the videos, the militants said they were ordered to carry out atrocities against Israeli civilians. In one video, one of the prisoners said they were given explicit instructions to kill everyone they encountered, including beheading victims and cutting off their legs. The plan, as described, involved moving from home to home, from room to room, throwing grenades, and killing everyone, including women and children. In one video a person whose face is blurred says that gunmen were ordered to "crush victims' heads, sever limbs, and cut off their legs". He also said they were given permission to rape a corpse.
Be'eri rapes
In Kibbutz Be’eri, a paramedic from the 669 Special Tactics Rescue Unit said he went house to house looking for anyone still alive after the attack and found the bodies of two teenage girls in a bedroom. He said that he had no doubt one of the teenagers was raped, but he did not know if she had died first. Two bodies of women were reportedly found with legs and hands tied to their beds, one of whose genitals were stabbed with a knife and internal organs removed.
Nova Festival rapes
Another statement was taken from a woman who witnessed the Nova festival attack from her hiding place on October 7. She said, "They bent someone over and I understood he was raping her, and then he passed her on to someone else. [...] I remember seeing another person raping her, and while he was still inside her he shot her in the head." A survivor told to a Knesset panel her testimony recounting she saw naked girls, sliced bodies and violated girls whose pelvises were broken due to the extent of the abuse.
Another survivor recounted to The Times, "They had caught a young woman near a car and she was fighting back, not allowing them to strip her. They threw her to the ground and one of the terrorists took a shovel and beheaded her and her head rolled along the ground. I see that head too". The BBC reported being shown a video by Israeli police in which a woman said that militants had cut off a woman's breast and played with it. A male witness told the BBC that he had heard what he was sure were the screams of women being raped and that dead women were raped as well. The BBC also reported that some of the forensic team investigating bodies "talk in terms of "dozens" of victims but quickly caution that evidence is still being gathered".
A video of the massacre shot by a survivor searching for her friends verified by The New York Times showed a woman lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread and vagina exposed while her face was burned and her right hand covering her eyes. She was later identified as Gal Abdush, mother of two from central Israel. One witness told the paper that 100 Hamas militiants congregated along a road passing weapons and badly wounded women to each other. The witness said she saw at least 5 women raped in front of her while she hid. Another witness recounted that he saw men in civilian clothes drag a woman out of a van in route 232 nearby, he said they gathered about her and penetrated her while she screamed and then one of the men killed her with a knife.
Testimonies from Camp Shura
Many of the bodies discovered in the various scenes were brought to the IDF Military Rabbinate Camp Shura, which hosts facilities for body identification. Shari Mendes, an army reservist stationed at the camp, recounted in an event at the United Nations that her team discovered female soldiers who were shot in their vagina or breasts, and reported that it appeared there was systematic genital mutilation by Hamas militants. She further stated that they found beheaded bodies or bodies with missing limbs or bodies whose faces were mutilated, with some faces shot multiple times post-mortem. According to Mendes, bodies were found with bloodied underwear. These testimonies were also mentioned in the December 2023 New York Times article.
Other locations
The New York Times reported that a woman was found with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin in an unspecified kibbutz, and that women and girls were raped in Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
Israeli hostages
One of the Israeli hostages released during the temporary truce in late November and early December 2023, recounted to The Jerusalem Post that at least three women were sexually assaulted by their Hamas captors. The Associated Press reported that an unnamed Israeli doctor who treated 110 of the released hostages said that least 10 men and women had been sexually assaulted or abused while in captivity. The released hostages underwent pregnancy tests and were screened for sexually transmitted diseases. Two Israeli doctors as well as an unnamed Israeli military official confirmed to USA Today that Israeli women in captivity underwent sexual abuse in their captivity. One of the doctors also said that "many of the 30 females from ages 12 to 48 suffered sexual assault during captivity". Another doctor said that many of the women who had witnessed sexual assaults were experiencing PTSD. The Israeli military official said "we know that female hostages were raped during their captivity under control of Hamas."
In January 2024, a video taken October 2023 re-emerged showing 4 female Israeli soldiers held hostage: Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Daniela Gilboa, and Agam Berger. After this, released hostage Chen Goldstein-Almog reported having seen some of them who had told her that their captors had sexually abused them multiple times.
The New York Times report
According to a two-month investigation by The New York Times using video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 purported victims or their families, the report identified at least seven locations where sexual assaults and mutilations of Israeli women and girls were carried out. They concluded that these were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern in which Hamas "weaponized sexual violence" during the attacks. No survivors have come forward to bear witness, and there were no autopsies, as funerals were held promptly according to Jewish tradition also most ZAKA volunteers hold beliefs that prohibit photographing the dead.
Video evidence reviewed in the report included "a woman in a black dress lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed" with her face completely charred, whom Israeli police officials believed to have been raped. The New York Times report identified the woman, whose sister spoke out later on social media, stating that the video showed no evidence of rape, nor did she feel there was any reason to suspect rape. She subsequently deleted the post, although “critics circulated images of it to assert falsely that the family had renounced the article.” She later told the New York Times she regretted her post being used to question whether Hamas sexually assaulted women, and that she had been "confused about what happened" and was trying to "protect my sister."
Alleged carelessness and inconsistencies
On January 9, 2024, the Hamas rape report was removed from the scheduled The New York Times podcast channel, The Daily. External sources cited the reason as this report causing turmoil within the news agency due to the lack of verification by the newspaper of the witnesses and their testimony, as well as inconsistencies in the testimonies (many noted in the table below), as well as outcry from family members, one of whom asserted that her sister's alleged rape did not take place at all, as well as complaints about how their input to the Times was mischaracterized in the article.
Table of witnesses and testimony
| Witness | Role | Testimony | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sapir | Rave attendee | Testimony in Screams without words article. Said she saw groups of heavily armed men rape and kill at least 5 women, slice off one woman's breast then throw it back and forth, and carry the severed heads of three more women. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Yura Karol | Screams without words article: Said he hid behind Sapir and saw a woman raped and killed. Later testimony: In November 2023, Ha'aretz reported that a man, who Ha'aretz didn't name. who had been hiding behind Sapir told them that he hadn't seen the rape but that Sapir had told him what she had seen at the time. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Raz Cohen, Shoam Gueta |
R=witness reported seeing rape … M=reported seeing murder … K=reported seeing knifing … B=reported seeing "butchering" … GD=reported seeing people gunned down
|
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| 4 ZAKA emergency responders | Screams without words article: Reported discovering corpses of women with their legs spread and underwear missing, some with hands tied by rope and zipties. Jamal Waraki of ZAKA said he saw a dead woman bent over half naked with her underwear rolled down between her knees. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Yinon Rivlin | Rave producer | Screams without words article: Reported finding the body of a young woman on her stomach with no pants or underwear, legs spread apart with her vagina sliced open | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 8 ZAKA men, 2 soldiers | Screams without words article: Reported seeing at least 24 bodies of females naked or half naked, some mutilated, others tied up, in Be'eri and Kfar Aza | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Unnamed commando unit paramedic" (note: may be "Sgt. G") | Screams without words article: Reported finding the bodies of girls, 13 and 16, one with boxer shorts ripped, bruises by her groin, one with pajama pants pulled to her knees, bottom exposed, semen smeared on her back. No photos or forensic evidence were taken at the scene as per ZAKA custom. Other testimony: A November 18, 2023, CNN report quoted witness "G", a paramedic in the Israel Air Force's "elite" 669 special-tactics rescue unit, stating that he had found 2 dead teenage girls together in a Be'eri house, one with pants pulled down and semen on her back. A similar interview with Chief Sargeant First Class "G" was broadcast on India's Republic TV. Note: Pro-Palestinian site Mondoweiss reported that upon examining the names of all the girls killed in Kibbutz Be’eri, no pair of teenagers meeting that description were found dead together. The closest match are two sisters 13 and 16 who were found separately. |
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| Shari Mendes | Shura base | Screams without words article: Reported seeing four bodies with signs of sexual violence including blood in their pelvic areas as she prepared bodies for burial. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Captain Maayan | Screams without words article: Reported seeing at least 10 bodies of female soldiers with signs of sexual violence, including cuts in their vagina, underwear soaked in blood, and in one case, missing fingernails. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Responses
Hamas
Hamas officials, including Basem Naim, denied the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, citing Islamic principles that forbid any sexual relationship outside of marriage. Hamas accused Western media of bias and said the reports of sexual violence demonized Palestinian resistance. They also demanded that The New York Times apologize following a report on the matter. Hamas said that any sexual violence that occurred should be blamed on other militants that breached the Israel-Gaza border on October 7.
Naim stated that the New York Times report on sexual violence lacked conclusive evidence, argued that testimonies from Israeli women contradict the report, and cited Hamas's alleged good treatment of female hostages in Gaza Strip. Basem Naim also remarked that the operation on October 7th was "very short", adding that Hamas' militants only had enough time to complete their mission "to crush the enemy's military sites".
International responses
The Maltese, Spanish and Panama ambassadors to Israel condemned the actions of Hamas in a 27 November 2023 Knesset panel. The Canadian ambassador in the same panel lamented the quiet response to actions against Israeli women in the same panel.
The director of the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre in Canada was fired after she signed a letter questioning the rape reports. After being criticized, student newspaper Yale Daily News issued an apology for issuing editors' notes that challenged statements rapes and beheadings during the October 7 attack.
In France, Gender equality minister Bérangère Couillard criticized French Women rights' organization for failing to advocate for universal values, warning them that their funding from the state was conditional. The organizers of the 25 November Paris march which 80,000 attended stated: "unambiguous condemnation of the sexual and sexist crimes, rapes and femicides committed by Hamas".
United States
In a speech on October 10, US president Joe Biden condemned Hamas, stating that the events represented "pure, unadulterated evil". Former US foreign secretary Hillary Clinton condemned the use of rape in war as a crime against humanity. Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, founder of Lean In, a women’s rights and advancement group also condemned the rape as a crime against humanity and attacked UN silence as dangerous. Sandberg also described Hamas' rape of women as a weapon of war.
On December 4, spokesperson for the United States Department of State Matthew Miller said that the Biden administration had not made an explicit condemnation of rape on October 7 because they had not conducted an independent assessment, and not because they doubted the reports. On December 5, Joe Biden called for global condemnation of "the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists without equivocation", calling the events "horrific". Five days later, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the sexual violence inflicted by Hamas "almost beyond human description or beyond our capacity to digest," and criticized International organizations such as UN Women for being too slow to condemn them.
On December 12, 33 US Democratic and Republican senators demanded in a letter to the UN secretary general that the UN begin investigating sexual and gender based crimes committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023. They further requested the United Nations begin collecting testimonies from survivors and witnesses.
United Nations and human rights groups
The United Nations, particularly the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), were criticized by Jewish and Israeli media and advocates for not condemning rapes of Israeli women after being presented with evidence and witness testimonies. Israel condemned the UN for its response. Israeli human rights group, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, called for the International Criminal Court to investigate the sexual violence accusations.
The Israeli First Lady, Michal Herzog, called the response of international organizations such as UN Women an "inconceivable and unforgivable silence". UN Women briefly condemned Hamas in a post, but deleted the post shortly after. Jewish and Israeli media and advocacy organizations criticized UN Women and the #MeToo movement, saying they did not condemn the violence against women that took place during the October 7 attack. In response to UN Women, US- and Israel-based activists created the slogan "#MeToo Unless You're A Jew". Israeli law professor Cochav Elkayam Levy told The New York Times that she sent a letter signed by dozens of scholars to UN Women on November 2, calling for condemnation of sexual violence during the attack; she said she did not receive a response. A bipartisan group of more than 80 members of the US congress said the response of UN Women was "woefully unsatisfactory and consistent with the UN’s longstanding bias against Israel".
On 25 November in Paris, a group of about 200 protestors attempted to join the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women march. Some carried Israeli flags and signs "denounc[ing] the deafening silence of feminist groups". The group was "effectively barred from joining the march" by pro-Palestine activists; march organizers later released a statement expressing "unambiguous condemnation of the sexual and sexist crimes, rapes and femicides committed by Hamas". On December 1, UN Women stated "We unequivocally condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on Israel on 7 October". Israeli politician Zehava Galon criticized the organization, writing that "the UN women's organization took almost two months... to issue a pale condemnation." On December 4, human rights' organizations including Jewish as well as their supporters protested in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York, some dressed in only their underwear and with synthetic blood smeared on their bodies. A former lawmaker Carolyn Maloney stated: "We're here supporting Israeli women who were brutally raped. They deserve the support of other women. Any other attack on women would be treated as a crime."
On November 28, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that there were numerous accounts of sexual violence during the October 7 attack; he said the incidents "must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted". A UN commission of inquiry investigating war crimes on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict will include a focus on instances of sexual violence by Hamas. Israel's Permanent Representative to the UN, Gilad Erdan, accused the commission of antisemitism and stated that Israel will not cooperate with it. English journalist Gaby Hinsliff criticized the UN's slow response. Navi Pillay, who chairs the UN inquiry rejected claims that the UN had delayed acknowledging the sexual violence and said that, despite Israel not cooperating, her team could still take evidence from survivors and witnesses outside of the country: "All they [Israel] have to do is let us in," she told the BBC.
On 8 January 2024, two U.N. experts on torture and on extrajudicial executions demanded accountability for sexual violence against Israeli civilians by Hamas. They said that a substantial body of evidence supported the occurrence of rapes and genital mutilation, indicating potential crimes against humanity. On 16 January, António Guterres again stated the accounts must be "rigorously investigated and prosecuted". Israel responded by forbidding doctors to speak to the UN commission investigating 7 October, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat calling the UN commission “an anti-Israeli and antisemitic body”.
On January 26, 2024, it was reported that the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC), Pramila Patten, is scheduled to visit Israel to investigate acts of rape committed by Hamas. During her week-long visit, Patten and her team will review raw footage from October 7, meet with released captives from Gaza, and hear their testimonies. Patten will visit various locations, including the Nova festival site in Re'im, Gaza border communities, and the military base in Nahal Oz, to gain insights into sexual crimes committed by Hamas, and findings to be submitted to the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council.