Hamas official: Freed hostage got plastic surgery, thinking she wasn’t pretty enough to have been assaulted

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan in an interview with the Hezbollah-linked Mayadeen TV said yesterday that one of the Israeli hostages underwent plastic surgery after her release because she thought she might not have been attractive enough to have been sexually assaulted.

Hamdan blasted the report compiled by the United Nation’s envoy on sex crimes, which indicated that rape and gang rape likely occurred during the October 7 Hamas onslaught against southern Israel, that “clear and convincing” evidence shows that hostages were raped while being held in Gaza and that those currently held captive are still facing such abuse.

“The UN report has three essential problems that necessitate the dismissal of [UN envoy Pramila Patten] who published it,” Hamdan said, according to translations from the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“The first problem is that the report is not based on any evidence. The second issue is that only the Israeli narrative was heard, not the counter-narrative, which includes many details about what happened – none of those were adopted,” Hamdan said.

“The third scandal is that what was written in the report is the opposite of the facts. She wrote that the Israeli women who were taken captive by the resistance were [sexually assaulted].”

“When these women were released, they said themselves that they were not attacked. I can say as an anecdote that one of them underwent cosmetic surgery because she thought that she was not assaulted because she was not pretty enough. In other words, they say one thing, and then the committee says the opposite. This is a scandal in the halls of the UN,” Hamdan said, without citing any proof for his allegations.

Osama Hamdan Rejects UN Report on Hamas’s Sexual Violence on October 7: The Woman who Wrote It Should Be Fired; One Female Hostage Had Cosmetic Surgery because She Thought She Was Not Pretty Enough to Be Sexually Assaulted #Hamas #Gaza #Palestinians @USGSRSGPatten pic.twitter.com/4wwzB17Euv

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) March 7, 2024