IDF spokesperson: UNRWA staff recordings prove Hamas treated young women ‘like animals’

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari in an evening press conference says that despite the “difficult content,” the military chose to release the audio recordings of UNRWA staff who participated in the October 7 onslaught, to “remind and not forget.”

“The massacre committed by Hamas on October 7 is the most documented massacre in history. Hamas terrorists filmed their own cruelty. As time goes by, more and more testimonies are revealed, more intelligence every day,” he says.

“You can hear how the terrorists entered Israeli territory, participated in the massacre, and terror, and captured ‘sabaya.'”

He explains that in one of the recordings, a Hamas terrorist, who worked as a teacher at a UNRWA school in Deir al-Balah, tells his friend that he captured a sabaya, a term used by Islamic State jihadists that means sex slave.

“Sabaya” is a term in Islam that describes women and children as the property of a Muslim man. It also means slave and handmaiden. The most difficult use of “sabaya” was by ISIS terrorists, who called the captured Yazidi women this, Hagari says.

“In the conversation, the terrorist on the other side of the line describes a woman as a noble mare,” he says.

“On October 7, Hamas treated young women with cruelty and brutality, kidnapped them from their homes, and treated them like animals,” Hagari continues.

“How they refer to the hostages as ‘sabaya’ and a ‘noble mare’ keeps us awake at night, and requires the world to shout, as it did for the Yazidi women,” he says.

Hagari adds that, via the testimonies from hostages who were released from Gaza, “we learn about the dangers the hostages are exposed to, especially the women and children.”