From the Liveblog of
Thursday, December 28, 2023
NYT report details weaponization of sexual violence during Oct. 7 terror onslaught
The New York Times publishes an exposé detailing the systematic sexual violence employed by Palestinian terrorists during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.
The two-month investigation included interviews with more than 150 witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers, rape counselors and government officials along with the scanning of video footage, photographs and GPS data from cell phones.
NYT says it identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls were apparently sexually abused or mutilated and those the paper interviewed described finding the bodies of more than 30 women around the Re’im rave site.
Photographs viewed by The Times included ones of a woman in a besieged kibbutz who was found with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin. Footage viewed by the newspaper showed two dead Israeli soldiers apparently shot directly in their vaginas.
One witness from the rave tells The Times that roughly 100 terrorists congregated along the road where the festival took place, passing weapons and badly wounded women amongst one another.
The witness says she saw at least five women raped in front of her while she tried to hide.
Another witness, who agreed to be identified as Raz Cohen, tells NYT, “They all gather around [one woman]… 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.”
In at least six different houses in the Be’eri and Kfar Aza Kibbutzim, at least 24 bodies of women and girls were found either stripped, tied up or mutilated — sometimes all three — according to eight volunteer medics and two Israeli soldiers who spoke to The Times.
At least 10 bodies of female soldiers from a Gaza observation posts were found with signs of sexual violence, a military dentist working at a body ID center tells the paper.
The vast majority of the women raped were subsequently murdered, but at least three managed to survive, according to Welfare Ministry spokesman Gil Horev.
“None of them has been willing to come physically for treatment,” he says.
Two therapists treating a woman who was gang raped at the Re’im rave tell The Times she is in no condition to speak with reporters or investigators about what she endured.
“According to Jewish tradition, funerals are held promptly. The result was that many bodies with signs of sexual abuse were put to rest without medical examinations, meaning that potential evidence now lies buried in the ground,” the NYT says.
