Sexual and gender-based violence in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel

During the October 7, 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.

Events

The October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israeli communities in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 hostages were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip were marked by sexual violence. Hamas fighters infiltrated Israeli towns, where they reportedly tortured, raped and sexually assaulted women and girls of all ages. The casualties on October 7 were unprecedented in Israeli history. It has been described as the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Most of the victims were civilians killed in their homes and at an outdoor music festival, in addition to soldiers stationed in bases near the border. At least 240 individuals, including the elderly, women, and children, were abducted to Gaza.

Evidence collection

Following attacks, Israeli police began to collect evidence and witness statements as well as interrogate captured Hamas militants. Working in collaboration with the military and Shin Bet (the internal security service), the police launched a comprehensive investigation into the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas, which presented challenges due to the difficulty of collecting physical evidence in a war zone. Authorities retrieved video evidence, photographs of victims' bodies, and testimonies from the militants themselves confirming the witness accounts of sexual assault. Survivors, witnesses, first responders, and military personnel provided graphic accounts of the sexual violence inflicted by Hamas militants. These accounts include instances of rape and mutilation. The witness testimonies build a comprehensive picture of the scale and brutality of these acts. An official from Lahav 433 told the Knesset that 1,500 testimonies were 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 raping 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 and member of the medical forensic team said that she had encountered several bodies displaying indications 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. Legal scholars and international law experts conducted investigations collecting substantial evidence amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes. Shari, another IDF reservist stationed in the Shura morgue, provided similar testimony based on firsthand observations of the deceased. This information was conveyed in a recorded video, which has been verified by the IDF.

Be'eri rapes

See also: Be'eri massacre

Be'eri after the 7 October attack

A paramedic from the 669 Special Tactics Rescue Unit said he had been at many casualty sites before, but the violence on October 7 was beyond anything he had ever seen. In Kibbutz Be’eri, he went house to house looking for anyone still alive after the carnage and found the bodies of two young 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 died first.

Nova Festival rapes

Main article: Re'im music festival massacre

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".

Responses

United Nations and human rights groups

The United Nations, particularly the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), faced criticism for failing to condemn the mass raping of Israeli women despite being presented with evidence and witness testimonies. The lack of immediate condemnation and urgent action to protect victims raised concerns about the effectiveness of international bodies in addressing such atrocities. Israel condemned the UN for its inadequate response. Israeli human rights group, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, called for the ICC to take action. The Israeli First Lady decried the "unforgivable silence" of rights groups. UN Women briefly condemned Hamas in a post, yet deleted the post shortly after. Eight weeks after the attack, UN women stated "We unequivocally condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on Israel on 7 October".

On October 13, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) equated the brutalities of Hamas with Israel's military response. Similarly, CEDAW was criticized for its silence on the violence committed by Hamas.^[33] The international #MeToo movement also remained silent.

On November 28, UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that there are numerous accounts of sexual violence during the October 7 attack. These crimes, he said, must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted. A UN commission of inquiry investigating war crimes will specifically 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.

Universities

Feminist activists like Samantha Pearson, director of the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre made light of the accusations against Hamas and questioned their veracity. The university fired the Sexual Assault Centre director for signing a letter questioning the rape reports. Yale Daily News apologized over issuing editors' notes that challenged statements regarding Hamas' rapes after criticism.

United States of America

President Joe Biden condemned Hamas, stating Hamas' actions were "pure, unadulterated evil". In a speech on October 10, Biden said, "Babies killed, entire families slain, young people massacred, women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies."

Hamas

Israeli security agencies released video footage from 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. The militants claimed that Hamas ordered them to crush victims' heads, sever limbs, and cut off their legs. They also said they were ordered to rape corpses.

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.

Foreign ambassadors

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.

Criticism of response

The Guardian's Gaby Hinsliff criticized the slow response by the UN, and the disbelief at the University of Alberta and online, writing that "when tales of Islamic State fighters raping and enslaving Yazidi women began to surface, or when horrific stories started filtering out from women in occupied Ukraine last year, I don’t remember too many sceptics demanding to see video proof... Why do people who would probably happily judge an allegedly predatory actor or MP based on little more than hearsay seemingly struggle to entertain doubts about the sexual conduct of a terrorist, as if to do so would somehow be a betrayal of the Palestinian cause?".

Zehava Galon wrote that "denouncing systematic rape shouldn't be a difficult moral test, yet the UN women's organization took almost two months... to issue a pale condemnation. This isn't a loss of one's way, it's an agreement to live with rape and torture as legitimate means of war. It's an abandonment of women. Not only Jews. Psychopaths around the world are studying these days. They will be back, in another place, to other women, for other reasons."

See also

• War crimes in the 2023 Israel–Hamas war
• Bearing Witness (2023 film)