Hamas terrorists raped and mutilated Israeli civilians, leaving an ‘apocalypse of bodies’ which were missing limbs at the site of the Nova music festival as gunmen swept through southern Israel on October 7, a harrowing new report has claimed.
The horrific report details ‘sadistic’ crimes alleged to have occurred at the festival, in surrounding villages, on IDF bases and in captivity in Gaza.
It describes the violence endured by men and women, some of whom were allegedly killed while they were being brutalised, as others were made to watch the sexual abuse of their friends and family members before being murdered.
The chilling report from the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel was presented to the UN Special Envoy on Sexual Violence in Conflict Areas, who visited Israel earlier this month to hear testimonies of sexual abuse.
An overview of the findings states: ‘Hamas terrorists employed sadistic practices aimed at intensifying the degree of humiliation and terror inherent in sexual violence. ‘Many of the bodies of sexual crime victims were found bound and shackled.
‘The genitals of both women and men were brutally mutilated, and sometimes weapons were inserted into them. The terrorists did not stop at shooting, they also cut and mutilated sexual organs and other body parts with knives.’
The testimonies included claims Hamas gunmen repeatedly stabbed an injured woman while they raped her; that victims had nails, grenades and knives inserted into their sexual organs; and how survivors fleeing the festival witnessed ‘girls whose pelvises were simply broken from being raped so much’.
An Israeli soldier stands over the body of a Hamas militant in Kibbutz Be’eri on Wednesday, October 11, 2023
A kindergarten in Kibbutz Be’eri, which shows signs of clashes from the October 7 attacks
The kindergarten in Be’eri which appeared to be a site of clashes when Hamas gunmen swept the kibbutz on October 7
The report concluded Hamas insurgents operated systematically to target both women and men in villages and kibbutzim during the assault, executing victims during or after instigating sexual abuse.
Orit Sulitzeanu, CEO of ARCCI, claimed partners, family and friends were forced to watch horrific acts performed often in groups to ‘increase the pain and humiliation for all present’.
The ARCCI report, looking at documented cases of abuse on and since October 7, concluded that Hamas’ attack ‘included violent acts of rape, accompanied by threats with weapons, and in some cases targeted towards injured women’.
The authors noted that rape was ‘often’ perpetrated in front of an audience, including partners, families or friends, in order to ‘increase the pain and humiliation of all present’.
Young men and women fleeing the Nova festival were ‘hunted’ and dragged by their hair, screaming, according to witness testimonies. In most cases, they were killed after or during their rape.
One survivor of the Nova festival said the aftermath was an ‘apocalypse of bodies, girls without clothes, some missing their upper, some their lower parts’.
The mutilation of bodies has been documented before. The report made reference to the story of a woman at the festival whose breast was cut off with a box cutter before her assailants threw it on the floor ‘and passed it between them like a toy’.
Another described fleeing the site and seeing a woman lying on her stomach near the road without pants or underwear, her legs apart. Her genitalia was described as looking ‘as if someone tore her apart’.
Another survivor said they saw women tied to trees, mutilated with ‘all their organs cut, damaged’ and ‘iron rods inserted into their sexual organs’.
Yoni Saadon, a survivor who witnessed the rape of a young woman enduring severe violence, recounted a victim crying out: ‘Stop it – already I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’
The witness said ‘when they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head’.
One witness said she saw a young woman with a back injury, her trousers pulled down below her knees, being raped by one terrorist as another ‘pulled from her hair’.
‘Each time the woman resisted, the terrorist stabbed her in the back.’
In another case, she said she saw how while one terrorist was raping a woman, another cut into her and mutilated her body.
Raz Cohen and Shoham Gueta, survivors who hid from Hamas at the festival, said they saw terrorists raping a young woman as they stabbed her repeatedly, ‘literally butchering her’.
Multiple witnesses reported seeing men who had been shot in the genitalia, or had sexual organs ‘cut off’.
A paramedic attending the scene said: ‘There were a lot of gun wounds there. Shooting was targeted at sexual organs. We saw that a lot. They had a thing with sexual organs’.
ARCCI also reported how family members, partners and friends in raided homes were forced to watch sexual abuse before their murders.
The positions bodies were found in indicated some had been made to watch the abuse and murder of their partners, the report suggested.
The authors said there was a ‘pattern’ that ’emerged clearly’ in testimonies.
In one case, a mother’s body was found by search and rescue teams, her hands tied behind her back with signs of struggle.
The body of her daughter, a girl or young woman, was found in the next room with her pants and underwear rolled down.
An IDF paramedic recovered the bodies of two girls from another building, one found sexually abused with a knife in her genitals. They said one of the girls was found with the remains of semen on her back.
Members of the Israeli military stand at the site of the Nova festival, where people were killed and kidnapped during the October 7 attack by Hamas gunmen from Gaza, January 5 2024
A woman reacts during a press conference at the Nova music festival site on January 5, 2024 in Re’im, Israel
Illustrative image shows attendees fleeing the scene of the Supernova music festival near Re’im in Israel on October 7. ARCCI said Hamas systematically targeted attendants at the event
ARCCI is the umbrella group for the nine regional Rape Crisis Centers of Israel, and serves as the only organisation in the country whose main aim is to combat sexual violence. The group is funded by donations.
The group ordinarily provides services and support for individual victims of sexual violence while working to raise awareness more generally in local communities.
It also works closely with the professional bodies that deal with sexual violence, including the State’s Attorney, the Israel Police, the Department of Justice, and the Police Investigations Department.
In its report, it said it had drawn on official sources, publications in local and international press, interviews with first responders, and information from professionals and confidential calls to ARCCI.
Information from social networks of ‘unverified sources’ was not included, the report noted.
Alleged sexual assaults have been reported by several eye-witnesses and first-responders of the October 7 attacks.
In kibbutzim, women and girls were first alleged to have been attacked by Hamas gunmen during their assault.
In one case it was reported a knife had been hidden in the genitals of a victim.
Soldiers on IDF bases were also reported victims of sexual violence, as well as hostages returning from captivity.
In December, images shown to the New York Times showed what Israeli authorities said was a woman who had dozens of nails driven into her thighs and genitals in a savage example of mutilation.
Other clips displayed the corpses of soldiers and civilians alike who had been either shot or stabbed in the groin.
Another dark image dubbed ‘the woman in the black dress’ showed the corpse of an Israeli later identified as Gal Abdush.
She is seen splayed on the floor, legs wrenched apart with her vagina exposed, and covered in burns. Her lifeless body was crumpled in the dirt next to the husk of a heavily damaged car riddled with bullet holes.
Earlier that month, as hostages returned from captivity in Gaza, it was reported at least ten male and female hostages held by Hamas had been sexually abused before being freed.
A medic claimed men and women had been physically abused while held hostage, after treating some of the 110 released as part of a week-long truce in late November.
‘They touch girls, and everyone knows it,’ one hostage later told local media. ‘I won’t recount details, but we had a procedure that no one moves without someone guarding them.’
Yelena Trufanov, a Russian citizen released separately in a nod to Vladimir Putin, described her fears as Israeli airstrikes rained down on the besieged enclave. ‘You have no idea what you’re doing there… and I know the conditions they’re holding the men in are worse, worse than for the women.’
In November, Israeli police said they were investigating ‘several cases’ of alleged sexual violence against women by Hamas, citing ‘multiple witnesses’ to incidents of rape.
Police said they had been gathering evidence about allegations of sexual violence from witnesses, surveillance footage and the interrogations of Palestinians arrested since Hamas’ incursion into Israel last month.
Police also shared testimony from a survivor of the attack at the Supernova music festival, who described seeing a woman gang-raped before being shot.
Haaretz reports the witness told officers of how she watched the shocking attack unfold as she hid from Hamas gunmen wearing military uniforms.
‘As I am hiding, I see in the corner of my eye that [a terrorist] is raping her,’ the witness told investigators. ‘They bent her over and I realised they were raping her and simply passing her on to the next [gunman].’
The witness said the victim was ‘alive’ and ‘on her feet and bleeding from her back. But then the situation was that he was pulling her hair. She had long, brown hair.’
The woman told officers one of the Hamas gunmen ‘shot her in the head while he was raping her… didn’t even lift his pants’.
Her testimony was one of thousands of pieces of evidence gathered by the police.
Another male witness said he didn’t see the rape itself, but confirmed the other witness told him at the time what she had seen.
David Katz, head of the Lahav 443 criminal investigation unit, said: ‘We have no living victims who said “we have been raped”‘, but, he said, ‘we have multiple witnesses for several cases’.
While he did not give a precise figure for the number of cases under investigation, Katz said the inquiry could take ‘six to eight months’.
An Israeli officer walks on the ground of the Super Nova Festival in Re’im, Israel, 17 October
A bloodied woman is apparently taken hostage as other men cheer, in this still from a video
Katz also outlined details of other evidence collected by police, including from the ZAKA organisation, which recovers human remains in accordance with Jewish religious law to afford them a proper burial.
‘We have several statements from people from ZAKA who saw the bodies of women without pants or underwear,’ he said.
‘We took more than 1,000 statements and some of the victims cannot speak due to being in psychological and medical treatment,’ he said.
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