Unimaginable cruelty - How Hamas terrorists mutilated women
The inconceivable barbarity of Hamas on October 7 must not be concealed, denied or forgotten.
More and more details about the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists are now coming to light - surviving eyewitnesses, first responders and forensic experts are reporting what they saw. Israeli police have collected hundreds of pieces of evidence of horrific acts of violence by the radical Islamic attackers, specifically against women.
At an event at the UN ("Hear our Voices", available online on the UN website), Israel called on the world - and the UN - not to keep quiet about the sexual violence experienced by Israeli women at the hands of the terrorists.
The reason: the UN reacted very late and very cautiously to the reports, thereby fueling suspicions of bias against Israel. The United Nations does not apply the same standards when it comes to rape victims who are Israeli women, according to the accusation.
Witness: Terrorists shot through the breasts
▶︎ The video of a first responder who testified before the police was played. She said: "There were a lot of gunshot wounds. The shots were aimed at the genitals, we saw that a lot. They were focused on sexual organs. Both men and women."
And further: "The women (...) were civilians. We mainly saw breast amputations or shots through the breast, simply from one side of the breast to the other. They were conscious when they came to us. Men were also shot in the genitals. There too: either amputations or shots."
According to the police, most of the girls and women - including pregnant women - did not survive. They are among the 1,200 people who, according to Israeli figures, were murdered by Hamas during the attack.
"Systematic genital mutilation"
▶︎ Shari Mendes, a member of an Israeli reserve unit that prepares fallen female soldiers for burial, said there appeared to have been "systematic genital mutilation of a group of victims". She also reported broken bones in the genital area of several women.
Faces had been so mutilated by gunshots or burns that they could often no longer be identified. Very often the terrorists continued to shoot women in the head even after their deaths, she said, because no more blood came out of the bullet wounds.
Hamas denies deeds
Despite the overwhelming evidence, Hamas denies having committed sexual violence against women, or even having attacked civilians at all, although some of its terrorists filmed it themselves with their bodycams and arrested perpetrators have long since confessed to it. How the terrorists justify this denial: Rape is forbidden in Islam.
▶︎ Sheryl Sandberg, former top manager at Facebook, also spoke on the panel. She warned that more credence should be given to the aforementioned evidence than to Hamas: "The world must decide who it wants to believe. Do we believe the Hamas spokesperson (...), or do we believe the women? Their bodies tell us how they spent the last minutes of their lives."
No figures yet on the extent of the rapes
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended the UN panel meeting from afar and said: "We must respond to sexual violence with weapons wherever it occurs."
Two Israeli investigators, who asked not to be named, cautioned against giving exact figures on rape victims at this stage. They told NBC News that evidence continues to come in and the investigation will likely continue for months.
Protests against the silence of the UN Women organization
On Tuesday, around 150 demonstrators also protested against the silence of UN bodies on the Hamas rapes. "Shame on the UN", "Rape is rape", they chanted in front of the UN headquarters in New York.
Their accusation: despite the evidence, the international community is ignoring this massive sexual violence.
"None of these bodies have recognized the fact that war crimes or crimes against humanity were committed here," says Israeli law professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, former chairwoman of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw). "And none mentioned the sexual violence against women, which was systematic, deliberate and premeditated, meaning that rape was used as a weapon of war."
Indeed, it was only last Thursday - a good seven weeks after the massacres - that UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed his "alarm" on the online service X (formerly Twitter). A day later, UN Women also reacted, but then deleted its tweet and replaced it with a new one that no longer named the Hamas perpetrators.
"They should have made this statement two months ago," says Halperin-Kaddari.
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- Despite the ongoing investigation and the large amount of evidence collected by Israeli police, Hamas continues to deny the allegations of sexual violence against women in the Gaza Strips.
- The Middle East conflict, specifically the situation in Gaza, was a topic discussed at the UN event titled "Hear our Voices," where Israel called attention to the sexual violence experienced by Israeli women at the hands of Hamas terrorists.
- The text-to-speech version of the testimony given by a first responder at the event revealed the horrific details of the sexual violence, including shots aimed at genitals and breast amputations.
- The politics-inland and politics-abroad have been affected by the Middle East conflict, with the international community being accused of applying different standards when it comes to rape victims who are Israeli women, according to the accusation.
