MESSAGE
| DATE | 2023-12-09 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] the naked truth of the Gaza war
|
timesofisrael.com
At least 10 freed hostages were sexually abused in Hamas captivity,
doctor says
By AP and ToI Staff 6 December 2023, 12:14 pm 63
10–12 minutes
At least 10 of the Israeli civilians released by Hamas, both men and
women, were sexually assaulted or abused while in captivity, the
Associated Press reported Wednesday.
In a report detailing allegations of severe and widespread sexual abuse
by Hamas terrorists during their October 7 onslaught and later against
hostages, a doctor who treated some of the 110 hostages released from
captivity told the AP that at least 10 men and women among those freed
were sexually assaulted or abused.
He did not provide further details, and spoke on condition of anonymity
to protect the hostages’ identities.
The doctor’s comments corroborated similar accounts shared at a meeting
on Tuesday. The meeting, held between the Israeli war cabinet and a
group comprising recently freed hostages and family members of those
still held in Gaza, featured firsthand testimonies from some of the
released captives. These individuals detailed their experiences of
sexual abuse during their captivity, participants said.
Aviva Siegel, who was freed from Hamas captivity last week and whose
husband, a US citizen, is still a hostage, reportedly said during the
meeting that some of the women hostages were “being touched.” Others
said during the meeting that both men and women were sexually
assaulted, according to leaks to Hebrew media.
Ronen Tzur, the director of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum,
said after the gathering that “this was an unusual meeting. Members of
the cabinet heard for the first time from freed female hostages
describing the difficult things that are going on in the tunnels,
including sexual abuse, and the fact that the airstrikes are happening
very close to where the captives are being held.”
Released hostages and families of hostages held in Gaza meet with Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the war cabinet on
December 5, 2023. (Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum)
Under a weeklong truce deal that expired on Friday, 105 civilians were
released from Hamas captivity in Gaza: 81 Israelis, 23 Thai nationals
and one Filipino. Earlier, four hostages were released and one was
rescued, and at least three bodies have been recovered. Israel says
that Hamas had an opportunity to extend the pause but refused to
release all the women held, as the deal entailed. It is believed that
138 hostages remain in Gaza, including some 20 women.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller suggested on Monday that
Hamas is holding onto the hostages because it does not want them to
testify about the sexual abuse they experienced in captivity.
“The fact that they continue to hold women hostages, the fact that they
continue to hold children hostages, just the fact that it seems one of
the reasons they don’t want to turn women over they’ve been holding
hostage, and the reason this pause fell apart, is they don’t want those
women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time
in custody,” Miller said in response to a question from a reporter
about growing evidence of Hamas rape and sexual abuse on October 7.
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a military spokesman, said the army was
“absolutely” concerned about sexual violence against female hostages.
Accounts given to The Associated Press, along with first assessments by
an Israeli rights group, show that sexual assault was part of the
atrocities-filled rampage by Hamas and other Gaza terrorists who killed
about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, on October 7 and took more
than 240 hostages.
While investigators are still trying to determine the scope of the
sexual assaults, Israel has been accusing the international community,
particularly the United Nations, of ignoring the pain of Israeli
victims.
“I say to the women’s rights organizations, to the human rights
organizations, you’ve heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible
atrocities, sexual mutilation — where the hell are you?” Netanyahu told
a news conference Tuesday, switching to English to emphasize the point.
US President Joe Biden called the reports of sexual violence
“appalling” and urged the world to condemn “horrific accounts of
unimaginable cruelty.”
Two months after the Hamas attacks on a music festival, farming
communities, towns and army posts in southern Israel, police are still
struggling to put together the pieces.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, priority was given to
identifying bodies, not to preserving evidence. Police say they’re
combing through 60,000 videos seized from the body cameras of Hamas
attackers, from social media and from security cameras, as well as
1,000 testimonies to bring the perpetrators to justice. It has been
difficult finding rape survivors, with many victims killed by their
attackers.
The group Physicians for Human Rights Israel, which has a record of
advocating for Palestinian civilians in Gaza suffering under Israel’s
longtime blockade of the territory, published an initial assessment in
November.
“What we know for sure is that it was more than just one case and it
was widespread, in that this happened in more than one location and
more than a handful of times,” Hadas Ziv, policy and ethics director
for the organization, said Tuesday. “What we don’t know and what the
police are investigating is whether it was ordered to be done and
whether it was systematic.”
Hamas has rejected allegations that its men committed sexual assault.
Following are some of the eyewitness accounts, which include
potentially disturbing descriptions of severe sexual assault and
mutilation.
‘They’re raping me’
Ron Freger fled the music festival when Hamas attacked and said he
heard a woman screaming for help. “I was lying in a pit (and) I heard
(a girl) yelling: ‘They’re raping me, they’re raping me!’” he told the
AP.
Several minutes later, he heard gunshots close by and she fell silent,
he said. “The feeling in that moment is one of complete powerlessness.
I’m lying in this hole and I have no ability to do anything. I have no
weapon, I have nothing, I’m surrounded by other people who are hiding
with me and we’re completely powerless,” said the 23-year-old from the
northern Israeli town of Netanya.
An aerial picture shows the abandoned site of the weekend assault by
Hamas terrorists on the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im in
the Negev desert, southern Israel, October 10, 2023. (Jack GUEZ / AFP)
Last month, the chief of the Israel Police presented to the
international news media videotaped testimony of a rape witness at the
music festival. Her face blurred, she said she watched terrorists
gang-rape a woman as she lay on the ground. The men then stood her up
as blood trickled from her back, yanked her hair and sliced her breast,
playing with it as they assaulted her. The last man shot her in the
head while he was still inside her. The woman in the video described
watching the terrorists as she pretended to be dead.
“I couldn’t understand what I saw,” she said.
A combat medic told the AP that he came across half a dozen bodies of
women and men with possible signs of sexual assault when he reached one
of the attacked communities.
One girl had been shot in the head and was lying on the floor, her legs
open and pants pulled down, with what looked like semen on her lower
back, said the medic who spoke on condition of anonymity because his
unit was classified. Other bodies had mass bleeding around the groin
with limbs at distorted angles, he said.
At the Shura military base where victims are being identified, Shari
Mendes, a member of the army reserve unit that deals with the
identification and religious burial preparation of female soldiers,
said some of the women’s bodies came in with little clothing, such as
parts of their pajamas. Some only had bloodied underwear.
‘Widespread’ crimes
Based on open-source information and interviews, the Physicians for
Human Rights Israel report documented incidents at the music festival,
homes around the Gaza Strip and an Israeli military base, all attacked
by Hamas.
“It is becoming more apparent that the violence perpetrated against
women, men and children also included widespread sexual and
gender-based crimes,” it said.
Before the war, Hamas, an Islamic terror group sworn to Israel’s
destruction, wasn’t known to use rape as a weapon, said Colin P.
Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, a global intelligence
and security consulting firm. Its tactics included suicide bombings and
shooting attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers.
A country like Israel should have the means to do rigorous testing to
confirm if people were sexually assaulted in a more systematic way,
said Nidhi Kapur, a specialist on sexual abuse in situations of armed
conflict.
“Forensic testing should have been a priority to build a full picture
of the attack,” said Kapur, who has worked in the region. “In a
conflict you first take care of the survivors, you don’t count bodies.”
Failure to support women
On Monday, Israel hosted a special event at the United Nations, where
former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, US Sen. Kirsten
Gillibrand and top technology executive Sheryl Sandberg were among
those who criticized what they called a global failure to support women
who were sexually assaulted and in some cases killed.
Former US senator Hillary Clinton in a video address to the UN Special
Session on Hamas’s October 7 violence, December 4, 2023. (courtesy)
But some groups said Israel isn’t making it easy to investigate.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it
requested access to Israel and the Palestinian territories to allow it
to collect information from the events that took place on Oct. 7 and 8,
and since then, but Israel has not responded to its requests, said
Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office.
Israel said the office has preexisting biases against Israel and it
will not cooperate with the body. Israeli officials said they would
consider all options for independent international mechanisms to
investigate.
Rights experts say the United Nations is best placed to conduct a fair,
credible and impartial investigation.
“These accounts are horrifying and deserve an urgent, thorough, and
credible investigation,” said Heather Barr, associate director for the
women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch.
--
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