{"id":11799,"date":"2023-11-18T13:49:03","date_gmt":"2023-11-18T13:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/18\/israel-investigates-sexual-violence-committed-by-hamas-as-part-of-october-7-horror\/"},"modified":"2023-11-18T13:49:03","modified_gmt":"2023-11-18T13:49:03","slug":"israel-investigates-sexual-violence-committed-by-hamas-as-part-of-october-7-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/18\/israel-investigates-sexual-violence-committed-by-hamas-as-part-of-october-7-horror\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel investigates sexual violence committed by Hamas as part of October 7 horror"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: This story contains graphic and disturbing accounts of sexual violence.<\/em><\/p>\n

Israeli police are using forensic evidence,\u00a0video and witness testimony and interrogations of suspects to document cases of rape amid the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. <\/p>\n

Women and girls caught in the rampage were brutalized sexually, as well as physically tortured and killed, witnesses to the aftermath say. <\/p>\n

Police Superintendent Dudi Katz said officers have\u00a0collected\u00a0more than 1,000 statements and more than 60,000 video clips\u00a0related to the attacks that include accounts from people who reported seeing women raped.\u00a0He added that investigators do not have firsthand testimony, and it is not clear whether any rape victims survived. <\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n
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The aftermath of an unprecedented Hamas assault on communities near Gaza,seen at the Kibbutz in Be\u2019eri, Israel, October 14. Israeli police are working to document cases of rape amid the October 7 Hamas attacks.<\/span> <\/div>\n

Marcus Yam\/Los Angeles Times\/Getty Images\/FILE <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

About 1,200 Israelis were killed and more injured that day in villages and farms near Gaza when Hamas militants struck across the border in coordinated attacks,\u00a0taking more than 240 hostages and precipitating\u00a0the current war. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza. <\/p>\n

Police Commissioner Shabtai Yaakov said the investigation could potentially lead to prosecutions, but for now, documentation is the primary mission. <\/p>\n

She pointed to a United Nations statement just a week after the terror attacks that did not mention sexual violence. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s much worse than just silence or an insult to us as\u00a0Israeli women and to our children and to our people,\u201d she\u00a0said\u00a0of the UN. \u201cWhen they are failing to acknowledge us, to acknowledge what happened here, they are failing humanity.\u201d <\/p>\n

Harrowing reports<\/h2>\n

A paramedic from the elite 669 Special Tactics Rescue Unit said he had encountered all kinds of casualties before, but the violence from October 7 was unimaginable. <\/p>\n

In Kibbutz Be\u2019eri, he went house to house looking for anyone still alive\u00a0after\u00a0the carnage\u00a0and found the bodies of two young teenage girls in a bedroom. <\/p>\n

The combat paramedic, who did not want his name published, said\u00a0the girl on the floor was on her stomach. He had no doubt the teenager was raped, but he\u00a0did not know if she died first. <\/p>\n

\u201cHer pants are pulled down toward her knees and there\u2019s a bullet wound on the back side of her neck near her head,\u201d he recounted.\u201cThere\u2019s a puddle of blood around her head and there\u2019s remains of semen on the lower part of her back.\u201d <\/p>\n

The girl on the bed had bruises all over her body and a bullet wound to the chest, he\u00a0said. <\/p>\n

Others reported similar horrors at the Nova\u00a0music festival where hundreds of young people were killed by terrorists. <\/p>\n

Rami Shmuel, an organizer of\u00a0the festival, said he saw female victims with no clothes\u00a0as he made his escape, and has no doubts about what happened. <\/p>\n

He added that it appeared women were specifically targeted for sexual violence. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhy didn\u2019t they [take] clothes off men?\u201d he asked. \u201cOnly women, only young girls, beautiful girls, why?\u201d <\/p>\n

A long investigation ahead<\/h2>\n

Israel\u2019s police acknowledge their investigation may take months, and Elkayam-Levy said it remains unclear how or where any prosecutions would be handled, though she noted that some families of dual nationals could seek justice in countries other than Israel as well as pursue cases in international courts. <\/p>\n

But officials provided a stark\u00a0window\u00a0into the evidence they have been\u00a0gathering\u00a0at\u00a0a press briefing,\u00a0which included\u00a0a statement from a\u00a0woman who\u00a0witnessed\u00a0the Nova festival\u00a0attack from her hiding place on October 7. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey bent someone over and I understood he was raping her, and then he was passing her on to someone else,\u201d the woman, who was not identified,\u00a0said of what she saw. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe was alive, she stood on her feet and she was bleeding from her back. I saw that he was pulling her hair. She had long brown hair.\u00a0I saw him chop off her breast and then he was throwing it toward the road, tossed it to someone else and they started playing with it.\u201d <\/p>\n

The witness added:\u00a0\u201cI remember seeing another person raping her, and while he was still inside her he\u00a0shot\u00a0her in the head.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: This story contains graphic and disturbing accounts of sexual violence. Israeli police are using forensic evidence,\u00a0video and witness testimony and interrogations of suspects to document cases of rape amid the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Women and girls caught in the rampage were brutalized sexually, as well as physically tortured and killed, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11800,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}