Experts in the fight against rape and sexual abuse demanded to know why international women’s organizations have remained silent about the horrific sex crimes that Hamas committed in Israel on Oct. 7.
The experts, all women, who spoke on Nov. 12 in an online seminar organized by Jewish professional students at Harvard University, have been systematically gathering evidence since the attack.
Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a legal scholar and chair of the Israeli Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, spoke for nearly 20 minutes, listing the crimes in detail.
The experts have gathered extensive evidence from eyewitness testimony, police investigations, medical examiners, first responders, doctors, Hamas’s own videos broadcast on social media, videos from survivors, news reports, the interrogations of captured Hamas terrorists, and forensic evidence gathered by hospitals, morgues and at crime scenes.
And the investigation continues, according to the event moderator, Dr. Elizabeth Gaufberg, a Harvard Medical School professor.
“Investigators are still uncovering and documenting the many atrocities that took place,” she said.
The event was streamed live to a capacity crowd of about 2,300 people, and a recording that has been made available online has had more than 16,000 views.
The event was organized by Jewish student associations at Harvard Medical, Dental, Law, and Business schools.
Ms. Elkayam-Levy, the commission’s founder, explained why its members organized and launched its inquiry. Despite Hamas broadcasting videos in real time on Oct. 7 showing “clear violations of international law and brutal crimes committed against women and children,” no national or international bodies have stepped forward to condemn it.
United Nations groups, in their initial statements, were quick to equate Israeli subsequent bombing of Gaza with Hamas’s attack, according to Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an international law expert and former member of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.
What’s striking about the U.N. Women’s statement of Oct. 13, she said, “is the complete silence about the actual atrocities committed during Oct. 7.”
“They failed to name Hamas. They did not mention war crimes, crimes against humanity, and no word about sexual violence committed against women and girls,” Ms. Halperin-Kaddari said.
“Never did I imagine that when faced with such undeniable atrocities—the very purpose for which they have been established, to protect women from these kinds of atrocities, to prevent them—I never imagined that they would actually resort to not acknowledging that at all,” Ms. Halperin-Kaddari said.
“These bodies do not only fail us, Israeli Jewish women, but they undermine the purpose for which they were established. And in fact, they undermine the whole international human rights system.
“It’s not a question of symmetry here. You can show empathy and you can also talk about what Israel must do with respect to Palestinians in Gaza. But failing to actually face this event that we Israelis had undergone on Oct. 7 is being complicit in the denial of the most atrocious act in modern humanity. And it is really a shame on these international bodies and international women’s organizations.”
Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, said rape survivors often take a long time—years or even decades—to talk about what happened to them. Those demanding firsthand accounts now as evidence won’t get it.
“Under-reporting will be very, very big,” she said.
The calls that the rape crisis centers take often feature the crisis worker picking up the phone only to hear silence at the other end, as the victim can’t yet talk about it, she said.
Dr. Dvora Bauman, director of the Hadassah Medical Organization’s Bat-Ami Center for Victims of Sexual Abuse in Jerusalem, discussed rape as a weapon of war. There are accounts going back as far as the Trojan War, when a Greek commander ordered his men, after they had won, to rape the women of Troy.
“We have a lot of explanations why it’s so important and of course it’s humiliation,” she said. “And a woman is a symbol of safeness, of a somebody who keeps the home while he is in battle. And hurting the woman means that nothing anymore is safe.”
And women represent a nation’s continuity, according to Dr. Bauman.
“Once you rule out the woman, you exclude the nation. There is no nation anymore. It’s the nation of the ruler,” she said.
Ms. Sulitzeanu said 90 percent of wartime rape cases include group rape.
“Many soldiers do it together,” she said. “Because for them, it is some kind of bonding and solidarity and whatever.”
Forcing family members to witness it is part of the torture, according to Ms. Sulitzeanu.
An interrogator said, “When I asked why did you take women, one terrorist answered, ‘To have our way with them, to dirty them, to rape them.’”
Another terrorist confirmed that the actions included beheading people and having sex with dead bodies, including young women, Ms. Elkayam-Levy said.
“That terrorist said he received permission from his religious leaders to murder children so that the children would not grow up to be Jews,” the Ha'aretz newspaper reported. “He also received permission to abuse women and their bodies in order to spread fear in Israeli society.”
Ms. Halperin-Kaddari said evidence includes documents and information from captured terrorists.
“They got clear, direct instructions to go for women, to go for children, to be as cruel as they wish. And to do whatever savagery and cruelty that they can think of despite Islam’s teachings. And they apparently received special dispensation from certain imams to allow them to engage in these atrocities,” she said.
Ms. Elkayam-Levy listed specific crimes committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 that the commission documented.
Ms. Elkayam-Levy warned listeners that the accounts could be traumatizing and advised them to seek counseling afterward if necessary and to mute the sound if they were unsure.
“Videos and footage released by Hamas show, for example, A dead woman, who is seen in one of the videos at the festival with rigor mortis, stripped from the waist down, legs spread apart, body partly burned,” she said.
“Another image shows the body of a young woman stripped from the waist down, her underwear torn, hung on one leg, and she was further burned on the site of the Nova Music Festival.
“A video released by Hamas shows a young woman who was abducted to Gaza surrounded by men in the back of a car, her hands tied behind her back, and a large blood stain between her legs and signs of trauma to her feet and arms.
“Another video posted by Hamas on social media shows the body of the young woman almost fully naked and unconscious, her legs in an unnatural position. And she’s paraded in the back of a pickup truck while the crowd cheers.
“Another image shows a murdered woman, her hands bound, her body abused and burned.”
Ms. Elkayam-Levy warned the audience about a particularly horrifying video she was about to recount.
“It shows terrorists torturing a pregnant woman while she is still alive. They cut her stomach open, took out her fetus, and cut off her breast while they’re wildly beating her,” she said.
Ms. Elkayam-Levy recited testimony that an eyewitness gave to police of an attack on a woman:
“They bent her over and I realized they were raping her one by one. Then she was passed over to another man in uniform. She was alive when she was raped. She was on her feet and bleeding from her back. He pulled her hair. He shot her in the head while he was still raping her. He didn’t even lift his hand. They cut her breast and literally played with it on the street. They held up someone’s head as a show of strength like a woman walking with a bag.”
A festival survivor told a news agency, Ms. Elkayam-Levy said, of hiding for two hours, “hearing people getting kidnapped and women getting raped. ... And you hear people dying, begging for their lives, women begging for their lives. And you can’t make a sound because they‘ll find you. They’ll find you to kidnap and kill you.”
In one of the reports from first responders, she said, a paramedic who entered one of the houses in the Beeri kibbutz said: “I saw two girls lying there, one on a bed, one on the floor in their bedroom. And the girl, she’s a 14- to 15-year-old teenager, she’s lying on the floor on her stomach. Her pants are pulled down, and she’s half-naked. Her legs are spread out wide open, and there were remains of sperm on her back. Someone executed her right after he brutally raped her. She was left there to lie in a puddle of blood.”
Medical staff documented severe and cruel injuries and specific brutality against women and girls, according to Ms. Elkayam-Levy.
An Israeli volunteer from Jerusalem, who worked to identify bodies of female victims and prepare them for burial, told the Daily Mail: “We have seen that women have been raped. Children too. Elderly women have been raped. Forcible entry to the point where bones were broken.
“We saw many mutilated corpses. We saw genitals cut off. Heads cut off. This was just abject cruelty. Women have been raped. They’ve been raped so violently that pelvises were broken. Now think about what it must take to break a pelvis. Or their legs were broken. There was forced entry. This was babies up until grandmothers.”
Another volunteer who worked identifying bodies reported: “We see evidence of torture and savagery. We have babies with their heads cut off. Bodies without hands, without legs, without genitals,” according to Ms. Elkayam-Levy.
