Mick Hartley

Christina Lamb in the Sunday Times:

Some were awoken in their beds in kibbutzim by shooting. Others were dancing at dawn at a music festival in the Negev desert. Among the approximately 1,200 people slaughtered in the most brutal attack on Israel in its history were found the bodies of young women stripped and tied to trees and poles, shot through their genitals and in the head.

Sexual violence was “widespread and systematic” during the October 7 attack, rape and gang rape occurring in at least six different locations, according to a report using testimony never heard before now. But most victims were “permanently silenced”, either murdered during the assaults or left too traumatised to talk. About 1,200 people were killed in the attack.

The Dinah Project’s report, which will be published in Jerusalem on Tuesday, is based on first-hand testimony from 15 of the returned hostages from Gaza (only one of whom has spoken previously) and a survivor of attempted rape at the Nova music festival, as well as interviews with 17 people who saw or heard the attacks and with therapists working with traumatised survivors.

In the 20 months since the attacks, little has aroused more controversy than the issue of sexual violence, with claims and counterclaims leaving victims and their families feeling forgotten.

The aim of this report, put together by Israeli gender and legal experts and partly funded by the British government, is “to counter denial, misinformation and global silence” in what it says is “one of the most under-reported dimensions of the attacks” and “to set the historical record straight: Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon of war”.

“Clear patterns emerged in how the sexual violence was perpetrated,” it states, “including victims found partially or fully naked with their hands tied, often to trees or poles; evidence of gang rapes followed by execution; and genital mutilation.”

The attacks took place at the Nova music festival, Route 232, the military base at Nahal Oz, and three kibbutzim: Re’im, Nir Oz and Kfar Aza. Those taken hostage were also abused.

But every excuse has been used to diminish the absolute horror of what Hamas did, from the UN on down. Meanwhile we watch the surge of antisemitic rhetoric and violence across the world, while mindless talk of a genocide in Gaza becomes part of everyday discourse.

It is a response to anger at the inadequate response from international organisations such as UN Women in the light of reports of sexual violence by The Sunday Times and others; questions raised by false claims from first responders and from those who insist that, as an Islamic organisation, Hamas would not rape women (despite examples such as Islamic State and Boko Haram); and arguments that the issue had been “weaponised” by the Israeli government to justify its own atrocities in Gaza.

As we've seen, sexual violence has been, and still is, a feature of many Islamic organisations.