Hamas terrorists, backed by Iran, invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. They massacred more than 1,200 people; burned families alive, tortured and raped women, children and men, and abducted roughly 250 hostages, including babies and children.
Since the October attack, however, Israeli women have faced public doubts and questions about the brutality and sexual violence they experienced at the hands of Gaza's Muslim men.
Despite the silence, and sometimes even outright denial, by many women's organizations around the world, Hamas' sexual crimes are well-documented. The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel published a report in February entitled "Silent Cry – Sexual Crimes in the October 7 War".
Hundreds of Israeli and non-Israeli women, the association reported, experienced the most gruesome sexual assaults, including rapes, gang rapes mutilations and dismemberments, often followed by murder at the hands of Hamas terrorists. Many of these assaults occurred in the presence of the victims' friends, partners or family members, and included facial disfigurement, mutilation, burning and decapitation. The mutilation of the sexual organs of both men and women was also commonplace.
The report not only provides testimonies about the sexual abuse, torture and murder inflicted upon Israeli men, women and children by Hamas during the October 7 invasion, but also details that similar crimes still being committed now against the hostages still held in Gaza.
The New York Times also published a report on December 28, based on 150 interviews of witnesses and first responders, video footage, and photographic evidence.
Today, June 19, the United Nations will observe the annual International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. Yet, it took the UN five months to document and condemn Hamas' sexual crimes on October 7.
On March 4, the UN finally released a 23-page report finding evidence that Hamas had indeed committed widespread sexual crimes. Pramila Patten, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict (and Under-Secretary-General of the UN), led a two-week investigation in Israel from January 29 to February 14. During this visit, her team reviewed more than 5,000 photos and 50 hours of audio and video footage. The team also interviewed more than 30 survivors and eyewitnesses.
According to the UN report:
"Interviews with stakeholders and material reviewed by the mission team describe an indiscriminate campaign to kill, inflict suffering and abduct the maximum number possible of men, women, and children – soldiers and civilians alike – in the minimum possible amount of time. People were shot, often at close range; burnt alive in their homes as they tried to hide in their safe rooms; gunned down or killed by grenades in bomb shelters where they sought refuge; and hunted down at the Nova music festival site as well as in the fields and roads adjacent to the Nova music festival ground. Other violations included sexual violence, abduction of hostages and corpses, the public display of captives, both dead and alive, the mutilation of corpses, including decapitation, and the looting and destruction of civilian property...
"[T]he mission team received clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment occurred against some women and children during their time in captivity and has reasonable grounds to believe that this violence may be ongoing....
"Based on the totality of information gathered, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred at several locations."
These crimes are reminiscent of the crimes ISIS (Islamic State) committed against Christians and Yazidis during and after their violent takeover of large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Sexual assault as a military tactic has commonly been used by Islamic terrorists since the seventh century, worldwide.
Ten years ago, ISIS attacked Yazidis and Christians in Iraq and Syria, committing massacres and forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of non-Muslims. In June 2014, ISIS seized control of the Iraqi city of Mosul. On 29 June 2014, ISIS proclaimed an Islamic caliphate in areas it controlled in Iraq and Syria.
The brutal ISIS occupation in Mosul and the wider area was accompanied by the mass killings, summary executions, disappearances, kidnappings, torture, and widespread home demolitions of thousands of the residents, as strict sharia law was implemented. ISIS terrorists killed, kidnapped, and threatened large number of people belonging to ethnic and religious minorities, including Christians, Turkmen, Shabaks, and Yazidis.
In 2021, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies of the University of Minnesota published a report entitled "Mass Violence and Genocide by the Islamic State/Daesh in Iraq and Syria." According to the report:
"After ISIS captured Mosul in June of 2014, Christians were given the option to either convert, pay taxes (jizya), leave, or be killed. ISIS marked Christian homes with the Arabic letter 'N' to mean Nasrani, or Christian, which quickly became a global symbol of solidarity with persecuted Christians. A few months later, in August of 2014, ISIS took control of all Assyrian towns in the Nineveh Plains, resulting in a second wave of mass displacement.
"Today, one of the biggest challenges facing Christians in Iraq is the question of return. While the Nineveh Plain has since been liberated from ISIS, many Christians are hesitant and fearful of returning, citing renewed tensions between various ethno-religious groups."
Just as Hamas kidnapped Israeli and non-Israeli people, ISIS also kidnapped Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria.
In February 2015, an ISIS attack overran some 35 villages of Assyrian Christians who lived in a series of farming communities on the banks of Syria's Khabur River. Former US diplomat Alberto M. Fernandez noted in 2016:
"... 232 of these Assyrians, 51 of them children and 84 women, were kidnapped. Most of them remain in captivity with one account claiming that ISIS demanded $22 million (or roughly $100,000 per person) for their release. Those who were not kidnapped have been terrorized and dispossessed."
A 2019 report by UNICEF and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, entitled "Children Born of Rape & Children Born to ISIS Fathers," documents ISIS's rapes and sexual slavery against women of religious minorities:
"Women belonging to religious minorities encountered serious violations, including abduction, deprivation of liberty, cruel treatment and forced conversion into another religion, but the most dangerous of such violations was sexual slavery, which targeted women from Yazidi religion in particular.
"In July 2014, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (IHCHR) announced 11 cases of rape against Christian women committed by ISIS. Other reports indicated that nearly 300 Christian and Shiite Muslim women (mostly Turkmens) have been detained by ISIS. An academic study conducted at the University of Baghdad, which covered a sample of 200 survivors who were detained by ISIS, showed 169 women in the sample were raped, including 39 Christian women and 39 Muslim women (from the Shiite Turkmens)."
One of the Christian women kidnapped by ISIS is Carolyn, an ethnic Assyrian from the village of Tel Jazera in eastern Syria. Knox Thames, who served in a special envoy role for religious minorities at the U.S. Department of State during the Obama and Trump administrations, reported in 2022 on Carolyn's ordeal:
"She has suffered unimaginable horrors as an ISIS 'wife' since being taken at the age of 15.... Carolyn's parents shared how she cried in terror as she was dragged from her home in April 2015. While kidnapped, Carolyn's whereabouts are known, but she is currently beyond rescue.
"Asked by her family and advocates to raise her case, Carolyn's parents told me through an interpreter, 'We have heard from many sources that she has been in Al-Hol Camp since 2017.' Al-Hol is a lawless displacement camp in the barren moonscape of eastern Syria. It is a holding cell for upwards of 60,000 individuals, many suspected ISIS family members or other sympathizers.
"The camp conditions are reportedly harsh, and crime is rampant.
"Major international powers have chosen to ignore this problem... The family knows of Carolyn being bought and sold at least four times. Reports indicate she arrived at Al-Hol in April 2019. She now has two children from these men, a young boy and girl. Escapees from Al-Hol report that Carolyn is very close to her children and will not leave without them...
"'She is our beloved daughter, and we know that she is an innocent girl because she was forced to go,' they told me. 'We will welcome her home at any time with her children. We live for that day to hug her and her children in our arms.'"
Approximately two months after ISIS seized Mosul, they invaded Sinjar, the Yazidi homeland in Iraq. Like Assyrians, Yazidis are an indigenous, persecuted non-Muslim minority in the Middle East. Yazidis say they were exposed to a wave of 74 genocidal attacks at the hands of Muslims. The last one, started in 2014 has had ongoing, devastating consequences that are still experienced by the victims.
During its occupation of Sinjar, ISIS terrorists murdered thousands of Yazidis either by execution or through the deliberate dehydration and starvation.
Thousands more Yazidi children and women were kidnapped, raped and turned into sex slaves. There are still over 80 Yazidi mass graves in Sinjar waiting to be unearthed. More than 2,600 abducted Yazidi women and children are to this day still waiting to be rescued from the hands of ISIS terrorists. More than 180,000 Yazidis remain homeless, trying to survive in displacement camps in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Yazidi girls and women were brutalized by ISIS terrorists. Teenage girls abducted by Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria were sold in slave markets "for as little as a pack of cigarettes," the UN envoy on sexual violence, Zainab Bangura, said.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported in 2015:
They kidnap and abduct women when they take areas, so they have – I don't want to call it a fresh supply – but they have new girls," Bangura said. Girls were sold for "as little as a pack of cigarettes," or for several hundred dollars, up to $1,000.
After attacking a village, ISIS separated women from men and executed all boys and men aged over 14. The women and mothers were then separated. Girls were stripped naked, tested for virginity, and examined for breast size and prettiness. The youngest, and those considered the prettiest, virgins fetched higher prices and were sent to Raqqa, ISIS' stronghold.
Under ISIS' hierarchy, sheikhs got first choice, followed by emirs and then fighters. They often took three or four girls each and kept them for a month or so, until they grew tired of the girl. Then she went back to the market. At slave auctions, buyers haggled fiercely, driving down prices by disparaging girls as flat-chested or unattractive.
"We heard about one girl who was traded 22 times, and another – who had escaped – told us that the sheikh who had captured her wrote his name on the back of her hand to show that she was his 'property,'" Bangura said.
The treatment of Yazidi women, in particular, was marked by contempt and savagery, Bangura said.
"They commit rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, and other acts of extreme brutality," she said. "We heard one case of a 20-year-old girl who was burned alive because she refused to perform an extreme sex act."
In an interview with the Gatestone Institute, Pari Ibrahim, executive director of the Free Yezidi Foundation, said:
"There has been no comprehensive effort to help us identify and bring back the more than 2600 Yezidis who remain unaccounted for ten years after the Yezidi Genocide by ISIS began. We know that many of the missing may be dead already, but some are alive. They are in Al Hol Camp, in other parts of Syria, and in parts of Turkey. But the international community has given up on them. But we from the Yezidi community cannot give up on them.
"We know many are located in certain parts of Turkey. That is because, sadly, Turkey has made itself a somewhat safe haven for ISIS members. It is probably the only place, outside of certain areas in Syria and Iraq, where ISIS members can be found. We also know that some survivors are in various locations in Syria and in Al Hol Camp. But we do not have current information on how many are alive and how many have already been killed, and this information requires a lot of effort and hard work. Unfortunately, the rest of the world has done little to help. I believe Yezidi civil society, including my organization and other organizations, could make some progress on this topic if stakeholders around the world could help us. I do think some people care, and there are some individuals who have helped efforts, including some in Iraq and Syria, but most of the time the world has just ignored the missing Yezidis."
While much of the world has abandoned the Yazidi and Christian victims of ISIS, some organizations and individuals have stood by their side. One is Steve Maman, a Moroccan-born Jew and founder of The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI Foundation).
Due to his efforts to help rescue Yazidis and Christians from ISIS captivity, Maman became known as the "Jewish Schindler". Maman has documented and helped 25,000 Yazidi and Christian victims of ISIS. This included freeing 140 Yazidi captives in Iraq despite great challenges and obstacles.
Maman -- one of the participants of a panel of international speakers and experts who met for 'The Global Women's Coalition Against Gender-Based Violence as a Weapon of War", which was held on May 20 at Israel's Knesset (Parliament) in Jerusalem -- said in his speech:
"Since October 7th, the media has suppressed your [Israelis'] story, even going so far as to claim it never happened while others justified it as warranted resistance to Israeli oppression. Someone please tell me where children bound and shot to death with their guts cut out constitutes a warranted resistance. The integrity of facts and truth has been compromised, while the moral compass has veered off course. We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that stupid people are not offended. There's a deliberate and discernible pattern at play here.
"The media is actively suppressing the events of October 7th to rewrite history according to their chosen narrative. The problem lies in the fact that the plight of a deceased Jew doesn't capture the attention of the masses like sensationalized stories do. It all boils down to likes, views, and revenue for them.
"[On October 7], humiliation, mutilation and murder took place during those rapes. Woman raped in front of their loved ones and then shot. Knives inserted into their private parts. Scalped heads. Nails inserted into woman's private areas. Indescribable pain must have taken place before death. And much more. I've seen the actual photos and videos. Attacking innocent people and subjecting hostages to torture is not an act of freedom fighting. Nor does it constitute a war worthy of collaboration from those who suppress the truth about such inhumane violence.
"Hamas's objective was to cause immense pain and suffering in pursuit of their Jihad, allowing the horrors to be etched into our collective memory and history. Their success ensures that this event will be recounted for generations to come. The global response to victims of radical Islam has consistently been one of silence, allowing such atrocities to continue unchecked, perpetuating a cycle of violence."
The panelists at the conference, organized by Knesset Member Shelly Tal Meron, heard testimonies from family members of hostages who shared stories of sexual violence. The Jerusalem Post reported:
Sasha Ariev, whose younger sister Karina has been held hostage in Gaza, spoke of the terror of not knowing her sister's condition and the knowledge of ongoing sexual violence in Hamas captivity: "We have no information about Karina's current health, but we are aware that sexual violence, including rape, is occurring in captivity. I ask all of you, from around the world, to unite in declaring that the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war is unacceptable and that Hamas must release all the hostages - women, men, and children - immediately.
Simona Steinbrecher, the mother of Doron, 30, who was also present at the conference, told the panel that her daughter "requires daily medication, which she is likely not receiving". She said that returned hostages have spoken of the lack of privacy, even when using the shower and toilet, and are under surveillance 24/7.
Mandy Damari, whose 27-year-old daughter Emily remains in captivity as well, spoke of her fears for Emily's psychological state:
"I wonder what thoughts are going through Emily's mind under the total control of her terrorist guards, knowing that it could happen any second if they wished to do anything to her. What sort of psychological or physical threat of real sexual torture and terror is happening to her? I know enough to realize that what she is going through now will never be erased from her memory."
Shari Mendes, who was part of a forensics team that examined the bodies of women killed on October 7, said it was "clear these women died in agony."
"There were times that they were shot in the head and there was no blood that came out, so they were probably shot after they were dead. It seemed like there was an intentional obliteration of these women's faces; to erase their faces so their parents or loved ones could not see these people."
In an article in the Jerusalem Post, Mendes spoke of her anger that Israeli women were not afforded the same empathy, anger and global concern as other women, saying that "outrage [was evident in] all previous instances of sexual violence around the world." Mendes wrote:
"We Israeli women have been stunned by the silence of most of our sisters [around the world]. The majority of women's rights groups have yet to condemn the violence perpetrated against our mothers, daughters, aunts, cousins, grandmothers, and neighbors on October 7. In this case only, in the recent history of modern sisterhood, we Israel women have been deserted - we are alone. Though I marched for women's rights, the majority of the silent women of the world now can't seem to see me or our pain. Some even go so far as to deny that sexual violence even happened here at all. It is difficult to understand the level of hate that must be necessary to abdicate sisterhood. Especially at a time when we Israeli women (of all religions, by the way) need it most."
Despite these horrors experienced by Jewish, Christian and Yazidi women at the hands of jihadists from ISIS, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, most women's rights organizations in the West have remained apathetic and silent. Sadly, none of them has taken to the streets as the voice of those non-Muslim women and children who were and are raped, tormented and held as hostages by Muslim men.
Regarding the large numbers of Israeli women who were brutally raped by Hamas terrorists and their supporters, many of those women's organizations have engaged in total denial, refusing to believe Israeli women and all the evidence in front of their eyes. In the case of other organizations, it took months to issue a simple statement condemning rapes and sexual assaults against Israelis.
True women's rights advocates would not discriminate against victims based on their religion or ethnicity, and would have documented those cases of mass rape and sexual torture. Sadly, the opposite has occurred.
Thanks to those organizations' total silence or apathy in condemning the rapes, anti-Israel propagandists fabricated a pro-Hamas narrative and easily misled much of the public to ignore or deny that Israel's war against Hamas rapists and murderers is required to rescue more than 250 hostages.
The hatred of Israel by these groups has made them indifferent to the sufferings of women who happen to be Jews. What their silence and denials have actually done is only to cover up and further the crimes of Hamas and other terrorist groups. In April 2024, the NGO CyberWell released a report on the widespread online denial of Hamas's October 7 sexual violence. As documentation regarding sexual assaults against Israelis continued to pour in after October 7, writes Professor Stacy Keltner, international organizations remained uncannily quiet. The Women's Alliance for Security Leadership, for instance, still has not issued a statement.
Many feminist and human-rights groups — such as Amnesty International and the National Organization for Women — have said little about the sexual crimes Gazans committed against Israelis. United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (also known as UN-Women) waited until December 1, nearly two months after the October 7 massacre, to make a superficial statement of condemnation.
Among others, UN-Women released a statement on October 13 equating the Hamas brutalities with Israel's self-defense. Likewise, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) neglected to explicitly condemn Hamas's atrocities. And the international #MeToo movement completely failed to mention Hamas — or the Israeli victims. For other organizations that have stayed quiet or said very little on the rape of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists, please see this report.
When it comes to abused and raped Israeli women, those women's rights and human rights organizations have chosen to be on the side of rapists and murderers and to enable jihadist terrorism.
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
Martina Vaslovik