[Attenzione: l’articolo contiene descrizioni molto esplicite]
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In recent weeks several important international media, including New York Times, Guardian e NBChave published long investigations that recount the rapes, sexual violence and mutilations of which dozens of Israeli women were victims when the radical Islamist group Hamas suddenly attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023. Already in the days following the attack testimonies had begun to emerge telling how the militiamen involved in the attack had not only killed many of the women they had come across, but had also raped and raped them in a particularly brutal way.
It is still not possible to say with certainty how many victims of sexual violence there were, and probably never will be: except for a few still traumatized survivors who for this reason do not want to speak to the media, all the people in question died and were buried without that autopsies or special tests be performed on them.
In a chaotic context like that of 7 October, in which there were fighting between Hamas and the Israeli army that went on for days, the recovery operations of the bodies were in fact concentrated rather on identification and rapid restitution of bodies to families. Furthermore, most of the volunteers who recovered the bodies were very religious Orthodox Jews: some of them said they “hadn’t really thought about the possibility [che fossero state stuprate]», others admitted to having moved and cleaned bodies or cut the ties that tied them as a sign of respect for the dead, without realizing they were destroying any evidence.
However, the new journalistic investigations contribute to providing new details, and some estimates, on what happened to many women on 7 October. According to New York Times, which was based on video footage, photographs, cell phone GPS data, and interviews with more than 150 survivors, medics, and soldiers, the sexual violence was systematic, occurring in at least seven different locations throughout the day . There were women raped and killed in three places on Highway 232. In two different kibbutzim, in the place where the Supernova music festival was held and in its surroundings, at least thirty bodies of women and girls were found with torn clothes, legs apart and signs of abuse in the genital areas.
“Many reports are difficult to bear and the visual evidence is disturbing to see,” he wrote il New York Times. Journalists Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella reported seeing photographs of the body of a woman found in the rubble of a kibbutz, with dozens of nails embedded in her thighs and groin, as well as a video provided by the Israeli army in which two female soldiers were seen who appeared to have been shot directly in the vagina.
– Read also: The massacres of civilians in the Be’eri and Kfar Azza kibbutzim
A woman who was at the music festival at the time of the attack instead told them that she managed to hide and that she saw, from her hiding place along Highway 232, a group of armed men heavily rape and kill at least five women. She told the New York Times that he saw a young woman with her trousers pulled down to her knees being pulled by the hair, bent over and then penetrated in turns while a knife was stuck in her back. He also said he saw a militiaman cut off a woman’s breast with a cutter: “one of them continued to rape her while the other threw the breast to someone else, and they played with it, they pulled it until they when it didn’t fall on the road.” Furthermore, he said he saw the militiamen carrying the severed heads of three other women. Journalists believed they could trust her story after seeing photos that showed she was actually where she said she was.
Other testimonies come from volunteers and medical staff who were at the festival site immediately after the attack. «Four of them said they discovered bodies of dead women with their legs open and underwear missing – some of whom had their hands tied by ropes and zip ties – in the party area, along the road, in the car park and in the fields open around the festival,” the article reads. Eight volunteer doctors and two Israeli soldiers who collected the corpses in two kibbutzim, those of Be’eri and Kfar Aza, told journalists that they had come across at least 24 bodies of naked or semi-naked women and girls, some mutilated, others tied and often isolated.
The investigation of Guardian instead she concentrated on identifying rape cases for which there is a large amount of cross-referenced evidence: they found at least six, including two involving underage girls. Shari Mendes, a reservist in charge of washing most of the female corpses and preparing them for burial, told them that the victims, however, would be much more: «[i corpi di] many young women arrived covered only in bloody rags or with only their underwear, which was often very bloody. The commander of our team saw several female soldiers shot in the groin, private parts, vagina or breasts.”
For the moment, no survivor of one of these rapes has spoken publicly about their experience, although it is known for certain that there are some who are currently undergoing a period of psychological treatment for the trauma they suffered. «Everyone is looking for definitive proof, a female survivor who will testify in public about what happened to her. But when you think about it, why would someone who has experienced that kind of trauma put themselves through that?” said Orit Sulitzeanu, director of the Association of Israeli Rape Crisis Centers. “I don’t think it’s in the survivors’ best interest to go to the police at the moment, and I think the investigation into all these atrocities will take a long time.”
Individual victims could potentially file a complaint against Hamas for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and the court is expected to open a specific investigation into sexual violence by the Islamist group. Rape and sexual violence in contexts such as that of October 7 are considered war crimes and a violation of international humanitarian law, and a UN-appointed panel of experts recently said that the much evidence of rape and genital mutilation that has emerged since The attack could undoubtedly fall under the category of crimes against humanity. Hamas has so far denied the allegations of sexual violence.
“In criminal proceedings, as opposed to international investigations, you need to have a specific individual and a specific victim and prove what happened beyond a reasonable doubt,” said professor and jurist Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an expert on women’s rights. «To condemn the overall scale of the atrocities and the degree of cruelty [delle violenze di Hamas]However, we already have enough evidence.”
– Read also: South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide, explained