As a woman and as a mum to 2 young girls I’m absolutely disgusted that the extreme abhorrent sexual abuse and violence which has occurred has also been downplayed by the UN.

JERUSALEM — The first suggestion that Hamas terrorists committed acts of extreme sexual violence and rape against victims during their Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel came on social media early on that fateful Saturday morning six weeks ago.

Two short videos, shared by the terrorists themselves, quickly emerged showing groups of cheering Palestinian men, some armed, in the streets of Gaza crowding around half-naked and bloodied young Israeli women.

In one clip, a woman later identified as German-Israeli citizen Shani Louk, 22, can be seen barely clothed lying unconscious in an unnatural position on the flatbed of a pickup as men spit and abuse her body while screaming "Allahu Akhbar."

In another video, 19-year-old Israeli soldier Na’ama Levy is pulled from the back of a jeep by an armed gunman, her hands bound behind her back and  thick blood stains between her legs, as Palestinian men jeer at her.

Louk is now counted among the 1,200 people murdered that day, and Levy is thought to be one of an estimated 240 hostages, including babies and children, being held by the terror group inside the Palestinian enclave.



While the victims of gender-based crimes committed during that brutal attack have yet to come forward, either because they were murdered or kidnapped or are still reeling from the trauma, the Israeli police and Israel’s newly formed Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women believe sexual violence during the terror attack was widespread, systematic and even endorsed by the Islamic fundamentalist group’s religious and spiritual leaders as permissible during war.

The witness, identified only by the initial "S," recounted on camera that while she was hiding from the terrorists, she saw a group of them pass a woman with long brown hair among them.

I understood they were raping her," S said. "They were passing her from one person to the next. She was alive and standing on her feet. She was bleeding from her back."

S then described how one of the terrorists sliced off the woman’s breast and began playing around with it. Another, the witness said, shot the woman in the head while he was still penetrating her.

"He did not even lift up his pants and shot her in the head," S said, adding that she spied another terrorist haul a naked, dead woman over his shoulder and walk off with her. Another, she said, cut off someone’s head and was walking around with it like a trophy.

Additionally, the police shared graphic photographs and video footage from the festival showing women, charred and bloody, their underwear visibly ripped and their legs spread apart.

Videotaped interrogations of some of the captured terrorists show them confessing that they had orders to murder, rape and kidnap Israeli civilians. One suspect told Israeli interrogators he and his men had received religious permission to kill children "because they’ll grow up to be soldiers" and to decapitate "to sow fear among the Israelis."

First responders from both the Israeli military and the country’s civilian services have described in detail the disturbing brutality and atrocities carried out by an estimated 3,000 Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists who entered Israel Oct. 7.

A commander with the Israeli army’s National Rescue Unit told journalists in the initial days after the attack that he had found multiple bodies of dead women who had been stripped naked. In one case, on Kibbutz Be’eri, Col. (Res) Golan Vach, said he found two women tied together on the same bed with no clothes on.

Speaking this week on a Zoom panel organized by the Maimonides Society at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, chair of Israel’s newly formed Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women, said her team had also been working to compile a database of gender-based atrocities "to ensure that the Oct. 7 victims of sexual and other violence against women are never forgotten and that their stories are adequately told."

Elkayam-Levy, a legal expert from Hebrew University added, "We established the commission on the eighth day of the war as more and more evidence of gruesome crimes against women and children emerged," she told the panel.

She said that even though some of Hamas’ crimes, which were broadcast in real-time on social media, "showed clear violations of international law and brutal crimes committed against women and children," there was little international condemnation.

"Therefore, we took it upon ourselves to call for recognition and action," Elkayam-Levy said. "We also realized that these crimes must be documented and brought to the attention of the international community."

Her pants are pulled down toward her knees and there’s a bullet wound on the back side of her neck near her head,” he recounted.“There’s a puddle of blood around her head and there’s remains of semen on the lower part of her back.”

The girl on the bed had bruises all over her body and a bullet wound to the chest, he said.

“These are two girls that were just killed, executed, perhaps raped in their own bedroom,” he told CNN.

Others reported similar horrors at the Nova music festival where hundreds of young people were killed by terrorists.

Rami Shmuel, an organizer of the festival, said he saw female victims with no clothes as he made his escape, and has no doubts about what happened.

“Their legs were spread out and some of them were butchered,” he told CNN.

He added that it appeared women were specifically targeted for sexual violence.

“Why didn’t they [take] clothes off men?” he asked. “Only women, only young girls, beautiful girls, why?”

A long investigation ahead
Israel’s 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.

But officials provided a stark window into the evidence they have been gathering at a press briefing, which included a statement from a woman who witnessed the Nova festival attack from her hiding place on October 7.

They bent someone over and I understood he was raping her, and then he was passing her on to someone else,” the woman, who was not identified, said of what she saw.

“She 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. I 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.”

The witness added: “I remember seeing another person raping her, and while he was still inside her he shot her in the head.”