FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 29, 2023
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DAY 10 OF HAMAS REFUSING TO RELEASE WOMEN, CHILDREN, AND ELDERLY HOSTAGES FOR TEMPORARY CEASEFIRE: NEW DETAILS PROVE HAMAS WEAPONIZED SEXUAL VIOLENCE ON OCTOBER 7
On December 20th, Hamas Rejected Israel’s Offer of Weeklong Ceasefire in Return for Releasing Women, Children, and Elderly Hostages Held by Hamas
WASHINGTON, D.C. – After 10 days of Hamas refusing to release women, children, and elderly hostages in exchange for a weeklong pause in fighting, newly reported details prove Hamas weaponized sexual violence on October 7th. A two-month New York Times investigation of Hamas’s October 7th terrorist attack on Israel revealed a “pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women.” This follows a detailed report last week by USA Today, reporting on Hamas’s use of sexual violence against the citizens it continues to hold hostage.
READ THE FULL NEW YORK TIMES PIECE HERE
Key Excerpts
- Relying on video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors, The Times identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated.
- And The Times interviewed several soldiers and volunteer medics who together described finding more than 30 bodies of women and girls in and around the rave site and in two kibbutzim in a similar state as Ms. Abdush’s — legs spread, clothes torn off, signs of abuse in their genital areas.
- The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.
- She said the men sliced her face and then the woman fell out of view. Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.
- Hours later, the first wave of volunteer emergency medical technicians arrived at the rave site. In interviews, four of them said that they discovered bodies of dead women with their legs spread and underwear missing — some with their hands tied by rope and zipties — in the party area, along the road, in the parking area and in the open fields around the rave site.
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