Hamas used sexual violence as part of ‘genocidal strategy’, Israeli experts say

Hamas used sexual violence as “part of the intentional genocide strategy” during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, a group of Israeli legal and gender experts in a new report calling for justice.

The DINAH project says that the report depends on reviewing evidence, including a direct certificate from a survivor from the attempt to rape and 15 former hostages in Gaza, as well as accounts from witnesses to sexual assaults.

He puts what the group describes as “a legal plan to sue these crimes, even when direct support to the perpetrators of individuality is impossible.”

Hamas denied that its forces committed sexual violence against women or the abuse of hostages.

but, The United Nations mission in March 2024 concluded that there are “reasonable reasons” to believe that sexual violence related to the conflict occurred during the October 7 attack in multiple locationsIncluding rape and gang rape, and that there is “convincing information” that the hostages have been subjected to sexual violence, including rape and sexual torture.

Before their assassination by Israel, Three senior Hamas leaders were accused by the International Criminal Court of Criminal Court of crimes against humanity of rape and other forms of sexual violence.In addition to killing, extermination and torture.

On October 7, hundreds of Hamas members and Palestinian armed groups attacked the allies in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and took 251 others as a hostage.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza, where more than 5,700 people were killed, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health in the region.

Warning: Contains graphic descriptions of rape and sexual violence

The DINAH project was launched after October 7 to follow the justice of victims of sexual violence. It was founded by legal researcher Ruth Halbreen Kadr, lawyer and former prosecutor Sharon Zagji-Binnas, former judge and Deputy Prosecutor Nava Ben or.

You say that The report published on Tuesday“It proves that Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon, as part of the genocide plan and with the goal of intimidating Israeli society and canceling its humanity.”

It also “creates a way to justice for the victims of the October 7 attack and perhaps for victims in other conflict areas,” according to the group.

The authors say they reviewed a large volume of sources, from social media publications to the registered certificate, as well as criminal evidence and visual and sound evidence.

The report – who does not specify the victims but cited reports that some of them – say one of the survivors of the attack at the Nova Music Festival on October 7 to the members of the Dina project that she was subjected to an attempt to rape and sexual assault.

According to the report, one of the 15 former hostages said she was forced to perform sexual work, preceded by sexual assault and verbal and physical sexual harassment. She also said she endured forced nudity – a six other hostage experience as well.

The report says that all hostages have almost reported verbal harassment and some physical harassment, including “unwanted physical communication in special parts”, while six said they faced threats of forced marriage.

Two men from the hostages said that they were subjected to forced nudity and physical assault when naked, with one of them also tells the shaving of all the hair of his body, according to the report.

The DINAH project says that the accounts of people who saw or heard sexual violence showed that such crimes were “widespread and methodological” on October 7.

According to the report, five witnesses reported four separate cases of gang rape; Seven were at least eight other separate cases of rape or severe sexual assaults, some in captivity; I mentioned at least five separate cases of sexual assaults, some of which are families; Three is reported to three separate cases of distortion.

The report says that nine of those cases related to the Nova Music Festival, two at the military base in Ni Oz, one on Road 232, and four for incidents that occur in captivity in Gaza.

Meanwhile, twenty -seven of the respondents described dozens of cases that showed “clear signs of sexual violence across six sites,” says the report – Nova Festival, Road 232, Kibbutzim from Perry, Alumim, Nahal Oz and Reem.

The report also says that “most of the victims have been permanently silent,” because they either were killed on October 7 or left a very shock to speak.

In response, the authors present what they describe as “the first global legal plan to explain how sexual violence is sustained as a war weapon – even when the evidence is chaotic, the survivors disappear, and individual perpetrators cannot be linked to individual actions.”

This includes a framework for the classification of information based on its proximity to the accidents and its proof value, and a legal framework to prove criminal responsibility for the atrocities committed during the mass attacks, even when the individual personally did not commit every specific act or was not aware of by another person.

The report concludes that justice is “necessary not only for individual victims but to confirm the broader principles: that sexual violence in the conflict represents a serious violation of international law, and that the perpetrators will obtain responsibility, and that the international community will not allow these crimes to be linked with impunity.”