Israeli officials say that everywhere Hamas terrorists struck — the rave, the military bases along the Gaza border and the kibbutzim — they brutalized women.
A two-month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.
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.
Four witnesses described in graphic detail seeing women raped and killed at two different places along Route 232, the same highway where Ms. Abdush’s half-naked body was found sprawled on the road at a third location.
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.
Many of the accounts are difficult to bear, and the visual evidence is disturbing to see.
The Times viewed photographs of one woman’s corpse that emergency responders discovered in the rubble of a besieged kibbutz with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.
The Times also viewed a video, provided by the Israeli military, showing two dead Israeli soldiers at a base near Gaza who appeared to have been shot directly in their vaginas.
That wasn’t clear in your comment. I thought you were asking why a soldier would rape someone during a war, which happened all the time when people conquered territories and cities in the past. The Rape of Nanking isn’t a figurative term – there was mass rape perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese army.
I didn’t realize you meant at the very moment when someone was being shot at, where yes, I agree you fire back. But war is not constant shooting. There are ebbs and flows in the violence and it shifts across regions. When the shooting moves from where you are to somewhere else, the story changes.
I understand the confusion but Israel is claiming exactly what I’m saying. During the initial attack they raped women and tortured babies while fighting which is absurd.
Sexual assault does happen during war absolutely
Agreed. That claim is ridiculous, as are most by Israel.