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Israeli investigators investigating the aftermath of the brutal October 7 attacks have found evidence that both men and women suffered sexual violence and rape at the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad attackers, activists said.
Yael Sherer, spokesperson for the Survivors of Sexual Violence Israel advocacy group, said there was physical evidence, as well as eyewitness accounts, of sexual violence perpetrated against both sexes amid the attacks.
There was sexual violence and rape in these communities in southern Israel… we have a few living survivors – not many – of both sexes. “It didn’t just happen to women, it also happened to men,” Yael Sherer told BBC Radio 4.
“Apart from finding dead bodies of murdered people, many of them were mutilated…the terrorists made sure to dishonor these people and disgrace them,” he added.
It comes as Israeli police opened the largest investigation into sexual violence and crimes against women ever conducted in the country.
Inquiry leader Shelly Harush said: “It is now clear that the sexual crimes were part of the planning and the purpose was to terrorize and humiliate people.”
Police have collected thousands of statements, photographs and videos that have been described as unbearable to watch from a mother’s perspective and include “girls whose pelvises were broken from being raped so much.”
An Israeli officer walks through the grounds of the Super Nova Festival in Re’im, Israel, October 17, 2023, which was attacked by Hamas on October 7.
A pile of bodies are seen lying in the rubble at the Nova festival after the attacks
Sigal Manzuri, whose daughters Norelle and Roya were killed while attending the Nova festival, hugs family friend Lior Goldstein at a tribute to those who died during the October 7 attack by Hamas gunmen from Gaza, at the Nova Festival site in southern Israel, November 28, 2023
Revelers flee the Supernova peace festival during the October 7 attacks, which left more than 1,200 Israelis dead.
Abandoned and burned vehicles at the site of the October 7 attack on the Supernova desert music festival in southern Israel.
Personal belongings left behind by Israelis following an attack that killed more than 260 people during a music festival on October 7, near Re’im, Israel.
Yoni Saadon, 39, an attendee at the Nova music festival massacre who survived by hiding under dead bodies, this weekend gave a harrowing account of the sexual violence she saw perpetrated against women in the camp.
One horrifying image he described was the moment a woman’s decapitated head rolled across the street, after she was decapitated for refusing to be stripped.
When the sun rose on the desert festival and Hamas terrorists broke in, Yoni took shelter under a musical stage. But the terrorists identified a woman who was hiding next to him.
“She fell to the ground shot in the head, and I pulled her body over me and smeared myself with her blood to make it look like I was dead too,” he said. Sunday weather.
‘I will never forget his face. Every night I wake up and apologize to him, saying “I’m sorry.”
After an hour, the shift leader showed up. “I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her.”
The woman screamed “enough,” he said, and begged the terrorists to kill her to put her out of her misery.
‘When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot him in the head,’ he said.
The father of four admitted that his mind kept reminding him that it could have been one of his daughters, or his sister, who pulled out of the festival at the last minute.
The horror was far from over for Yoni when, hiding in the bushes, he saw two more Hamas fighters grab a woman.
“She defended herself, she didn’t allow them to undress her,” he recalled. ‘They threw her to the ground and one of the terrorists took a shovel and decapitated her and her head rolled on the ground.
“I see that head too,” he admitted.
Yoni shared his story with The Sunday Times at a support group for festival survivors in Sitria, southeast of Tel Aviv.
Three times a week, survivors from across Israel meet with the parents of whose children were among those massacred.
Among the volunteer therapists present was Bar Yuval-Shani, 58, who lost her only sister, Deborah, and her brother-in-law, Shlomi Matias, both musicians and peace activists, killed in the Holit kibbutz by militants who broke in in his safe room.
Festival goers flee the outdoor party after Hamas launched airstrikes and rampaged through the venue with assault rifles. Israeli police have not shared the identities of the alleged victims in the sexual violence investigation.
Hamas fighters bypassed Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip by paragliding, according to the Israeli military (pictured: an alleged paragliding crossing into Israel)
Sitting on the back of a terrorist’s motorcycle, with her arms outstretched pointing towards her helpless boyfriend, student Noa Argamani pleads for her life.
Yoni Saadon’s account is one of several witness accounts of rape that Yuval-Shani has heard from festival survivors, who she says are “deeply traumatized.”
Eight weeks after the attack in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage, there is growing evidence of widespread rape on October 7.
According to the people who had to remove the lifeless bodies from the massacre sites, many of the women were left naked with serious signs of bleeding on their genitals.
Haim Outmezgine, commander of a special Zaka unit, which collects the remains of the bodies, said: “We collected 1,000 bodies in ten days at the festival site and in the kibbutzim. Nobody saw more than us.
“It was clear that they were trying to spread as much horror as they could: kill, burn alive, rape… it seemed their mission was to rape as many as possible.”
David Katz, head of Lahav’s 443rd criminal investigation unit, did not give a precise figure on the number of cases under investigation, but said the investigation could last “six to eight months.”