No living victims but many witnesses. The Israeli army is investigating cases of sexual violence committed during the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7. “No living victims have said they were raped” but “we have multiple witnesses in several cases,” said David Katz, head of the cyber section of the Lahav criminal police unit.
At this stage of the investigation, which could still last “six to eight months”, he said, the police refuse to give a precise figure concerning the victims. But she showed the press the filmed testimony of a survivor of the rave party from Kibbutz Reim, describing a gang rape of a woman shot dead during her attack.
Mutilations, rape, execution
This survivor, S., interviewed by the police, claims to have seen “a group of women taken away by armed men in military uniforms”. “I understand that they raped her,” she said again, before describing mutilation, rape and execution.
“We have several testimonies from the people of Zaka”, the organization specializing in the collection of human remains which was one of the first to go to the scene of the massacres which according to the Israeli authorities left around 1,200 dead, the majority civilians, added David Katz. “We also saw bodies of women who no longer had pants or underwear,” he continued.
A collective of French public figures had, for their part, send a call on November 10 for the recognition of “mass femicide” by Hamas in Israel. “But we must do it so that women are no longer the first victims of wars and armed conflicts, and so that their faces are never forgotten,” argued the forum.