‘Was the world quiet about October 7 rapes because it was Jewish women?’ Netanyahu hints at anti-semitism as he blasts women’s groups and world leaders for not ‘screaming’ about the atrocities
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted women’s rights groups and world leaders for not ‘screaming’ about the rape and mutilation of Israeli civilians by Hamas – while hinting their silence was because the victims are Jewish women.
Harrowing details have emerged of the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, with eyewitnesses detailing how Israeli women were gang raped and mutilated before being shot dead.
‘I heard heartbreaking stories of abuse,’ a visibly emotional Netanyahu said last night. ‘I heard, as you heard, about sexual abuse and unprecedented cases of brutal rape.’
But Netanyahu said that despite the emergence of harrowing evidence of torture and gang rape committed by Hamas terrorists, women’s rights groups and world leaders have remained silent while hinting this is due to anti-semitism.
‘Were you silent because it was Jewish women?’ Netanyahu asked in Hebrew.
Switching to English, a seething Netanyahu said: ‘I say to the women’s rights organizations, to the human rights organizations, you’ve heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible atrocities, sexual mutilation – where the hell are you?
‘I expect all civilized leaders, governments and nations to speak up against this atrocity,’ he added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted women’s rights groups and world leaders for not ‘screaming’ about the rape and mutilation of Israeli civilians by Hamas – while hinting their silence was because the victims are Jewish women
One eyewitness, who was at the festival, spoke of how a woman was gang raped before she was mutilated
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden called the reports of sexual violence ‘appalling’ and urged the world to condemn ‘horrific accounts of unimaginable cruelty.’
Shortly after Netanyahu’s passionate address, UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell said: ‘The accounts of sexual violence on 7 October in Israel are horrific.
‘Survivors must be heard, supported and provided with care. Allegations must be fully investigated.’
READ MORE: Full horror of Hamas festival massacre is revealed – Survivors describe gang rape and mutilations, with the terrorists deriving sick pleasure from targeting men and women’s genitals
Russell, who did not mention Hamas terrorists in her statement, added: ‘We condemn gender-based violence and all forms of violence against women and girls.’
It comes as survivors of the deadly October 7 attack on the Nova Festival recounted how Hamas terrorists gang raped, tortured and mutilated Israeli women and men.
One witness has told Israeli police that they saw a woman mutilated by Hamas gunmen before a terrorist shot her in the head during a gang rape.
Others have described hearing the screams of women as they were attacked, as well as seeing the gunmen cut off their breasts and toss them to the side of the road.
Several people involved in the collecting and identifying of the bodies found in the aftermath have also recounted harrowing evidence of torture and murder to officials, describing how festivalgoers’ genitals were shot at, and how elsewhere they found victims murdered in their homes, their genitals mutilated with knives.
A combat paramedic said he saw the body of a young woman with her legs open, her pants pulled down, and what looked like semen on her lower back. An army reservist who was tasked with identifying those killed by the terrorists said some of the women were found wearing only bloodied underwear.
While few victims of the atrocities are thought to have survived the attack, a selection of these recorded eyewitness accounts have been released by Israeli police, and seen by several news organisations.
The horrific accounts show that rape and sexual assault was part of an atrocities-filled rampage by Hamas who killed 1,200 Israeli civilians as they screamed and begged for their lives.
With the release of the testimonies, Israel is calling on the international community to recognise Hamas’s October 7 attack as a crime against humanity, with one senior official investigating sexual violence saying the terrorists came across the border from Gaza with a ‘clear order’ to use ‘rape as genocide.’
One woman at the horrific scene said: ‘There was one body of a woman that had a blood stain on her genitals, at first I thought she might have had a mishap out of fear. When we picked her up we knew for sure that it was blood.’
Another told officers in a recorded clip: ‘Mainly there were a lot of gunshot wounds, also targeted shooting in the male genital area and we saw that a lot. They had a thing with sexual organs, both for women and men.
‘The women we received, they were civilians, we mainly saw either breast amputation or shooting just to the breast, simply shooting from one side of the breast to the other.
‘They were conscious when they got to us. For the men it was their genitalia, shooting genitals, they had a thing with that, or amputation.’
Israeli soldiers console each other next to the pictures of the Nova music festival victims at the site of the festival near Kibbutz Reim on 1 December
Survivors of the Nova Festival massacre have recounted the horrors of the October 7 attack to Israeli police. Pictured: Festivalgoers fleeing the party as Hamas launched its attack
Other witnesses gave harrowing testimonies, recalling seeing women and men having their genitals shot at by Hamas terrorists
Footage showed of a Hamas terrorist launching fire on festivalgoers on October 7
In one of the horrific statements recorded on video, a witness known only as Witness S described seeing a female victim being passed from one attacker to another as they raped her, while she ‘bled from her back’.
The terror group went on to ‘cut her breasts’ before ‘throwing it onto the road’ and ‘playing with it’, the witness recalled.
She continues to say the victim was passed to another man in uniform.
‘He penetrated her, and shot her in the head before he finished,’ she said, according to the BBC who saw the video testimony. ‘He didn’t even pick up his pants; he shoots and ejaculates.’
The woman in the video described watching the militants as she pretended to be dead. ‘I couldn’t understand what I saw,’ she said.
Another man who was at the festival as the bloody incursion unfolded, told the BBC he could hear the ‘noises and screams of people being murdered, raped, decapitated’.
When asked by the broadcaster how he could be sure that the screams he heard indicated a sexual assault, he said he believed when listening at the time that the shouts could only have been as a result of rape.
In a statement the same man made through a support organisation, he described the attack carried out by the Hamas terror group as ‘inhuman’.
‘Some women were raped before they were dead, some raped while injured, and some were already dead when the terrorists raped their lifeless bodies,’ his statement says. ‘I desperately wanted to help, but there was nothing I could do.’
Another witness, Ron Freger, fled the music festival when Hamas attacked and said he heard women screaming for help.
‘I was lying in a pit and I hard a girl yelling ‘they’re raping me, they’re raping me’, he told Associated Press.
Several minutes later, he heard gunshots close by and she fell silent, he said.
‘The feeling in that moment is one of complete powerlessness. I’m lying in this hole and I have no ability to do anything,’ the 23-year-old explained.
‘I have no weapon, I have nothing, I’m surrounded by other people who are hiding with me and we’re completely powerless.’
Two months after the Hamas attacks on the music festival, farming communities and army posts across southern Israel and close to Gaza, police are still struggling to put together the pieces.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, priority was given to identifying bodies and not preserving evidence, making the investigation more challenging.
Now Israeli police say they are combing through 60,000 videos seized from the body cameras of Hamas gunmen. Footage from social media and security cameras will also be looked at in a bid to bring the perpetrators to justice. It has been hard to find rape survivors, however, as many were killed by their attackers.
But police say they not have ‘multiple’ eye-witness accounts of sexual assault.
They have not said exactly how many, and are yet to interview any of the surviving victims of the attacks.
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