Hamas planned sexual violence as weapon in October 7 attack, report finds

WARNING: This article includes graphic and disturbing accounts from the October 7 massacre in Israel.

Rape, gang-rape and acts of extreme sexual violence carried out by Hamas terrorists during their brutal Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel were part of a well-planned systematic weapon of war, a report, based on collated, open-source evidence and new testimonies, has found. 

Authored by The Dinah Project, a global initiative advancing justice for victims of conflict-related sexual violence, the 80-page report titled “A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond” calls on international human rights groups to recognize that Hamas weaponized sexual violence as part of its atrocities and demands that the U.N. secretary general blacklist the Palestinian terror group. 

“The main goal is to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive framework, based on all the available information, that has been analyzed and cross-checked from a legal perspective to prove that sexual violence was indeed used as a weapon of war by Hamas on October 7,” Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University, which oversees the Dinah Project, told Fox News Digital.

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“Based on that, we hope to develop or to propose a legal theory that allows for the prosecution of all the terrorists who took part in the attack and hold them responsible and accountable for all the acts of sexual violence that were perpetrated,” said Halperin-Kaddari, who officially presented the report to Israel’s first lady Michal Herzog, wife of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, on Tuesday. 

While accounts of sexual violence, including rape, gang-rape and genital mutilation, emerged quickly following Hamas’ brutal attack that sparked 20 months of war in Gaza, some in the international community – including multiple women’s rights groups – cast doubt on the reports due to a lack of physical evidence or of victims.

Most of the victims, Halperin-Kaddari pointed out, were either murdered, taken hostage or too traumatized to speak about their experience.

“It was a huge disappointment that the international human rights community could not handle the truth or escape the politicization of this issue,” she said, adding, “it’s a sign of a failure by the international human rights community that could not accept a complex situation where one side in the conflict, which is always perceived to be the victim, turns into the aggressor and uses the most horrific kind of crime — rapes and sexual violence — to advance their cause.” 

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Under pressure, some international organizations such as UN Women and the International Criminal Court in The Hague did carry out investigations, which concurred with accounts from witnesses and first responders that sexual violence and rapes had taken place.

The Dinah Project’s report builds on those investigations, bringing together, for the first time, first-hand testimonies, including from 15 returned hostages, 17 eye and earwitnesses, and 27 first responders. 

According to the report, which also draws from forensic evidence, as well as visual and audio documentation, “sexual violence was widespread and systematic” during the attack, which saw more than 1,200 people, civilians and soldiers murdered, and some 251 taken hostage back to Gaza. 

Further, the report found that the acts of rape, gang-rape and other forms of sexual violence took place in at least six different locations: the Nova music festival, Route 232, Nahal Oz military base, and Kibbutzim Re’im, Nir Oz and Kfar Aza.

“Clear patterns emerged in how the sexual violence was perpetrated, including victims found partially or fully naked with their hands tied, often to structures like trees or poles; evidence of gang rapes followed by execution; genital mutilation; and public humiliation,” said the report.

For those who were taken hostage, sexual violence continued into captivity, with multiple returnees reporting “forced nudity, physical and verbal sexual harassment, sexual assaults, and threats of forced marriage,” the report found.

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“Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon, as part of a genocidal scheme and with the goal of terrorizing and dehumanizing Israeli society, a finding with significant implications for international justice mechanisms,” the report’s authors write, outlining some “practical frameworks for achieving accountability.”

Among the recommendations, the report urges the international community to view conflict-related sexual violence as a “distinct category,” different from everyday sexual offenses; to take into consideration “the systematic silencing of victims; to utilize more diverse forms of admissible evidence, including eyewitness accounts and circumstantial evidence; and to apply joint criminal responsibility to all participants in the attack, rather than requiring direct links between individual perpetrators and specific acts and victims.”

“We also seek to set the historical record straight: Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon of war,” the authors write, adding, “This report thus sets the stage for future criminal and other domestic and international proceedings against Hamas terrorists, leaders and collaborators.”

Israeli first lady Michal Herzog, who received The Dinah Project’s report on Tuesday, said in a statement that it “lays out the truth.” 

“On behalf of all those harmed, we must continue to fight until their voices are heard everywhere and justice is served,” she said, adding, “as a woman, a mother, and an Israeli, I read the reports with a broken heart… it challenges the global silence, replaces denial with facts, and calls on the world to recognize sexual violence as a crime against humanity and to prosecute those responsible.”