Witnesses and medical testimony are coming out one after another to support the suspicion that the Palestinian armed political faction Hamas committed sexual crimes during a surprise attack on Israel.
The U.S. government said, “It is possible that Hamas is withholding additional releases to prevent testimony of sexual violence against civilian women it has kidnapped in Israel.” 바카라사이트닷컴
According to foreign media such as AFP and The Hill on the 5th (Korean time), U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller responded as follows to a reporter’s question about Hamas’s rape and sexual abuse of hostages at a briefing that day.
“I think one of the reasons Hamas doesn’t want to hand over the hostages is that the temporary ceasefire agreement broke down because they don’t want the women to come forward and talk about what happened to them while they were in detention,” Miller said. “He said.
He also said, “There is no reason to doubt reports of sexual crimes committed by Hamas. “We have clearly seen reports that Hamas has committed sexual violence, and they have committed rape,” he said. 바카라사이트닷컴
The Hill reported that this reflects the U.S. administration’s view that Hamas is responsible for the breakdown of temporary ceasefire negotiations with Israel.
The Israeli government said it had so far obtained more than 1,500 eyewitness accounts of Hamas’ acts of sexual violence, including rape of women and girls.
However, Hamas denies the allegations, saying that sexual crimes and other atrocities were committed by other armed forces that invaded after the Hamas attack.
To date, there has been no case in which a person who has directly suffered a sexual crime has publicly disclosed the facts of the victimization. However, the Israeli side continues to release secondary evidence, such as medical staff and eyewitness testimonies, body photos, and autopsies.
One witness testified that “a woman was shot dead after being gang-beaten and sexually assaulted by 8 to 10 Hamas terrorists.”
He added, “Hamas attempted to sexually assault a woman, but when she resisted, he beheaded her with a shovel.”
Professor Ruth Halperin-Kadari, an Israeli women’s rights activist and lawyer, said: “We have come across a number of first-hand eyewitness accounts, including accounts from eyewitnesses who hid in the grass and watched several men rape a woman.”
“These sexual crimes were concentrated in multiple locations in one day,” she said, adding, “This suggests that Hamas was planning to use sexual assault as a weapon of war.”
However, Israeli authorities are said to be having difficulty finding direct evidence of sexual crimes because the alleged crime scenes were damaged due to the war and most of the victims of sexual assault were murdered.
UN Women issued a statement on the 1st, two months after the Hamas attack, stating that all types of sexual violence that occurred on October 7 should be investigated and punished.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged the need to investigate Hamas’ sexual crimes in a post on his social media a day before UN Women issued a statement.
“It took too long,” said Professor Halperin-Kadari regarding the UN’s response. “Until a week ago, no one at the UN had openly used the word ‘sexual violence.’ “It took them over 7 weeks to do that,” he criticized.
Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas held a ceasefire from the 24th of last month to the 1st, but could not agree on an extension. In response, the U.S. White House stated that this was because Hamas refused to release additional female hostages.
Both sides resumed fighting at 7 a.m. on the 1st, when the ceasefire ended. Israel launched a massive airstrike on the Gaza Strip as soon as the ceasefire ended, claiming that Hamas had broken the agreement to stop fighting.