It’s simple. Either Hamas is keeping the women and children hostages to keep them from talking about sexual abuse and rape, or they are dead.
State Department spokesman Mathew Miller:
“The fact that they continue to hold women hostages, the fact that they continue to hold children hostages, the fact that it seems one of the reasons they don’t want to turn women over that they’ve been holding hostage and the reason this pause fell apart is they don’t want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody.”
October 7 survivor Yoni Saadon told The Sunday Times:
“She fell to the ground, shot in the head, and I pulled her body over me and smeared her blood on me so it would look as if I was dead too,” he said. “I will never forget her face. Every night I wake to it and apologise to her, saying ‘I’m sorry’.”After an hour, he peeked out. “I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her. She was screaming, ‘Stop it — already I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’ When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head.“I kept thinking it could have been one of my daughters,” added the father of four. “Or my sister — I had bought her a ticket but last minute she couldn’t come.”The horror did not end there. Hiding in bushes, he saw two more Hamas fighters. “They had caught a young woman near a car and she was fighting back, not allowing them to strip her. They threw her to the ground and one of the terrorists took a shovel and beheaded her and her head rolled along the ground. I see that head too,” he says.
Two people preparing the remains of females found at the festival confirmed the rape allegations (emphasis mine):
“It was clear they were trying to spread as much horror as they could — to kill, to burn alive, to rape,” said Haim Outmezgine, a senior member of ZAKA rescue services, which has been working around the clock collecting the remains of the dead. “It seemed their mission was to rape as many [people] as possible.”Corroborating Outmezgine’s account, an architect identified by the Sunday Times only as Shari, described what she had seen during a two-week stint volunteering as part of a group preparing the remains of female victims for burial.“Opening the body bags was scary as we didn’t know what we would see,” she said. “They were all young women. Most in little clothing or shredded clothing and their bodies bloodied particularly around their underwear and some women shot many times in the face as if to mutilate them.”“There seems no doubt what happened to them,” she added.
The women released by Hamas have not said anything about rape or sexual abuse, but that does not mean it didn’t happen. Rightfully, no one will pressure them to speak about anything they do not want to. They must be given the time and space to heal and speak when and if needed.
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