Israeli accounts of sexual violence by Hamas rise but justice is remote

At the Shura defensive camp in central Israel on October 7, the day of the Hamas attack, the Israeli military erected a makeshift mortuary made of refrigerated shipping containers in order to identify and prepare the deceased for burial.

Authorities reported that at least 300 of the 1,200 people slain that day were women.

Following the attack on October 7, Israeli police detained several hundred persons, and among them, they are looking into allegations of sexual offences. Every suspect that they have in custody is to be put on trial.

This is only one of the difficulties confronting the inquiry into the purported sexual offences carried out during the most violent attack in Israel’s seventy-five-year history.

At certain locations, conflicts lasted for days, making entry difficult. There was some evidence collected, but authorities claim they now have a problem since they missed chances to collect ephemeral evidence that would have allowed them to connect particular suspects to specific crimes.

The identification of corpses so that families may be notified as quickly as possible was the top priority in the mass casualty incident, an Israeli military spokeswoman told news agency Reuters. Many were unaware in the early going if their family had been transferred to Gaza, were dead, or were injured.

“Victims were tortured, physically abused, raped, burned alive, and dismembered,” according to Israel’s justice ministry. Hamas vehemently contests the allegations of sexual assault or mutilation by members of its armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, on Oct. 7 or after that.

(With agency inputs)