UK-funded report shows how Hamas weaponized rape

Let's talk about the bloody barbarism unleashed on October 7th, 2023, when Gazan terrorists descended upon Israel with a savagery that defies the boundaries of human decency. 

A new report, funded in part by the British government and set to be released on Tuesday by the Dinah Project, lays bare the grotesque reality of that day, a reality that some, in their moral cowardice, have sought to pretend didn't exist or obscured it. This isn't just about recounting the atrocities; it is a searing indictment of a calculated campaign of sexual violence, wielded as a weapon of war with a horrific, gleeful premeditation that chills the soul.

The Dinah Project, driven by Israeli jurists and anti-rape activists, has compiled what will stand as the first comprehensive, widely accessible chronicle of the sexual horrors inflicted during the Gaza invasion. Its purpose, as stated, is “to counter denial, misinformation and global silence,” a silence that, shamefully, has too often emanated from those quarters of the international community that pride themselves on their humanitarian credentials. 

The report draws upon a harrowing array of testimonies: from 15 former Israeli hostages, one of whom, attorney Amit Soussana, has previously spoken of her ordeal; from a survivor of the Nova music festival who narrowly escaped rape; from 17 other witnesses to the invasion; from therapists tending to the shattered survivors; and from 27 first responders who bore witness to the aftermath of this depravity.

The findings are as unambiguous as they are appalling. 

“Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon of war,” the report declares, and the evidence is irrefutable. “Clear patterns emerged in how the sexual violence was perpetrated,” it continues, detailing a litany of horrors: “victims found partially or fully naked with their hands tied, often to trees or poles; evidence of gang rapes followed by execution; and genital mutilation.” 

These acts were not confined to a single site but were documented across multiple locations: Nova music festival, the IDF’s Nahal Oz base, Route 232, and the kibbutzim of Rei’m, Nir Oz, and Kfar Aza. Nor did the torment end with the initial assault; hostages endured “sexual violence continued in captivity, with many returnees reporting forced nudity, physical and verbal sexual harassment, sexual assaults and threats of forced marriage.”

What emerges from these accounts is not merely the brutality of the acts but their deliberate, systematic nature. Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, a key figure behind the project, observes with grim precision: “Women found dead, naked and mutilated, with gunshots in their genitalia, and tied to trees. The fact that the same things happened in three to six locations can’t be coincidence but proof this was premeditated.” 

The repetition of rape followed by execution, enacted “dozens” of times, and the grotesque spectacle of terrorists attempting to rape lifeless bodies, “many of the witnesses we spoke to talk of the victims being shot and them still trying to rape a dead body,” Zagagi-Pinhas notes, reveal a depravity that is not spontaneous but orchestrated.

This is not war; this is something much darker, something that seeks not only to destroy but to degrade, to strip away every vestige of humanity. And yet, the global response has been marked by a curious reticence. 

The United Nations, that self-appointed shabby arbiter of moral rectitude, issued a report in March 2024, led by Under-Secretary-General Pramilla Patten, which, while thorough in its review of images, videos, and interviews, lacked the testimony of most hostages, many of whom were still languishing in Gaza’s dungeons at the time. The Dinah Project fills this void, amplifying voices that have been silenced or ignored.

Let's be totally clear: to deny or downplay these atrocities is to collude in their perpetuation. The “global silence” the Dinah Project seeks to shatter is not merely an absence of words but an absence of courage, a refusal to confront evil in its most naked form. 

Those who equivocate, who parse the suffering of the victims to avoid offending the sensibilities of the perpetrators’ apologists, are complicit in a moral failure of historic proportions. The evidence is here, in the voices of the survivors, in the accounts of the first responders, in the meticulous documentation of premeditated horror. To turn away is to betray not only the victims but the very principles of civilization itself.

And yet we know that in spite of the horrible videos Gazans and Hamassholes took on October 7, 2023, they will deny their barbarism and thus challenge your sanity.

But in spite of it all, Am Yisrael Chai!

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