Voiceless Israel
On Dec. 28 The New York Times published an article about the sexual violence and assault against Israeli women on the dreadful morning of Oct. 7. It is a story about mass rape, torture and the murder of numerous women. It is a testimony to the horrors of Oct. 7.
The article is a summary of work done over the last two months, interviewing 150 witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors. The New York Times tells the story of many women who were subjected to gang rape, torture, mutilation and eventual execution and finally gives voice to these women in a world that insists not listening or care. There is evidence of at least 30 recorded cases of sexual violence but the real extent could have been even greater.
Here are some paragraphs from The New Your Times investigative article, bear in mind that this is just one case in a series of mass rape incidents that the Times reported on:
Screams without words
Sapir, a 24-year-old accountant, has become one of the Israeli police’s key witnesses. She does not want to be fully identified, saying she would be hounded for the rest of her life if her last name were revealed.
She attended the rave (aka Re’im “Super Nova” party) with several friends and provided investigators with graphic testimony. She also spoke to The Times. In a two-hour interview outside a cafe in southern Israel, she recounted seeing groups of heavily armed gunmen rape and kill at least five women.
She said that at 8 a.m. on Oct. 7, she was hiding under the low branches of a bushy tamarisk tree, just off Route 232, about four miles southwest of the party. She had been shot in the back. She felt faint. She covered herself in dry grass and lay as still as she could.
About 15 meters from her hiding place, she said, she saw motorcycles, cars and trucks pulling up. She said that she saw “about 100 men,” most of them dressed in military fatigues and combat boots, a few in dark sweatsuits, getting in and out of the vehicles. She said the men congregated along the road and passed between them assault rifles, grenades, small missiles — and badly wounded women.
“It was like an assembly point,” she said.
The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.
She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast.
Hey reader, wake up!!! This is not a TV crime drama where you can just switch the channel if it gets too gruesome, this happened less than three months ago to real women with families, careers and dreams.
Let’s play an imagination game and make it much more graphic for you:
Stop for a minute, close your eyes and think about the scene. Try to imagine Sapir lying there in the Re’im field, terrified, wounded, covered by dry grass and dirt. Look through her eyes at the rape scene unfolding just meters away.
Look at the rapists stand in a circle around the victim. There are many of them, all armed and she is all alone, scared and bruised. No one comes to her rescue. No one to plea mercy to. They all have this savage look in their eyes she is terrified of. They have full control of her, she is powerless. Nothing in her life has prepared her for this moment.
One of them pulls her down and another starts raping her. The knife is pressed against her throat. Try reaching her with Sapir’s gaze. Feel her pain. This woman is hurting. Does she scream or is she too paralyzed to make a sound? What is going through her mind at this moment? Maybe she is already beyond pain.
Look at the rapist now, look him in the eyes. See the joy and excitement he feels as he moves inside her. Finally, all his years in terrorism have paid off, this is what he was trained to do and hoped for. Full control over his victim. He finally feels himself a real man. World conqueror. He is encouraged by the others to rape her even harder. She needs to suffer more, he tells himself. He was trained for this and happy to do it. He is exhilarated.
He is done now and passes her broken body to the next guy. This guy is also happy to “join the fun”. They all shout slurs at her. Cursing her. Spitting on her. They chant “Allah Akbar”. She can’t hear any of it now.
Two of them hold her while another cuts of her breast and starts playing with it. They start tossing it from one guy to another as if it was some tennis ball. It is in your hand now, reader, feel the warm blood on your fingers. Can you feel their sick, sociopathic and sadistic excitement? Do you see the smiles on their faces?
They are done with her now, they stab her multiple times and cut off her head. It’s not easy, it takes considerable effort but they don’t mind. They throw it on side of the road. The victim has played her part in this “heroic deed” of theirs. Time for them to move on to the next victim.
Here is what The New York Times is not telling you:
There is growing evidence that the atrocities of Oct. 7 were not random acts of violence by militants out of control, looking for prey and acting on their own sadistic instincts. According to captured intel and the interrogation of captured ‘Nuhba’ (Hamas commando) soldiers, they were well briefed as to whom should they capture to hold hostage, they were told which categories of people hold most value (female soldiers for example). They were told who should be killed on sight. What kind of atrocities to commit. There is evidence that terrorists got orders to gang rape women. Most of these women were killed afterwards. Those were the orders. It was not some random slaughter orgy. It was planned and executed as ordered.
Rape as a weapon is not a new concept, it has been practiced for ages and has been applied in many wars. There are mountains of evidence that Russian soldiers raped many Ukrainian women in the first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There are thousands of ongoing investigations.
Rape was practiced in all the wars in Africa over the years. The Congo war or the Rwandan genocide of the 90’s are good examples.
The Soviet soldiers raped every woman in East Prussia that they could put their hands on during the final stages of WW2. And wrote home about it.
The main incentives for “rape as a weapon” are:
- To terrorize the local population.
- Humiliate the enemy by targeting the women.
- Force the local population to leave its habitat. Run. Flee.
- To taint one’s own militants (and often civilians) in these crimes so that they can’t walk away from the war. These crimes are shared by a large part of the army/terror organization. The more militants who get involved in rape, the better for the warlord. It gets easier for him to control this group of soldiers as they are guilty of war crimes.
- Sow the seeds of further violence so that peace can never be achieved.
- And finally, rape as payment for loyal service to the warlord or terror organization. Women are considered “spoils of war”. Thousands of Yazidi women in Iraq and Syria were kidnapped, raped, forced to convert to Islam, marry the kidnappers and sold at the slave market. This did not happen in some medieval backward society. It was just a few years ago.
P.S.
Dear reader, I have written and read similar articles before and I know that no one wants to hit that “clap” button or comment. I understand that it feels savage and immoral to “clap” for a rape story.
By clapping and commenting you are not condoning rape or any kind of violence against women. You are taking the opposite position. By clapping you are saying “Never Again Is Now” and “I want to help Medium’s algorithm spread this article because the world needs to know.”
