The October 7 Rape War

"We are indeed facing a whole new battlefield which we did not anticipate. A whole new war, which is the war over the narrative, over the truth, over the justice, the acknowledgement."

"Hamas had engaged in the most horrendous crimes and brutal and inhumane acts on October 7. One can both acknowledge that Hamas used sexual violence as a weapon of war, and at the same time question the ongoing war in Gaza. but this is a very complex truth to hold on to. It's nuanced, and I'm afraid that this is where much of the media, international human rights organizations and women's groups have failed."

"[The Minerva Center for Human Rights said there is] clear and convincing evidence that hostages in Gaza were subject to sexual assaults that were probably still ongoing."

Israeli legal scholar Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, former UN official

People protest outside the offices of the United Nations Women in New York City on Nov. 27, 2023 to bring attention to the Israeli women who were raped by Hamas terrorists on October 7. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

 

Dr. Halperin-addari is involved in spearheading documentation of the sexual violence Hamas terrorists committed during their invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Her purpose is to finally achieve international recognition for the  horrors that Israeli women and among them some men as well, suffered, in the face of perplexing apathy and indifference from a number of world bodies.

 

Dr. Halprin-Kaddari is the lead researcher for the Dinah 7/10 Project, co-author of its white paper submitted to the United Nation's Special Rapporteur on Torture. She is in the process of cataloguing evidence while proposing new legal frameworks for prosecuting such crimes. Her dozen  years as a member of he UN's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women has more than adequately prepared her for the task at  hand.

Finding bodies showing signs of sexual violence were reported by first responders, Israeli soldiers and medical teams. Survivors and witnesses of the attacks also provided accounts of sexual violence. Some victims were found bound, unclothed, and exhibiting injuries consistent with sexual assault, such as genital injuries, nails pounded into female organs and bleeding. Women required surgery and plasma transfusions for extensive internal rape damage.

At the Shura IDF base, the identification site for victims' bodies, forensic examinations revealed signs of sexual assault followed by execution. Site photographs revealed women's bodies naked from the waist down, or with underwear ripped aside, legs splayed, signs of trauma to genitals and legs. Bodies were bound to structures such as poles and trees. Bodies with broken pelvises from viciously violent assaults. 

The Office  of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict concluded in a UN report that evidence was "clear and convincing of sexual violence, characterizing its scope and actions as "cruel and inhumane". Findings, Dr. Halperin-Kaddari states, meeting criteria of the Rome Statute: When rape is committed "as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack, a crime against humanity is constituted."

 

The expectation is that international bodies such as the United Nations will acknowledge this.

 

"Our major  undertaking now is to complete a research report that both accumulates all the pieces of information which we gathered and we grouped together, cataloguing them according to their evidentiary value, according to the proximity of the source of information."

"So eyewitnesses, earwitnesses, footage by first responders and testimonies of first responders."

"It's the attack against the sexual organs. It's mutilation of he sexual organs of the procreative capacity of the nation that is being attacked. So the bodies, mostly of women, but also of men, are actually used as tools."

"They are attacked directly in their procreation capacities in order to destroy that nation."

Dr. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari