Several witnesses shared detailed accounts of Hamas’ torture and rape of Israeli women at the Supernova Music Festival on Oct. 7, according to a report from The New York Times.
One key witness, Sapir, 24, attended the music festival with several friends and has recounted graphic details of seeing heavily armed Hamas terrorists rape and kill women, she told The Times.
Sapir told the outlet that after she had been shot in the back, she hid under the branches of a tree. As she was hiding, she saw “about 100” armed Hamas gunmen pull up, passing around assault rifles, grenades, and women.
From her hiding spot, Sapir watched in horror as the men raped and tortured at least five women. One woman was stabbed with a knife every time she flinched, while another was “shredded into pieces” and had her breast cut off. Sapir observed the gunmen rape and torture three other women, carrying the severed heads of women.
“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,” Sapir told the outlet.
Another eyewitness, Raz Cohen, an Israeli who had also attended the music festival, described seeing a white van pull up with five Hamas gunmen from his hiding place in a dried-up stream.
Cohen told the outlet he saw the men — in civilian clothing and carrying knives and a hammer — drag a woman into the road and gather around her in a circle as they began “raping her.”
“I saw the men standing in a half circle around her,” Cohen explained. “One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.” After they were done, one of them raised a knife and “they just slaughtered her,” Cohen said.
Jamal Waraki, a volunteer paramedic with the non-profit organization, ZAKA Search and Rescue, described seeing a woman between the main stage and the bar who had her hands “tied behind her back” and had been “bent over, half naked” with her underwear rolled past her knees.
Another paramedic described coming across the bodies of two teenage girls, one with her boxer shorts ripped and bruises all the way down to her groin. The other, with her pajama pants pulled down and semen smeared on her.
In the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel, which left more than 1,200 dead and more than 200 people taken as hostages, doubt was cast regarding the sexual and physical violence Hamas carried out on Israeli women.
The Los Angeles Times issued an editor’s note to an article referencing Hamas’ sexual violence atrocities claiming that “such reports have not been substantiated.”
While it is unclear how many women were victims of Hamas’ sexual assault on Oct. 7, the Israel Defense Forces has been and is continuing to gather evidence as it investigates, according to the outlet.
