A New York Times investigation on Thursday, December 28, described in gruesome detail how Hamas weaponized sexual violence during its multi-pronged October 7 terror assault on Israel. Serious bodily violations were part of the methods used by Hamas, as Lahav 433, Israel’s top national police unit, collected evidence of dozens of cases of abuse. The report was conducted through many investigations with the collection of survivor testimonies of more than 150 witnesses, medical personnel, rape counselors, soldiers, and government officials. All of this was uncovered also with video footage of scans and GPS data from cell phones. Around 30 percent of Israelis killed on October 7 – some 360 out of 1,200 – had attended the Nova Music Festival on a weekend of atrocious mayhem. Many of the victims had their charred remains near the music site.
“On Saturday, October 7, when Hamas raped and tortured and massacred over a thousand of our men, women, and children – innocent unarmed people – I felt every ounce of the pain of those people burning through my veins [which] tore me apart,” Cheryl E. an Israeli who also goes by her Hebrew name, Chaya, tells the Queens Jewish Link. Chaya, who lost her parents in a terror attack two decades ago, is sustained by her two daughters and her husband. She credits her spouse for encouraging her to speak out often on Twitter/X. “My husband is the first person I ever allowed myself to even get close to. And now my daughters. I use [Twitter] to release my rage and emotions through my writing, which I have always done. I get to control my emotions through my writing,” Chaya says.
October 4, 2003, “[was] the day Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad sent a young suicide bomber to Haifa and my entire family was lost,” says Chaya. “I became an orphan in an instant, because they chose to hate us by decree of their religion. They took everything away from me. Or so I thought. When I saw the images of the terrified young students being slaughtered at the Nova Festival on October 7, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t control my tears, my emotions, [and] my rage. When I heard the joy in the voices of the murderers, it destroyed every part of my being and every ounce of my humanity. In a split-second, everything changed. I am no longer the person I was on October 6.”
Chaya’s tweets about her coping with the horrors of the October 7 terror assault have drawn the attention of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which continues to retweet her many messages.
Throughout the month of December, Israeli women and young adults released by Hamas after weeks in captivity have taken to the airwaves of late. Mia Schem, a 21-year-old Israeli-French tattoo artist whom Hamas brutally dragged and kidnapped before being held captive for 54 days by Hamas, said: “It was important to me to relay the truth about the nature of the people who live in Gaza, who they truly are, and what I experienced there. I went through a Holocaust. Suddenly, I realized that I’m with a family. I’m asking myself questions: Why am I in some family’s home? Why are there kids here? Why is there a wife?” In another Israel TV interview, Schem also said, “Everyone [in Gaza] is a terrorist.”
Agam Goldstein Almog, a 17-year-old who was released after 51 days of captivity in Gaza, also shared her experiences at a large gathering at the Square of the Kidnapped in Tel Aviv on January 6, The Jerusalem Post reported. “My father was shot immediately as he stood by the safe room, clutching my sister’s bed board. He screamed, ‘No, no, no’ as we, huddled in a corner, were forcibly taken, stepping over his body without a chance to say goodbye. The chaos was deafening,” Almog said. “Many experienced severe sexual assaults and complex injuries [and] left untreated. We had to bandage ourselves or help each other.”
Doron Katz Asher, another hostage released after almost 50 days in captivity, spoke of the “psychological warfare” inflicted on her. She said on CNN, “The [terrorists] didn’t give us a lot of information. They mainly tried to say that Hamas wants to release us but in Israel no one cares about us. She added that she did not believe them, as the loud sounds of fighting outside the building in Gaza showed “how we knew that something was going on in order to get us back home [and] to put pressure on Hamas to release us.”
The Metiv Israel Psychodrama Center, for instance, said that those affected will surely need medical treatment while others may not. “The main issue that needs to be restored is a sense of control,” said the center’s director Danny Brom, as reported by Reuters. “People coming through horrific things are not sick. They need to cope with it; they need to get space, time, and a warm environment in order to do that, but not necessarily in a medical setting.”
Despite the many atrocities in recent months, including hateful demonstrations throughout New York City, including at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan on December 28, Chaya reminds that the power of Judaism lies in its shared sense of identity. “The Jewish people have lost more than almost all other people have ever gained,” she tells the Queens Jewish Link. “We are not just any people. We are one of the elders. We have been around as people longer than most others around today. We have seen countless civilizations come and go. Empires forgotten into the annals of history, yet we still stand here today.”
It was also reported on Sunday, January 7, that a massive hourglass erected in Tel Aviv to represent the plight of the remaining 130 held captive by Hamas will be flown to New York City to mark 100 days since the terror group invaded Israel. The hourglass, constructed by Israelis, will be on display at Dar Hammarskjold Plaza on Friday, January 12, at a rally for the hostages. The Ramat Hashnaim non-profit organization that constructed the working timepiece was initially set up in front of the Habima Theater under the title, “Time is Running Out,” YnetNews reported.
There have been no hostages released since late November.
By Jared Feldschreiber
