sabrina maddeaux: hamas's oct. 7 attack wasn’t only an antisemitic slaughter, it was a mass femicide
torturing women to death while raping them is not resistance, nor a political statement. it is evil you can't negotiate with
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survivors of the nova music festival, at which at least 350 festival-goers were killed by hamas terrorists in israel on oct. 7, embrace during a memorial evening on nov. 11, 2023, in caesarea. the new york times has reported horrifying eyewitness and video accounts of the rape, torture and murder of women at the festival and elsewhere during hamas's oct. 7 attack.
alexi j. rosenfeld / getty images
(warning: the following column contains extreme graphic content.)
“grandma, how did mom die?”
in a disturbing new report on the sadistic sexual violence inflicted by hamas terrorists on oct. 7, eti bracha shares the question her seven-year-old grandson, refael, asked several weeks ago. it’s a question too many children are left asking after their parents were slaughtered by hamas.
the true horror of what happened to their moms in particular, and many other young israeli women, that day is something a child should never have to hear — and an atrocity western democracies should act to ensure is fully prosecuted to the extent it can be, and never happens again.
instead, many otherwise self-proclaimed “feminist” politicians, including those in justin trudeau’s liberal government, have spent more time downplaying and equivocating the mass rape and torture of women.
we don’t know for sure how refael’s mother, 34-year-old gal abdush, was murdered or what her last moments looked like — but how her body was found paints a pretty clear picture. a corpse, on her back, burned beyond facial recognition. legs spread. dress ripped and lifted, leaving her genitals exposed.
eyewitness accounts of other rapes, mutilations and murders shared with the new york times are nothing short of nauseating.
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bloodied and badly injured women passed down a line of hamas terrorists like party favours.
a woman bent over, raped and stabbed in the back by a hamas terrorist each time she flinched.
another whose breast was cut off with a box cutter, then played with by terrorists, as she was raped and further mutilated.
terrorists carrying decapitated women’s heads as others were raped and killed nearby.
the times also viewed photos and video that appeared to show young women “shot directly in their vaginas,” and another woman with “dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.”
there should be no question that oct. 7 wasn’t only an antisemitic attack, but a mass femicide and systematic use of rape as a tool of subjugation and terror that should horrify the world.
israel’s top police unit says they will never know exactly how many israeli women were raped and mutilated — the chaos and rush to identify victims, alongside religious duties and well-intentioned respect for the dead that disturbed crime scenes, meant few autopsies and missed opportunities for additional photographic evidence.
however, the international community must take advantage of the photos, videos and eye witness accounts that do exist to prosecute hamas terrorists for their war crimes against women. political leaders must also make clear these crimes did happen, are unacceptable in all contexts and will not go unpunished.
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they must acknowledge this is why there can be no lasting peace with hamas, an organization that says it will recommit oct. 7 over and over again — more systematic rapes, more mutilation, more torture.
torturing women to death while raping them is not resistance. it isn’t a political statement. it’s the sort of evil you can’t rationalize or negotiate with.
the weeks since oct. 7 have brought numerous distressing truths to light: one of them is how comfortable many westerners, particularly left-leaning ones, are brushing aside sexual violence when it suits their ideological agendas.
when months and years pass, and the attacks are no longer headline news, women everywhere would be wise to remember who stood by them and who cowered for the sake of political convenience.
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