Israeli officials say that everywhere Hamas terrorists struck — the rave, the military bases along the Gaza border and the kibbutzim — they brutalized women.

A two-month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.

Relying on video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors, The Times identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated.

Four witnesses described in graphic detail seeing women raped and killed at two different places along Route 232, the same highway where Ms. Abdush’s half-naked body was found sprawled on the road at a third location.

And The Times interviewed several soldiers and volunteer medics who together described finding more than 30 bodies of women and girls in and around the rave site and in two kibbutzim in a similar state as Ms. Abdush’s — legs spread, clothes torn off, signs of abuse in their genital areas.

Many of the accounts are difficult to bear, and the visual evidence is disturbing to see.

The Times viewed photographs of one woman’s corpse that emergency responders discovered in the rubble of a besieged kibbutz with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.

The Times also viewed a video, provided by the Israeli military, showing two dead Israeli soldiers at a base near Gaza who appeared to have been shot directly in their vaginas.

Bypass paywall.

  • machinin@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I wonder at what point Israel will realize that an apartheid state will always produce this kind of violence. I’ve written this in other comments, but it seems like Israel is happy to exist with this violence for the possibility of getting all the Palestinian lands after the genocide is finished.

    • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The violence is the point to stay in power. It follows a “strong man” scenario.

      • Create bogeyman out of Palestine
      • Close of all paths for peaceful resolution
      • Warn how dangerous the bogeyman is and how the strong man will protect
      • Wait for inevitable violence to erupt
      • Respond with overwhelming force to project strength
      • Rake in popular support and votes
      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        The popular support and votes isn’t all that forthcoming, though, if it were there wouldn’t be such a crackdown on Israeli dissent.