GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 9th July -In what is perhaps one of the most chilling and gut-wrenching disclosures since the vicious Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, The Times of London has carried an investigative story that makes charges of unimaginable sexual abuse not only against alive victims—but even against dead Israeli women’s corpses.
Quoting accounts of Hamas terrorists raping women even after they killed them, mutilating their bodies into unrecognizable forms of death, showing utmost evil that has appalled Israel and the entire world, the report reads:
Brutality Beyond Imagination
The report states that women corpses were naked, mutilated, and positioned in humiliating poses. As per one of the medical staff cited in The Times, “Some of these bodies were so burned and deformed, we couldn’t at first ascertain their sex. But the forensic analysis clearly indicated signs of post-mortem sexual assault.”
According to Israeli authorities, over 1,200 were slain in the October 7 Hamas attack—most of them civilians. But what stunned even veteran investigators was that many of the murders were ritualistic and brutal, particularly against women.
In the initial stages, Israel had put restrictions on publishing images and forensic information regarding the atrocities, attributing the reasons to its graphic content and the psychological shock it might inflict on the victims’ families and society as a whole. But months down the line, journalists from large global news organizations, such as The Times, were allowed access to some forensic witness accounts and visual evidence.
Eyewitness Testimony: “Even the Dead Were Not Spared”
An Israeli pathologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Times, reported:
“We’ve been performing autopsies for decades, but never anything like this. In a number of the cases, the women were already dead—shot or burnt—and then they were raped. One victim was discovered with a fractured pelvis, which is a sign of violent assault after death.”
Medical staff also highlighted signs of mutilation, dismemberment, and attempts to humiliate the victims sexually, such as the insertion of foreign objects and graffiti on the corpses.
One Israeli army official noted, “We initially thought this might be propaganda, but the forensic evidence is irrefutable. These were not just killings. These were symbolic acts of hatred and domination.”
International Outcry Grows
Although Israel has long accused Hamas of war crimes during its October 7 cross-border attack, this additional layer of atrocity has sparked world outrage once again.
Human rights activists have called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to take instant notice of the new evidence, referring to it as a “flagrant violation of human decency and international law.” Leading women’s rights organizations, such as UN Women, had previously come under fire for slow and restrained reaction to reports of Hamas’s gender-based abuses. Following the report by The Times, demands have risen for global action and accountability.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in response to the report, stated,
“This is no longer just terrorism. This is a genocidal cult that has weaponized sexual brutality. The world must see what Hamas truly is.”
A Pattern of Gender-Based War Crimes?
It is not the first time that Hamas has faced allegations of employing rape and sexual violence as a war tactic. Kibbutz and surrounding Israeli town survivors previously testified to hearing the cries of women being violated and tortured. Some videos published by Hamas combatants themselves—most of which were intercepted from mobile phones taken from them—have been discovered to include graphic scenes of abuse.
Israeli officials have created a dossier of the type of footage and testimonies they have collected and are sharing with foreign embassies and human rights organizations in order to rebut pro-Hamas narratives that have developed in some areas of Europe and American academia.
The Silence of the West?
In contrast to the severity of these crimes, several have observed the curious silence of some Western media and left-liberal intellectual communities, who have either dismissed these charges as “unverified” or sidestepped attention towards Israeli military action in Gaza.
Some observers claim that this selective indignation undermines the integrity of the human rights discourse, particularly when explicit, documented proof of gendered war crimes is received with circumspection or silence.
One Israeli columnist noted, “If these barbarities had been carried out by white supremacists or in any Western setting, the Paris and New York streets would have been chock-a-block with demonstrations. But since the victims are Israeli and the murderers are Islamist extremists, there is a sickening degree of moral relativism.”
A Wake-Up Call for the World
The Times’ detailed and chilling report is more than journalism—it is a wake-up call to the world. The battle lines in this war are not so much territorial as they are ideological. Not just Israel’s security is at stake, but the moral integrity of the international community.
If the international institutions of justice and human rights fail to act on this new evidence, it will send a terrible message: that even the most abhorrent war crimes can be ignored when they are committed under the guise of resistance.
This isn’t about Israel or Gaza. It’s about what the world is going to tolerate in the interests of politics, and what lines we will not allow any ideology to cross.
