Yes, of course many hostages were sexually assaulted
In a report detailing allegations of severe and widespread sexual abuse by Hamas terrorists during their October 7 onslaught and later against hostages, a doctor who treated some of the 110 hostages released from captivity told the AP that at least 10 men and women among those freed were sexually assaulted or abused.
He did not provide further details, and spoke on condition of anonymity to protect the hostages’ identities.
The doctor’s comments corroborated similar accounts shared at a meeting on Tuesday. The meeting, held between the Israeli war cabinet and a group comprising recently freed hostages and family members of those still held in Gaza, featured firsthand testimonies from some of the released captives. These individuals detailed their experiences of sexual abuse during their captivity, participants said.
And those are the ones Hamas has released. It is logical to assume that the people they are still holding were – and are – even more badly mistreated.
There’s much more at the link about the sexual abuse and torture of Israelis on October 7, as well. It makes for very grim reading.
The was also plenty of abuse of the hostages that wasn’t sexual:
“Those held captive were subject to starvation, to beating, to sexual abuse. They were being held in inhumane sanitary conditions. Extremely severe psychological abuse was inflicted on them, including separation from family members, separation of siblings, separation of children from their mothers. They were held in solitary confinement and spent long days in total darkness until they developed severe hallucinations,” Eitan claimed. “Children were forced to watch brutal videos. They were under constant threats by weapons and threats to harm them even after they were released. They refer to the forced use of psychiatric drugs and other substances.”
At the moment, I can’t find another article where I read the following: one woman was able to mark how many days were passing by counting Muslim prayers, because she knew that Muslims pray five times a day. I also read that many captives were not allowed to wash for the entire time they were held, and wounds became infected as a result. Many also had lice. The trauma was very very severe for many of them, perhaps all of them. And of course, well over 100 people are still being held – that is, if they’re alive.
Most of us feared something of the sort was happening. It was and it is.
There are mixed reports about whether the IDF is pumping water into the tunnels. The left media say it’s in the planning stage, but a conservative outlet says it’s underway.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/12/05/israel-mulls-flooding-hamas-tunnels-with-salt-water-n2632010
The best thing the Israelis can do for the memory of the hostages is to eradicate the Hamas vermin.
As you might expect, freed Thai hostages confirm that ‘Israelis Had It Worse’.
I certainly hope it’s true that the IDF is currently flooding the tunnels. I had heard that they had set up the pumps and were ready to go as of yesterday anyway.
If Israel wants to ensure that this sort of thing never happens again, for the lives and well being of any potential future victims, Hamas must be wiped off the face of the Earth. An absolutely clear message needs to be sent to any future terror group or state that there will be extreme, existential repercussions to them in the event of an attack anything like October 7th. There can be no compromises with evil of this magnitude. There can be no tolerance. There can be no quarter.
From the river
To the sea
Hamashites
Must cease to be
For their tunnels
Use big funnels
Bring the sea
To thee
If they choose
to leave the ground
Lock and load
and cut them down
No quarter, never again
Regarding the treatment of hostages. I think it is easy to miss some of the deprivations that people have suffered at the hands of other people. We may think of the loss of freedom of movement, but there is often so much more involved. Consider the many centuries of the use of Galley Slaves by Asians, Muslims and even Europeans. It is easy to imagine, or try to imagine, the severe physical labor of rowing for hours and miss the fact that the the slaves lived in filth. On the barge type ships the slaves were exposed to sun and rain and cold and heat. On some galleys, slaves slept on the very benches they rowed from. You think a few hours on a long flight is tough. Imagine sitting on a hard bench for months, never able to even lay down and stretch out to sleep. And you are sitting in other person’s filth. Toilet paper? What’s that. Go to the bathroom in a bucket, maybe.
It is likely millions of men over the centuries worked on galley ships.
People can be absolutely brutal . And people ask, when were white people slaves? Multitudes of white Europeans served on both European and Muslim run galleys.
I’m still trying to figure out how, armed, combat trained, and psychologically prepared Israeli military personel who were still ambulatory were taken captive.
But, perhaps the stipulations within the question above, provide their own answer.
In the moment presenting a choice between abject humiliation and abuse with the prospect of some additional moments of life on the one hand, versus certain death in defiance, on the other, most of us would choose life, especially if the assault were completely unexpected, overwhelming, and we are caught out unaware and confused.
Our own moral formation, might in fact, work against us as we worry about our “responsibilities” to “vulnerable” and less capable companions, and as we project a possibly undeserved humanity on our psychopathic assailants.
I suppose perfect information is never available.
Japanese soldiers during WWII chose to die; in some cases based on false expectations of their fate should they surrender.
The British in the east, pathetically, in my armchair judgment, contrarily chose to surrender rather than go full Wake Island or Isandlwana [ yes I know the American commander on Wake did in fact eventually surrender on the basis of false apprehensions] and were massacred and brutalized in return.
We don’t know I guess what the certain outcomes of what look like binary choices, would be.
Fortunately, I have never been forced to the choice.
I know men – relatives – who have killed multiple other men under justifiable conditions. It did not work out so well long term. Just thankful I’ve not been placed in such circumstances.
Still one wonders regarding the Israeli soldiers …
Blame the victims? The dead don’t tell their stories, directly anyway.
And J6 prisoners…
DNW:
I read that they were asleep. The warning systems were made inoperative. Overwhelming numbers of Hamas fighters, very well armed, attacked them while they slept and killed the majority but took some hostage. It was around 6 AM on a holiday. I believe some other captured soldiers were off-duty and came to the scene on their own, in one’s and twos, and also were overwhelmed. Many were killed. Some were taken hostage.
“In ones and twos”.
In yesterday’s open thread, I linked to this article entitled:
“Israeli Police have evidence Hamas terrorists raped men on October 7” (https://tinyurl.com/dj2jm78f).
I’ll repeat the link, since Neo’s posted here on the subject of sexual assaults by Hamas. I think it’s worth repeating that almost everything done by Hamas is a war crime. Even worse, Hamas isn’t restricted to Gaza. They’re also the dominant political force in what is now called the West Bank. That’s why the Palestinian Authority has stopped holding elections. The depth and breadth of evil, among Palestinians, is almost impossible to comprehend. Their political structure needs to be destroyed, and their society needs to be completely rebuilt. After WWII, this was done in Germany, but who can now do it in Gaza and the West Bank?
I have to suggest there’s a difference between Germany and Palestinian society.
Germany has a history of various examples of high culture.
And they’ve managed technological advancement.
After WWII, the Marshall Plan could make use of German technological experience and competent operators.
For all the horrors they’ve visited on the rest of us, they have, among other things, a history of humane populations as well.
Three Victoria Crosses were provided awarded to British military in WW II on the voluntary representations of German officers.
IOW, there was something to work with.
As an intellectual exercise, imagine Palestinian society with the German WW II industrial base and manpower.
There is nothing to work with and much to work against.
Fifty thousand Carthaginians were made slaves over night when Rome finally conquered their city. Terrible, of course. OTOH, when the earlier Punic wars were being fought, people in Italy preferred to be sacked by Rome rather than Carthage, as the Romans raped only the women. The Carthaginians were more, Shall we say? , eclectic. A large part of what the Hebrew prophets were decrying was what we now call sodomy. plus infant sacrifice. Knowing all of this, and knowing what’s happening now, the fierceness of the conquest of Jericho does not seem so shocking.
PreHebrew and preChristian sexuality was about the dominance of the receivers by the emitters. With the coming of monogamy and monotheism, apparently running together, an understanding of mutuality in sexuality entered thought. Note how the earliest Hebrews were just catching on, over a few generations , to both of those concepts.
Regarding DNR’s comment and Neo’s response, I’ll reiterate the question I posed in an earlier post. It seems inconceivable to me that this would have happened if the military personnel were armed. And no way they were all asleep, given their previous reports of enemy activity. So I ask again, does anyone know whether they were armed?
While I’m neither as poetically inclined nor have the time to practice (hat tip om), these perpetrators of prehistoric levels of barbarity and savagery must be wiped off the face of the earth.
There is no other option. No one is safe when rabid animals are permitted to flourish.
Rape is violent assault and has zip to do with “sexuality”. Hamas are feral, revolting creatures and must be eradicated 100%. Like rats.
But Dopey Joe is against that. He wants Israel to stop!
For our sakes, do not let any Palestinians enter the US, ever. If they have not already crossed the mythical southern border, and are hatching their Jihadi schemes so they can go to their Paradise and rape many virgins. I do not care if there are >1 billion Muslims on the planet. Keep them out, Dopey Joe!
Jon baker,
I’m sure galley slaves were treated very poorly, but I do want to clarify that the stereotypical image of ancient Roman and Greek galley slaves from Ben Hur is flat-out wrong. The people rowing the ships were usually not slaves at all. While the work was obviously hard, they were well trained and well paid. They had to be in order to be effective in battle. A major reason Athens lost the Peloponnesian War was the decreasing effectiveness of its navy, not just from the losses, including the loss of trained rowers, at Syracuse, but because Sparta, flush with Persian cash, bought up all the best trained rowers. Athens was left with poorly-trained replacements, leading to an ineffective navy and the catastrophe at Aegospotamoi.
Unpleasant…but it should be known that while rape is a weapon used by many warring cultures, and for a variety of reasons, sexual mutilation was a tradition in the Middle East. Perhaps in other locales as well, but I’m not aware of it.
(I don’t know where ISIS stood on this issue. OTOH, they may have been too busy beheading people. No, it is not a pleasant topic.)
In any event, anyone who may have entertained the hope that such barbarity was a thing of the past will no doubt be disappointed (unless they’re the type who would wax euphoric because of it).
Indeed, it is very much alive.
So is the desire to destroy the State of Israel…no matter how much would like to deny it. Ignore it. Rationalize it. Mitigate it. Excuse it. (Of course, there are those who eagerly anticipate such an achievement. How many? We knew the numbers were plentiful; we are finding out just how plentiful they are.)
In any event, the so-called “paranoid” would appear to have been vindicated.
These acts were so horrific, I cannot even read about the details, much less see the videos. So foreign to me, this visceral hatred for another human based on something they had absolutely no control over. That the lgbt for Palestine folks are so entirely clueless and stupid about the facts is astonishing. The power to control brains in “institutions of higher learning” is so much more developed than I had realized. Of course, I say that knowing I cannot even raise discussions of such matters with my neighbors because they know I support Trump and other conservative elected officials. Brains are locked.
Reading everI see on the Hamas atrocities yet nothing I read has surprised me or won’t because I know what evil is.
Can only pray and hope for hostages still held.
Most of the Western world no longer has any idea of how evil EVIL is.The hostages still living must be regarded as sacrifices, a la Abraham and Isaac, and will surely welcome death as a relief from torture, despite Biden’s mewing for a cease-fire.
T Rex, they were horrible. I look at it because old habits die hard. I was an intelligence officer for nearly my entire adult life literally nothing surpriseses me anymore. Nothing makes me puke.
“The hostages still living must be regarded as sacrifices, a la Abraham and Isaac,”
Cicero Dude…you need to find some better analogies…this one isn’t even close.
Really…
Jeff Cox,
Yes you are right about the ancient Greeks primarily using non slaves in their war galleys.
Much later than the classical Roman period, The Ottoman Empire, the Europeans and even non middle eastern Asians were using galley slaves very late in human history.
Somebody has to clean up the mess and bring the ship back into fighting shape. The smell lingers
We don’t throw expensive fighting system like warships or tanks away simply because the crews got killed
Aircraft are also expensive but they usually die with the pilot
“Israeli Police have evidence Hamas terrorists raped men on October 7”
Young Muslim men are the men most obsessed with sex on earth. They are poor and most cannot afford a wife. Richer men take the women in to harems. Sodomy is the secret way they get by. The ferocious bans on homosexuality are evidence of the problem. Rape is an ancient practice with warriors but Muslim men are into more violent fantasies. Mutilation is one.
I don’t think you like me
Why am I not surprised Miguel?
Oh shut up.
TimK:
I seem to recall I answered your question earlier. But if not, I’ll do it now.
I believe I read that the number of Hamas attackers at the base was much larger than the number of guards. The guards were overwhelmed and killed, and the rest were caught asleep. I don’t know the numbers, but the Hamas units sent to the base were elite fighting units. It is estimated that 3 thousand Hamas invaded Israel that day. About half were killed. It is possible that over a thousand invaded the base, although I’ve not read any numbers on that.
Yes the nukba that were inbedded in islamic state in syria, then returned to their operating base in gaza
As regards sleeping with weapons, there are different levels of alert.
In peaceful garrison circumstances, the weapons are in the unit’s arms room. They are drawn by the troops when an exercise requiring rifles is on the schedule. Ammo is issued when they arrive at the exercise site or firing range.
The weapons are returned to the arms room at the end of the exercise and the return of the unit to quarters.
In terms of being prepared, there’s no difference between this and anything short of having the rifle under the bed with an ammo belt close to hand. And thoat has its downsides if you’re not practically in combat.
As a general rule, the first arrangement is followed until the threat is pretty obvious, and not the threat level we’ve had for the last couple of years.
It’s a judgment call with the inevitable effups having to do with troops and their weapons looking over the commander’s shoulder. How serious is the threat RIGHT NOW to give these guys, some of whom are confirmed sleep walkers, rifles and ammo under the bed?
All that said, if the first thing you know of the attack is the door busting open and automatic weapons fire raking the bunks, you’re pretty much screwed anyway.
When I was in, fifty-plus years ago, each platoon had a list of guys told off each night to be awake maybe two hours as a fire guard. And that’s in the US. Another couple of minutes’ warning. And if the company CQ heard something or got a phone call, more than that.
So the actual nuts and bolts of the situation that night would be nice to know. Weapons to hand? Couple of guys wandering around the barracks trying to stay awake until their watch ends? CQ’s phone working? If the stuff hits the fan, who’s to call whom?
All of which is to say, a bit too much complacency had they known the real situation. Which, obviously, they did not. And the question….
Muslim animals are Muslim animals are Muslims animals.
I reallylik
Very much
Thanks, Neo. I’m just surprised that an armed group of women would surrender. A horrible choice, and I don’t claim to know what I would do in a comparable situation. It just seems that surrender would mean rape and death. But I guess one would always cling to the hope of being rescued.
“An absolutely clear message needs to be sent to any future terror group or state that there will be extreme, existential repercussions to them in the event of an attack anything like October 7th.” Nonapod
Like all death cults, Islamic terrorists welcome death, it is how they gain entrance into paradise.
Unless… at the instant of death they are in an ‘unclean’ state, in which case they can never enter paradise for Allah has declared it to be so in his eternally unchangeable Qur’an.
Hint; bullet + pig fat gun oil = no virgins… Immediate execution of captured terrorists in an ‘unclean’ manner… removes the incentive.
There is a reason we don’t execute men for rape. Because rape turns I no to rape – murder. Nothing would give me more emotional satisfaction than killing the expletives. You just don’t get that many surrenders when you execute prisoners
TimK:
I’m just surprised that an armed group of women would surrender.
– – –
Which is why women should not be in combat units… In its folly, the Israeli Left forced this issue, and now we see the bitter fruits… I am sure that some more cynical Leftie strategists are now seeing exactly the headlines they were hoping for.
Neo, thank you for covering this. I am limiting my exposure to these stories to preserve my sanity but it is important that it is not thrown down the memory hole.
Which is also why women need to know how to defend themselves
My father mentioned on Tet, when the VC sappers attacked, his side arm, which he only carried on combat missions, was safely locked up elsewhere. This in a straight up war zone.
Women should be treasured. I realize I’m reading from the book of obvious or, maybe not. Im not saying women can’t be strong. I learned Krav Maga mostly from women.
Chases Eagles, my dad taught me you don’t get to choose. Your enemy gets a say.
Combat can break out when you least expect it. Which is why my sidearm is right by my side. Never put away.
He was U S. Coast Guard. Semper Paratus. Always ready.
DNW: your word salad is pretty meaningless.
If you bothered to rub a few brain cells together and maybe read Hebrew, you’d understand most of those soldiers neither carried weapons in a combat unit, and were completely overwhelmed by an unprepared military that had become complacent on technology, mythology and on a holiday.
Yet you think it’s somehow warranting a “one wonders about the soldiers” as though your three ellipses weren’t implying something else altogether.
A reminder: these “soldiers” were severely undermanned surveillance officers, mostly women, numbering in a couple dozen. All of them are or were 18-22.
You don’t look intelligent hiding behind ellipses here.
Maybe sit this one out.
He was always ready
I read that the Israelis didn’t follow a lot of the standard forensic protocols at the crime scenes, which I think will give the anti-Semites and Israel-haters fuel for “plausible deniability.” I realize that there were so many bodies and not enough people, time, and resources, to the full forensic protocol for each murder victim. But I wish (and maybe they have) that they did the 3D scene scans as much as possible. They did that at the crime scene for the Mother Emmanual massacre, and the jury was really shaken up by the virtual reality of “walking through the scene.” October 7 was full of so much horror, that
Islam is a religion of supremacy. They can’t negotiate or they’re betraying Allah. The world won’t face up to this.
We do need to kill all of them. Just enough
Rape is built into Islam. Mohammed, “the most perfect man” was a murdering, raping pedophile and created a religion to justify his own perversions. We shouldn’t be surprised when the followers of that religion turn out to be murdering, raping pedophiles.
I’m afraid that we may never see some of the young female prisoners again, not because they are dead, but because they were impregnated by their captors, and, under Sharia law the offspring must be raised Islamic. They will be kept as concubines (brood mares) per Sharia.
Until Islam, and the vast majorities of it’s followers accept exgesis of the Koran, we must treat Muslims with caution, much as we would any “tame” wild animal.