Letter to the editor: Hamas’ rape, murder and torture of Israelis was planned
· The Washington TimesOPINION:
Thank you for Rowan Scarborough’s column, “Hamas raped minors and the dead on Oct. 7” (Web, May 17).
His important op-ed reports on “Silenced No More,” the newly released evidentiary record documenting Hamas’s systematic use of rape, gang rape, sexual violence, torture and kinocide against Israeli civilians.
Hamas sexually assaulted women, men, children and even corpses during and after its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in Israel.
The terror group’s sex crimes against Israelis were never a secret. Hamas broadcast video of its terrorists proudly parading the half-naked and violently abused body of 22-year-old Shani Louk — kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival and murdered by her captors — as a war trophy in Gaza City, and of Naama Levy bleeding from her face and through her pants during her abduction.
The new report demonstrates that rape and sadistic sexual torture were widespread, planned and integral to Hamas’ war strategy: “Hamas and its collaborators used sexual torture to maximize pain and suffering.”
Victims were burned, mutilated, raped, shot in their face and genital areas and abused and killed in front of family members. Emergency responders found “aluminum cans, grenades, nails, blunt objects, rods, household tools and spike-like instruments” inserted into victims’ genitals.
One woman had her breast cut off and was killed while being gang-raped.
Those who have callously abandoned Israel for having had the chutzpah to defend itself against Hamas’ genocidal monsters should read the full report, see the documentaries “Screams Before Silence” and “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre” and listen to the harrowing testimony of survivors like Amit Soussana, Romi Gonen, Arbel Yehud, Tali Binner and Dafna Elyakim.
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Then they should decide whether they are on the side of the Israeli innocents who were raped, kidnapped and slaughtered by terrorists or with Hamas, whose charter vows to “obliterate” Israel and “kill” all Jews.
STEPHEN A. SILVER
San Francisco, California