Former Hostages Speak Out About Sexual Violence
For the first time, two women who were hostages of Hamas have testified before a committee of the Israeli Parliament about their captivity. They revealed that they and the kidnapped girls had to endure daily sexual assaults.
In November, Aviva Siegel and Chen Goldstein-Almog were among the 80 hostages freed by the radical Islamic Hamas during a seven-day humanitarian ceasefire and able to return to Israel. Now, the two women have testified before a parliamentary committee about their captivity, which was marked by sexual violence.
“Girls Treated Like Dolls”
“There was not a minute during our 51 days of captivity in which the hostages didn’t experience abuse,” Aviva Siegel, who was abducted from her home in the Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern Israel during the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, was quoted by the newspaper “Haaretz” as saying. The 62-year-old stated that the terrorists treated the kidnapped girls “like dolls, to do whatever they wanted with.”
“I can’t breathe, I can’t handle it, it’s too heavy. It’s been almost four months, and they are still there,” Siegel said, according to media reports. She described the girls in captivity as being like her own daughters. According to the reports, she emphasized that men also experienced the same things. “They can’t get pregnant, but they go through it as well.”
“The World is Silent”
According to the reports, Siegel’s husband is still being held in the Gaza Strip. “I can’t understand how the world is silent,” she said. Her daughter reportedly told the members of parliament, “At this very moment, someone is being raped in a tunnel.”
Chen Goldstein-Almog, another freed hostage, said that the periods of some of the women she was held with had stopped. She attributed this to the “difficult conditions in captivity” and expressed hope that they weren’t pregnant. The biggest fear of the hostages, according to Goldstein-Almog, was that the Israeli authorities might abandon them.
1,200 people were killed in the attack
On October 7, 2023, terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups carried out a massacre in southern Israel. They killed 1,200 people and abducted 253 others to the Gaza Strip. Israel believes that 105 of them are still alive and that many are being held captive in the underground tunnel network of Hamas.
In recent weeks, released hostages have already painted a picture of the horrors and highlighted the conditions under which the abducted individuals are being held in the Gaza Strip. At rallies, the speakers have mentioned instances of sexual abuse against women. There are also numerous reports of brutal sexual violence against women and girls in connection with the massacre on October 7.
