Israeli Hostage Says She Was Sexually Assaulted and Tortured in Gaza
Israeli Hostage Says She Was Sexually Assaulted and Tortured in Gaza
Amit Soussana is the first former hostage to publicly say she was sexually abused in captivity. A U.N. report has said it found “clear and convincing information” that some hostages suffered “conflict-related sexual violence.”
Ms. Soussana, 40, is the first Israeli to speak publicly about being sexually assaulted during captivity after the Hamas-led raid on southern Israel. In her interviews with The Times, conducted mostly in English, she provided extensive details of sexual and other violence she suffered during a 55-day ordeal.
Ms. Soussana’s personal account of her experience in captivity is consistent with what she told two doctors and a social worker less than 24 hours after she was freed on Nov. 30. Their reports about her account state the nature of the sexual act; The Times agreed not to disclose the specifics.
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For months, Hamas and its supporters have denied that its members sexually abused people in captivity or during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. This month, a United Nations report said that there was “clear and convincing information” that some hostages had suffered sexual violence and there were “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual violence occurred during the raid, while acknowledging the “challenges and limitations” of examining the issue.
Well. This is pretty significant. I would say it's rather damning evidence that considerably raises the bar to doubt these claims.
There's a lot I could say here. Hamas is a bunch reprehensible fucks. It's disappointing that we needed concrete evidence because of how untrustworthy the IDF is. But I think the most salient and important point here is that there is no "good guy" or "right side" among the war combatants. It's awful people fighting awful people. Hamas and the IDF both deserve nothing but contempt and scorn, and both should be dismantled for their crimes against humanity.
I've tried to be very precise with my wording because none of what I just said applies to the Palestinian nor Israeli people. The civilians and innocent people are caught between two legions of hell and are the ones paying the price. The kidnapped and tortured Israelis, the Palestinian people -- both of them are suffering at the hands of both Hamas and the Israeli government.
Neither of them care about the civilians. They use them as lambs for sacrifice and control the flow of information to manufacture hate and support for the war. It's become readily apparent that the IDF and Hamas just want to keep fighting, and they're manipulating the civilians to support them. If both peoples were getting the true, unfiltered information -- sights of dying Palestinian children, demolished buildings, accounts of Israeli hostages -- I think they'd be appalled at what "their side" is doing.
I really hope the majority would be appalled, because there can't be any peace until they recognize their shared suffering and humanity. And to be clear, the majority of suffering is clearly inflicted on the Palestinians.
Edit: I'm not angry at the downvotes but damn am I disappointed. You'd think "fuck the people genociding others and fuck the people taking hostages" would be an uncontroversial position, but here we are.
"And now you can't call us out for totally fucking up with that other article."
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
After being released along with 105 other hostages during a cease-fire in late November, Ms. Soussana spoke only in vague terms publicly about her treatment in the Gaza Strip, wary of recounting such a traumatic experience.
Hours after her release, Ms. Soussana spoke with a senior Israeli gynecologist, Dr. Julia Barda, and a social worker, Valeria Tsekhovsky, about the sexual assault, the two women said in separate interviews with The Times.
The small kibbutz stands roughly 1.5 miles from Gaza, and it was one of more than 20 Israeli villages, towns and army bases overrun that day by thousands who surged across the Gazan border shortly after dawn.
In Kfar Azza, Ms. Soussana said, she rarely involved herself in village life and was not part of the local WhatsApp groups, which left her unaware of the extent of the attack on the kibbutz.
Finally, the two women were driven to Palestine Square, a major plaza at the heart of Gaza City, where a raucous crowd waited to see them handed over to the Red Cross.
Social media video showed that Hamas struggled to control the onlookers, who surrounded the car, pressed up against its windows and at one point began to rock the vehicle, Ms. Soussana said.
The original article contains 3,949 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 95%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Now, write an individual article for each child starved to death or bombed by Israel. I can't muster the energy to care about a single rape in the middle of a genocide.
We have rape kits in Texas that have gone untested for over a decade. If rape was important to the people enacting justice, we have a long list to get through before we can start worrying about rapes in warzones.
But justice isn't the intent behind articles like this. They want to justify the genocide with individual crimes.
When Hamas can't harm the IDF, they harm the innocent, of both Palestinians and Israelis.
This is not a call only of Israeli women, but a call of every women to be possibly be near these savage people.
While an unfortunate and harrowing ordeal she suffered, her experience highlights a sort of proof that systemic and mass sexual assault is not a weaponized tool of Hamas: reinforcing the grim reality that warfare and the mechanisms that perpetuate it create this kind of collateral destruction. Rules are defined by their exceptions, after all.