Hostages subjected to regular sexual abuse
Israeli women held hostage in the Gaza Strip are being subjected to regular sexual abuse, with their guards treating them like "dolls", survivors of October 7 testified.
(THE TIMES OF ISRAEL) Hamas has rejected Israel’s proposal for a two-month ceasefire during which the terror group would release Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian security prisoners, said a senior Egyptian official on Tuesday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Hamas leaders have also refused to leave Gaza and are demanding that Israel fully withdraw from the territory and allow Palestinians to return to their homes.
Israel did not confirm the report.
Meanwhile, Israeli women held hostage in the Gaza Strip are being subjected to regular sexual abuse, with their guards treating them like “dolls”, survivors of October 7 testified in the Knesset on Tuesday, adding to a growing body of evidence that Hamas weaponised sexual assault and is likely still violating victims in captivity.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” said former hostage Aviva Siegel, who was abducted from Kibbutz Kfar Aza with her husband Keith on October 7 and released during a ceasefire in late November.
“I felt as if the girls in captivity were my daughters. The terrorists bring inappropriate clothes, clothes for dolls and turn the girls into their dolls. Dolls on a string with which you can do whatever you want, whenever you want,” she told a meeting of the newly established Knesset caucus on victims of sexual and gender violence in the war against Hamas.
“I can’t breathe, I can’t deal with it, it’s too hard. It’s been nearly four months and they are still there,” she said.
“I’m still there. My body is there. The boys also go through abuse – what the girls go through. Maybe they don’t get pregnant [but] they are also puppets on a string.”
Aviva’s daughter, Shir, told lawmakers that her mother’s testimony was “only the tip of the iceberg”, and expressed anger that ministers were not present to hear the accounts.
Troops of the Israel Defence Forces operating in the southern Gaza Strip recently uncovered a tunnel where Israeli hostages had been held by the Hamas terror group “in harsh and inhumane conditions”, the military revealed Saturday night.
In a press conference, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that by means of “precise intelligence”, soldiers had found an entrance to the vast tunnel network beneath the home of a Hamas commander in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis. He said troops battled Hamas gunmen as they first entered the tunnel, killing them. “The tunnel was rigged with explosives and blast doors designed to protect the terrorists and prevent the advancement in finding our hostages.
“After walking about a kilometre in the tunnel, at a depth of about 20 metres underground, the soldiers found a central chamber where, according to testimonies of hostages who returned from Gaza, we understand that they spent most of their time,” Hagari said.
Some hostages previously held in the tunnel have already been released, he said, noting that the soldiers found drawings made by five-year-old Emilia Aloni, who was freed in November, among other evidence.
Hagari said that further into the tunnel, troops found five narrow holding cells, each with a mattress and a toilet.
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