Law, Power, and Justice

A prominent Israeli human rights organization is calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate whether the accounts and reports of sexual abuse committed against Israeli women by Hamas terrorists on October 7 constitute crimes against humanity.
“Based on the currently available information and the accounts indicating that sexual and gender-based violence occurred across several locations, an inquiry must be conducted to examine whether their scope and manifestations amount to crimes against humanity under international humanitarian law,” wrote Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, in an English-language position paper published on Monday.

The paper also calls for the immediate release of the hostages still being held by Hamas, noting that they face on “ongoing threat” of sexual violence, based on “accumulated experience from armed conflicts in other regions and scientific literature on the vulnerability of hostages.”
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“The increased danger to their well-being compels us to utilize all available means to promote their release from captivity and safe return,” the authors write.
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Even after the release of three batches of hostages in recent days, dozens of women, including female soldiers abducted from their bases, remain in captivity.
Titled “Sexual & Gender-Based Violence as a Weapon of War,” the paper provides a detailed list of the sexual and gender-based crimes committed by Hamas that have already been documented and shared publicly. Based on what is already known, PHR concludes, such atrocities were “widespread.”
Founded 35 years ago by a group of Israel doctors, PHRI’s main focus is advocating for the healthcare right of patients with little-to-no access to the Israeli healthcare system, among them migrants, refugees and Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The purpose of devoting a position paper to the sexual crimes committed by Hamas, the authors note, is to encourage their further documentation, bring the perpetrators to justice, and provide financial and medical support to the survivors.

Women’s organizations around the world have tended to downplay – and in certain circumstances, even deny – the sexual crimes committed by Hamas against Israeli women, including accounts of gang rape and genital mutilation. To mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, a group of Israeli and Jewish women planned to hold a demonstration outside the United Nations on Monday morning to protest this silence.
The accounts of rape of other sexual crimes included in the PHRI paper were collected from mainstream media reports, videos posted online by Hamas (some later removed), and interviews with representatives of professional organizations. They include incidents of violence against women at the Nova music festival, at private homes on kibbutzim along the Gaza border and at an Israeli military base where female soldiers were on duty. The victims, according to various accounts, included young girls and elderly women.
The paper, however, does not rely on videos shared by Israel’s Shin Bet security service, in which terrorists under interrogation confessed to participating in sexual crimes, “due to severe concern that the interrogations included the use of torture.”
The paper cites testimony its own representatives were able to obtain independently from a senior medical official with knowledge of the state of the corpses gathered at the Shura military base – where most of the bodies and remains from the massacre were brought – who “shared with us that incidents of broken pelvises and other physical signs indicating sexual violence had been documented.”
This same official also shared with PHRI officials information obtained from medical personnel at various hospitals “who told him they had observed clear signs of sexual violence, including vaginal tears.”
The paper notes that the true extent of the sexual crimes committed by Hamas may never be known. “The information published to date is only partial, both due to a lack of systematic analysis of the findings for forensic evidence of sexual abuse and due to the conditions of some of the victims’ bodies, their quantity, and the urgency of identifying and evacuating them – sometimes under fire,” the authors write. “It is also likely that much of the documentation has not been officially published for additional reasons, including privacy concerns.”