As Israel marks three years since the October 7 massacre, one of the cruelest lies about that day refuses to die: the claim that Hamas terrorists never raped anyone.
This denial no longer lives only on the fringes of social media. On November 14, 2025, Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, posted: “No Palestinian applauded rape in Gaza. No independent investigation found that rape took place on the 7th of October.”
The UN official charged with protecting women told the world that Israeli women were not raped. The record says otherwise.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists massacred about 1,200 people in southern Israel and dragged hundreds of hostages into Gaza. From the first days, survivors, first responders, and captured terrorists described rape, gang rape, and sexual mutilation at the Nova music festival, on Road 232, and in the kibbutzim along the Gaza border.
Some of the clearest testimony comes from the terrorists themselves. Jamal Hussein Ahmad Radi, a 47-year-old Hamas member captured in Gaza, confessed to raping an Israeli woman at gunpoint. “She was screaming, she was crying, I did what I did, I raped her,” he said. His son Abdallah said they gang-raped her with a cousin, and then his father killed her. Abdallah also admitted, “I killed two people, I raped two people, and I broke into five houses.”
Manar Mahmoud Muhammad Qassem, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist captured in Khan Yunis, confessed on camera to raping a young Israeli woman in her home during the attack.
The bodies told the same story. First responders identified at least 24 bodies of women and girls in Be’eri and Kfar Aza who were naked or half-naked, some mutilated or tied up.
International bodies reached the same conclusion. A UN mission led by Pramila Patten, the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, reported: “We found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and gang-rape occurred in at least three locations, namely: the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, Road 232, and Kibbutz Re’im.” The mission also found “clear and convincing information” that hostages were subjected to rape and sexualized torture.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said he had reasonable grounds to believe Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh were responsible for rape and other sexual violence as crimes against humanity. “My Office also submits there are reasonable grounds to believe that hostages taken from Israel have been kept in inhumane conditions, and that some have been subject to sexual violence, including rape, while being held in captivity,” Khan stated.
The European Union sanctioned the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad for “widespread sexual and gender-based violence” used “as a weapon of war.”
This year, the evidence grew even heavier. In May, Israel’s Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children published Silenced No More, a two-year investigation led by international law expert Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy. The report documents 13 recurring patterns of sexual violence, including rape, gang rape, sexual torture, mutilation, and attacks on men and boys, with firsthand testimony from more than 10 survivors. “The most important finding is the fact that the sexual violence on October 7 and against hostages in captivity has been a calculated strategy by Hamas,” Elkayam-Levy told CNN. In June, she presented the findings to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and demanded that Israeli women not be held to a double standard.
Still, the denial continues. Last month, Kevin Barrett, an American 9/11 conspiracy theorist who has written for Iran’s state-run Press TV, published an article titled “October 7 ‘Rape’ Hoax Exposed,” attacking the Silenced No More report and calling the rape allegations “just as patently ridiculous as the tales of roasted and beheaded babies.” This week, former hostage Emily Damari answered the deniers in a video. “It was not an accident,” she said. “It was a planned terrorist attack, in which innocent people were murdered, raped, injured, and kidnapped from their homes and from a music festival.”
Denying the rapes of October 7 requires ignoring perpetrator confessions, survivor testimony, the bodies of the victims, and the UN’s own findings. Those records exist. No post, and no UN title, can erase them.
Three years later, Israel remembers. The world must too.
Sources
https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-official-for-violence-against-women-falsely-claims-no-independent-probe-found-oct-7-rape/
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-13451089/The-father-son-Hamas-rapists-Terrorists-going-house-house-carrying-sex-attacks-murder-One-screamed-cried-father-raped-did-cousin-did-father-killed-her.html
https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-794210
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html
https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/press-release/briefing-by-srsg-svc-ms-pramila-patten-to-the-security-council-findings-of-visit-to-israel-and-the-occupied-west-bank-11-march-2024/
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state
https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-sanctions-hamas-wings-over-sexual-violence-oct-7-2024-04-12/
https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/12/middleeast/report-sexual-violence-hamas-oct-7-attacks-intl
https://www.jfeed.com/middleeast/october-7-sexual-violence-report
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-900638
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-910722
