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The Scope of Hamas' Campaign of Rape Against Israeli Women Is Revealed, Testimony after Testimony
(Ha'aretz) Hilo Glazer - Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, of the department of international relations at Hebrew University, founded the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children. She said it was not the viewing of dozens of graphic videos disseminated by Hamas. Nor was it the pictures of women, the state of whose bodies leave no doubt as to the terrible things that had been done to them before they were murdered. Nor was it even the horrific eyewitness accounts of the Zaka search and rescue organization volunteers and the people at the victim-identification center. What caused Elkayam-Levy to break down this week was a brief phone conversation with Michal Herzog, the wife of Israel's president. "Suddenly someone like her calls me and asks: 'How are you doing?' How am I doing? I am doing terribly. But I am not the story here." Elkayam-Levy gathered a team of 15 lawyers, activists, criminologists and researchers from various fields - all of them women, all volunteers. During these past weeks, the women of the nongovernmental commission have been hard at work gathering testimony and documentary materials related to the day of the massacre, with the aim of putting together a database of crimes against women and children. The evidence leaves no room for doubt: Under cover of the massacre, Hamas carried out a campaign of rape and sexual abuse at many of the communities adjacent to Gaza that it attacked. Terrorists who were arrested by Israel have testified to their interrogators that the mission assigned to them included rape. A military source cited by Yediot Ahronot noted that "the terrorists related that the aim of cutting off heads and rape was to sow fear and alarm in the Israeli public."