Men and women held hostage face fate worse than death, survivors forum says

Dozens of women were shot in the breasts and vaginas by Hamas terrorists, and the fate of the women still held hostage is a fate worse than death.

This was what the witness testimonies revealed at the meeting of the Forum for Sexual Abuse and Gender in Swords of Iron War in the Knesset on Tuesday morning in a discussion led by Tsega Melaku (Likud).

"We saw women who were stripped out of their clothes, including their undergarments," said Haim Otmazgin, commander of the special units of the first aid organization Zaka. "We saw clearly and schematically women who were shot in their intimate body parts. This is not something that happens randomly, especially when you see it systemically, at the [Nova] party, then at the kibbutzim. Another one tied up, another one stripped, another one shot [in the vagina]."

He explained, "The terrorists received a checklist saying, 'If you are pressed for time, just kill. If you have some more time, shoot them in their intimate body parts, especially women, but men too. If you have more time, poor combustible materials and burn the body.'

"There were bodies of women alongside men in which the men were shot in the head and killed and the women received a different approach, an approach not intended to defeat an enemy, but rather to ridicule their bodies, expose them from beneath their clothes."

Other October 7 victims were set aflame, left dead in ashes. "There was water that we brought with us to drink, and we poured it on the bodies to put out the fires because we couldn't touch them, they were still aflame," Otmazgin said. "Not one, not five, not ten: I held in my arms over 20 burned bodies, and they weren't burned accidentally in a fire."

The fate of hostages in Gaza

The fate of the women and men taken into Gaza and held hostage by Hamas were fates worse than death.

"We are expected to see ourselves here, in the Knesset, in a few months, holding discussions that I don't want to think about," said MK Shelly Tal Meron (Yesh Atid). "There may be discussions about late-stage abortions. There may be discussions with the Chief Rabbinate about the religion of the babies that may be born here or there (in Gaza). There may be about the legal status of the babies that are expected to be born. How can we even imagine having this discussion in Israeli society?

"We must not get to this point," she concluded. "We don't want pictures of planes carrying caskets draped in Israeli flags, we want them here, alive, now."

Chen Goldstein Almog, who returned with her daughter from the captivity of Hamas, told the forum that the female hostages weren't getting their periods, and that is what they wished.

"There was a thought, a wish that the menstrual cycles of the girls there wouldn't come so that they wouldn't be able to get pregnant while they raped them," she said. "There were girls there that didn't get their period for some time, maybe because of some defense mechanism of the body or the difficult state of being held hostage."

Horrifically, Aviva Siegel, another hostage released during the hostage deal last month, revealed that Hamas terrorists would dress the girls in dolls' clothes and use them as "puppets on strings that they can do whatever they want with, whenever they want."

She said, "The boys are also experiencing what the girls are. They may not be getting pregnant, but they, too, are puppets on strings, like I was. Something needs to urgently change."