A survivor of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre said he sees the terrified faces of the women who were raped and killed by the terror group in his nightmares. At one point during the attacks, he was forced to hide underneath the body of a dead woman to evade the terrorists.
Yoni Saadon, 39, is a survivor of the Supernova music festival, where Hamas terrorists killed over 300 attendees in a mass murder. The festival took place in the desert near Kibbutz Re’im. Numerous partygoers attempted to flee on foot and in their vehicles but were murdered or taken captive.
The terror group’s assault against southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people, a majority of them civilians, including 31 Americans, and thousands of others were wounded. Hamas also took around 240 others hostage. In response to Hamas’ invasion, Israel commenced airstrikes and a ground offensive to eradicate the terrorist group and secure the hostages’ release.
Saadon’s eyewitness testimony, which he recounted in an interview with The Sunday Times, UK, is yet another firsthand account of Hamas subjecting women to sexual violence during its assault against Israel. A father of four, Saadon said one of his daughters nearly attended the festival with him before canceling at the last minute.
The father told his story to the U.K. news outlet in an area set up for festival survivors located southeast of Tel Aviv. Saadon said during the attack on the rave that he witnessed the murder of a young woman who had been hiding near him beneath the stage at the music festival.
“She fell to the ground, shot in the head, and I pulled her body over me and smeared her blood on me so it would look as if I was dead too,” he said. “I will never forget her face. Every night I wake to it and apologize to her, saying, ‘I’m sorry.’”
The music festival survivor said about an hour passed before he peeked out from his hiding place. Saadon remembered witnessing around 10 Hamas fighters beating and raping a woman who he described as having the “face of an angel.”
“She was screaming, ‘Stop it — already I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’ When they finished they were laughing and the last one shot her in the head,” Saadon recalled.
“I kept thinking it could have been one of my daughters,” he added.
At one point, Saadon was hiding in some bushes while two Hamas fighters sexually assaulted a young woman who kept fighting them, resisting their attempts to remove her clothes. Eventually, one of the Hamas terrorists beheaded the woman with a shovel, and Saadon said that he saw her head roll along the ground.
The Hamas terrorist group has denied that its militants committed sexual violence during its October onslaught. Last month, Hamas official Basem Naim claimed in an interview with The Washington Post that the terrorist organization considers “any sexual relationship or activity outside of marriage to be completely haram,” keeping with the principles of Islam.
Bar Yuval-Shani, 58, one of the volunteer therapists at the support site for festival survivors, however, said that Saadon’s story is not the only account of rape that she’s heard, according to The Sunday Times. She added that survivors of the music festival massacre are “deeply traumatized.”
Shelly Harush, an Israeli police commander leading the investigation into whether Hamas engaged in a widespread campaign of rape and sexual violence against women on Oct. 7, told WaPo it’s likely that sexual violence was part of Hamas’ invasion plan.
Additional reports of Hamas’ sexual crimes come from Shari, a Rabbinate corps member of the Israel Defense Forces responsible for preparing victims’ bodies for burial. In October, Shari told The Daily Mail that there is evidence of Hamas’ mass rape of women, children and the elderly, with the violence being so extreme that many victims had their pelvis’ broken.
Shari also described the burned bodies of women and children, some of whom had their hands tied behind their backs. The Rabbinate corps member even recalled a baby who had been “cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded and then the mother was beheaded.”
Over 50 days after Hamas’ terrorist attacks, the United Nations entity, UN Women, finally released a statement on Friday condemning the terror group’s assault against Israel. UN Women also expressed “regret” that the fighting had resumed between Israel and Hamas following a temporary truce to swap civilian hostages for Palestinian prisoners who has committed murders and terrorist acts.
“We unequivocally condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on Israel on 7 October. We are alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks,” the statement read.
UN Women claimed that it’s supporting the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, which the entity stated began an investigation into reports of sexual violence following the attacks against Israel on Oct. 7. It then went on to call for accountability for “all acts of gender-based violence” that happened on and after that day, in addition to calling for the release of the hostages and a ceasefire.
“For the sake of everyone in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, and especially women and children, we call for a return to a path of peace, a respect for international humanitarian and international human rights law, and an end to the suffering of people in Gaza and in Israel, and those families still waiting for their loved ones to return,” UN Women stated.
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
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