Sexual violence is alleged to have taken place in four types of locations: Eden Wessely, a woman searching for a friend after the rave who says she filmed the video, told ARCCI that she had seen a cut wound on the victim's leg, which led her to believe the victim's underwear had been cut off. Eti Bracha, Gal's mother; Rami Bracha, Gal's brother; and Nagi's mother all believe that Gal was raped. Eti stated that "there are witnesses who saw the sexual assault of my daughter" and emphasized the importance that the world knows about "the sexual assaults committed by these monsters, that they don't close their eyes and say they don't believe it really happened." Nissim was interviewed on Channel 13 on 1 January 2024 and repeatedly denied that Gal was raped. He said Nagi had called him at 7 AM, saying his wife was killed but never mentioned anything related to sexual assault. Abdush reiterated that Gal had not been raped and that "the media invented it". Tali posted on
Instagram: "No one can know what Gal went through there! Also, what Nagi went through, but I can't cooperate with those who say many things that are not true. I plead with you to stop spreading lies, there is a family and children behind them, no one can know if there was rape or if she was burned while alive. Have you gone mad? I spoke to Nagi personally! At 7 o'clock, Gal was killed by those animals, and they shot her in the heart. Nagi was alive until quarter past eight…" a militant bent someone over, then "Esther" understood that he was raping the victim; the militant passed her on to someone else; she was still alive and bleeding from her back; the men cut off parts of her body, sliced her breast, threw it on the street and played with it; Two months later, in December 2023, the
New York Times reported accounts with very similar themes from a witness identified as "Sapir". In his testimony he said: "They were Nukhba terrorists, actually pinning you to the ground...You try to resist. They take off your clothes, laugh at you, humiliate you, spit at you. They touched private parts, rape you." He said that he had no doubt one of the teenagers had been raped, but he did not know if she had died first. new
Times reporter
Anat Schwartz said she tried but failed to find a second witness to confirm that the girls had been sexually assaulted after the paramedic told her his story about them. Similarly, in March the UN special representative stated that, at Kibbutz Be'eri, her team "was able to determine that at least two allegations of sexual violence widely repeated in the media were unfounded due to either new superseding information or inconsistency in the facts gathered.". In March 2024,
The Intercept noted that Kibbutz Be'eri's spokesperson Michal Paikin rejected the story of rapes of taking place there that the
New York Times had included in its article. He said "they were shot and were not subjected to sexual abuse".
Other accounts The
New York Times viewed photographs of a woman's corpse found in a kibbutz that had dozens of nails driven into her groin and thighs. The ARCCI Report cited 6 cases and sources:
Haaretz reported in April 2024 that "According to a source knowledgeable about the details, there were no signs on any of those bodies [at the Shura base] attesting to sexual relations having taken place or of mutilation of genitalia."
Shari Mendes Shari Mendes, an army reservist stationed at the Shura camp, recounted in an event at the United Nations that her team discovered female soldiers who were shot in their vagina or breasts, and reported that it appeared there was systematic genital mutilation by Hamas militants. She further stated that they found beheaded bodies or bodies with missing limbs or bodies whose faces were mutilated, with some faces shot multiple times post-mortem. Mendes provided testimony based on her observations of the dead, conveyed in a recorded video. In a February 2024 investigation
The Intercept reported that Mendes became a prominent figure in Israeli government and media narratives on 7 October sexual violence "despite the fact that she has no medical or forensic credentials to legally determine rape."
The Intercept also questioned Mendes' credibility based on a testimony she gave to the Daily Mail in October 2023 of what she had seen, including: "A baby was cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded and then the mother was beheaded." The official Israeli list of those killed in the attacks did not list a pregnant woman.
Captain Maayan IDF Captain Maayan who was a dentist and member of the medical forensic team identifying bodies at the Shura base, said that she had encountered several bodies showing signs consistent with
sexual abuse, recounting "I can tell that I saw a lot of signs of abuse in the [genital region] [...] We saw broken legs, broken pelvises, bloody underwear".
Lt. Tamar Bar Shimon Lt. Tamar Bar Shimon, survivor of the attack at the military base attached to the Erez crossing, said that a Hamas member tried to undress her, but another Hamas militant stopped him, after which both left the room in which she was hiding.
Moshe Pinchi video Moshe Pinchi shared a Hamas-filmed video that the IDF had recovered of two soldiers shot in the genitals. The
Associated Press reported that an unnamed Israeli doctor who treated 110 of the released hostages said that least 10 men and women had been sexually assaulted or abused while in captivity. The released hostages underwent
pregnancy tests and were screened for
sexually transmitted diseases. The Israeli military official said "we know that female hostages were raped during their captivity under control of Hamas." held hostage:
Liri Albag,
Karina Ariev,
Daniela Gilboa, and
Agam Berger. After this, released hostage
Chen Goldstein-Almog reported having seen some of them who had told her that their captors had sexually abused them multiple times. The ARCCI report cited the
Times of Israel report plus two statements from former hostages from Kfar Aza: Chen and
Agam Goldstein said they had encountered 3 female hostages who told them that captors had sexually assaulted them; and
Kan ran a story with
Aviva Sigal who said she saw a woman whom captors had just assaulted when taking her to the restroom, and said that captors turned women and men into "puppets on a string". She was taken captive on 7 October; The
International Criminal Court, issuing an arrest warrant for the attack's alleged mastermind
Mohammed Deif, stated that there were reasonable grounds to believe some Israeli hostages were subjected to sexual and gender based violence while held captive in Gaza. In a November 2025 interview, former hostage
Rom Braslavski told CNN that he had been sexually abused and tortured during his time in captivity. According to Braslavski, he was stripped naked and tied up. He believes the aim was to humiliate him and strip him of his dignity. He described his time in captivity as "hell".
Guy Gilboa-Dalal, who was held in captivity for hostage for two years, revealed in an interview to
Channel 12 in November 2025 that he was sexually abused. He recalled a Hamas militant abusing him by rubbing his genitals against him for several minutes while he stood motionless, even though Gilboa-Dalal told him: "You're joking, right?
This is forbidden in Islam". The guard then threatened to kill him if he spoke about this. Gilboa-Dalal feared that the assaults would escalate to forced anal penetration. During another incident, a guard allegedly took him to a separate room tied him to a chair, then made sexual threats while touching all over his body, kissing his neck and back, telling him he loved him. == Notable reports ==