Released Hostage Describes the Sexual Abuse She Endured

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One of the hostages released by Hamas in November, Amit Soussana, has given her harrowing account of the sexual violence and physical abuse she endured in Hamas captivity in an eight-hour interview with The New York Times that was published on March 26. She is the first released hostage to give direct testimony of sexual atrocities she endured while being held in Gaza. More on her testimony can be found here: “Released hostage: ‘I was forced to commit sexual acts with a gun pointed at me,’” by Jacob Laznik, Jerusalem Post, March 26, 2024:

…Soussana previously made headlines when a video surfaced of the moment of her capture, when she fought off seven Hamas terrorists before being brought to Gaza.

In the interview, Soussana recalled being held hostage in a child’s bedroom in Gaza with a chain attached to her left ankle. The Hamas terrorist in charge of guarding her, whom she named Muhammad, occasionally would sit beside her on the bed, lift her shirt, and grope her, she said.

Muhammad would constantly ask about her period, inquiring if she was bleeding, if she had washed herself since, and when it would end, she added.

Sometime around October 24, Muhammad forced her to commit a sex act on him, Soussana said.

On that morning, he unlocked the chain around her ankle so that she could wash herself in the bathtub, she said, adding that after she began, Muhammad returned with a pistol.

“He came toward me and shoved the gun at my forehead,” Soussana said.

Muhammad hit her repeatedly to force her to take her towel off. After she did, Muhammad groped her before continuing to hit her.

Afterward, he dragged her back to the child’s room at gunpoint. The room was covered in images of SpongeBob Squarepants, she said.

“Then, with the gun pointed at me, [he] forced me to commit a sexual act on him,” Soussana said. After it was over, Muhammad left the room to wash up and left Soussana naked in the dark.

When he returned, she said, he expressed remorse, telling her, “I’m bad. I’m bad. Please don’t tell Israel.”…

Soussana then discussed her second captor, Amir, after she was transferred to a different location. On the day that she arrived at the new apartment, the Hamas terrorists wrapped her head in a pink shirt, forced her onto the floor, handcuffed her, and beat her with the butt of a gun, she said.

Minutes after that, they suspended her “like a chicken on a stick, suspended between two couches.” She recalled that she felt that her hands would be dislocated due to the intensity of the pain.

While suspended, her new captors beat and kicked her, focusing on the soles of her feet while demanding information that she might have had about the enemy.

After that, she was untied and led to a new bedroom, where they told her she had 40 minutes to produce information or else they would kill her….

Many apologists have denied any reports of sexual violence committed by Hamas, saying if it took this long to bring the allegations to light, they could not be true. Sexual crimes do not always get reported, as the trauma suffered by the victims could take such a toll as to dissuade them from bringing the crimes to light, according to experts….

There are many reasons why victims of sexual violence do not report, or report only long after, what they have endured. Some want only to forget the whole thing, to suppress it. Others are embarrassed to describe in detail what they endured. In the case of Amit Soussana, she wanted to share her story, as she told The New York Times, in order to raise public consciousness about what the girls still held as hostages in Gaza are no doubt suffering.

Hamas spokesperson Basem Naim filed a 1,300-word response to The Times regarding Soussana’s testimony. He cast doubt on her allegations and demanded that the newspaper investigate them. He also said such an investigation would be impossible under “the current circumstances.”

Naim questioned why Soussana had not spoken out publicly about the extent of her abuse until now. The level of detail in her account makes it difficult to believe, “unless some security officers designed it,” he said.

It’s not hard to imagine why it took months for Soussana to publicly discuss what she endured. For a while she was simply in shock. And then there was acute embarrassment over revealing the details of what she was made to do by her Hamas captors — it is that same embarrassment that still keeps other Israeli girls and women, including those freed from captivity, from going public with what they suffered on October 7, or when they were held captive in Gaza. As for Bassam Naim’s claim that Soussana’s account was too detailed to be believable, he has it backwards. It is precisely that level of detail — such as the SpongeBob Squarepants images on the walls of the children’s bedroom she was first held in — that should convince anyone except Hamas and its supporters of her truthfulness.

Naim also discounted the possibility that Hamas members could carry out such an act because the human body is sacred to them.

“For us, the human body, and especially that of the woman, is sacred,” he said, adding that Hamas’s religious beliefs “forbade any mistreatment of any human being, regardless of his sex, religion, or ethnicity.”…

No “mistreatment” by Hamas of any human being, especially of women? Those corpses of women with their breasts sliced off, those corpses of men with their genitalia cut off, and eyes gouged out? The “human body…is sacred” to Hamas? We all saw those videos of Israeli girls, some kicking and screaming and being beaten by their Hamas captors, others already half-dead and thrown naked in the back of pickup trucks, which then carted them back into Gaza, where they were again beaten by civilians wanting to join in the fun. Videos of the sexual atrocities were taken by those Hamas members who committed them. They were proud of what they had done and wanted to share evidence of their exploits with others.

She’s a brave woman, Ms. Amit Soussana, to have come forward. The next time you pass by some of those screaming demonstrators on college campuses and on city streets — the ones chanting “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free,” which in effect calls for the destruction of Israel and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab state, or that even more grotesque chant, “Say No To Genocide” – mention her name to them. Remind them of what she — and many other Israeli girls and women — have suffered at the hands of Hamas. I doubt that information will soften any antisemitic hearts and minds, but one never knows.