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
…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.
Rick Gordon says
What is amazing to me is how little concern the pro-Hamas protesters have about this – as well as the media’s . They just don’t care about anything that contradicts their worldview.
OLD GUY says
Rick you are 100% correct these pro-Hamas idiots don’t care what these terrorist do, they just hate the Jewish people and many would include Christians in that hate. And the political so called leaders have to guts to stand up for right and fight what’s wrong.
Stephen says
The so called “political leaders” have shot themselves in the foot with this BS, there’s a lot more Jewish Voters than pro Hamas idiots to vote for them…
I hope every Jewish voter votes for Trump, remembering none of this would have happened if Trump wasn’t cheated out of the last election .
Lisa D Letto says
Worst nightmare
somehistory says
Such an enormous lie: that mozlums view the human body as sacred.
mozlums have no real concept of “sacred.” If they viewed the “human body” as sacred, little babies would not be raped, beheaded, burned alive or taken from their parents who love and care for them.
If mozlums viewed the human body as sacred, they wouldn’t strip women, rape and then dismember them. Nor would they mutilate little girls to satisfy their lust for sexual violence.
We’ve all seen some of what hamas members did and how very pleased they were with what they did to human bodies.
Studies have shown that most females are raped at some point during their lives. Many victims of sexual abuse, violence, rape, assault, do not report it. Many feel that they will not be believed and having to tell of the crime makes the victim relive it, as if it is happening again. And each time they must repeat the facts, it is to live it all over again.
It’s a known fact that most rape victims see themselves in a shameful way, as if they are somehow to blame for what happened. It’s hard to overcome that feeling long enough to tell someone. And even if they know it was not anything they did or didn’t do, it is still embarrassing to have to give the details.
Courts demand explicit details in order to prosecute the case. Euphemisms like “heck” for “hell” are not allowed.
The scum denying this, is a ghoul. Likely he has enjoyed with lust in his heart, hearing her and reading her account of the horrors she endured. living it vicariously.
Do to them what they have done to these young people. Give the victims some justice.
Stephen says
“mozlums have no real concept of “sacred.””
Robert Spencer has said on this channel “73% of moslem woman feel they’re raped contineusly”
That’s why whenever you see pictures of moslum young woman they usually have a kid on the hip and a couple hanging around …
From the other side of Town. says
God bless you Soussana, and may you and all Israel be safe from here and now, to forever-more.
Ray Jarman says
How can some fool state that in Islam the female body is sacred. Not only are the bodies of Jewish women not considered sacred, men are permitted to beat their wives and almost every honor killing in the world is by Muslims and by far the vast majority of their victims are the poor women.
James Lincoln says
Gaslighting Ray, gaslighting…
dumbledoresarmy says
Mohammedans do not view infidels as human. Therefore the bodies of infidels qua infidels are NOT ‘sacred’. And the bodies of any deemed-insufficiently-islamic mohammedan are not sacred either…
Throughout the entire history of Islam one sees a consistent pattern of relentless, obsessive desecration of anything and everything held sacred by non-Muslims.
Islam has an honour-shame mentality on overdrive, and in that mentality, one gains ‘honour’ by dishonouring and degrading the despised ‘other’.
The total destruction of the genitalia of the victims of 7th October is all of a piece with the mohammedan worship of Thanatos.. to destroy the physical house of life.
Mohammedans KNOW that it is Jews who really do regard the body as holy; so the Mohammedans on 7th October set out to publicly defile, desecrate and DESTROY the bodies of their victims, as thoroughly and grossly as possible, to try to render them deader-than-dead.
(The same diabolical craziness is seen when Mohammedans ‘honour-murder’ their own despised-and-hated females; mohammedan males will rape, torture-kill, dismember their OWN female kin, in ways that in other societies are the modus operandi of psycho serial killers.)
Delenda est Islamia…
somehistory says
I listened to a guest on Glenn Beck’s program who had done a lot of research into the death of Christ…and what He endured before dying.
One thing he said applies to your comment. The Jews didn’t even allow criminal’s dead bodies to hang over night, but these were taken down and buried; even at a time when they lived under the laws of Rome.
Respect for life, the life God gives.
On the other hand, mozlums disrespect life and other gifts given by man’s Creator (Who is not their false god) and they show their disrespect in so very many ways.
And then, lie about it all.
St. Croix says
When October 7 happened and then the details started coming out soon thereafter, I was in shock. My thought was that an army of serial killers had been unleased on Israel. And they wanted to do the same in every other country where they are not already in power. It’s just that there they had the proximity, and lots of “CIVILIANS” to join in, and Israel is, though powerful militarily, still vulnerable in many ways. Numbers for one, their population is small. A lot of people in a tiny area, but still, as nations go, a small number.
Any woman who has not been psychologically caged by woke paradigms and brain-washed to hate jews culturally or by circles of influence, WOULD FEEL TERROR at just reading or hearing about what they did to the victims in Israel. And broadcast it for all to see. Women always have a fear of sexual molestation and rape, being vulnerable and less able to defend. WEAKER. Yes, the female body is less strong than the male. Male swimmers and weightlifters competing as “women” against real women know this. Women know this.
Having endured what she did, it took a lot to share. People believe accounts of women who even make things up–and some do–yet they doubt this women and others because of their political and ideological biases. Though, as stated, Hamas did publicly take pride in their actions and broadcast them on the internet.
The interviews with the captured culprits also confirms what was done. And let me add here, compare the interrogation of the Russians who caught the terrorists with that of the Israelis who really just were interviewing the captured men of Gaza. Compare the approach to “interrogation.” Which country is civilized and which is barbaric? We know during WW2 that Nazis ran to surrender to the Brits, to the Canadians, Americans…to avoid being captured by the Russian troops. Russians gang-raped German women–I know from an elderly woman who was at dinner in our house when I was a teen. Her mother was raped by 12 Russians, there in the house, with the children present.
And Israel is barbaric??? They’ve got it all upside-down.
Blougeoisie says
#believesomewomen
Troybeam says
Islam and its followers: what is written and what we do are 2 different things. Women are treated very badly in Islam, they are nothing more than citizen slaves and as the book states “cattle have more rights than women”( para-phase). Not a surprise that on Oct.7th 2023 that the women of Israel were abused so bad, to the men of Islam its a prize to use and abuse and if the women are lucky be returned home damaged goods. May these women be stronger and not let the Muslim win.
Magooey says
There is the question of why the terrorist was asking about Amit’s period? It may be based on a Muslim law of “Istibra”. This is “one menstrual period of sexual abstinence for a female slave when she is captured or changes ownership. This is to ensure that there is no confusion on paternity”.
Magooey says
As far as the question of rapes of hostages occurring during Hamas captivity, the perpetrators themselves have provided evidence. In the past few months some videos of rapes by Hamas have been made publicly available. One even has what appears to be Arabic chanting in the background. In many cases the backgrounds are well furnished flats. In one case the depravity clearly takes place is a high rise apartment building. It is a mockery to consider they are supposedly living in refugee camps. Also, when you get the chance to view them you may note the sarcastic and insulting nature of the videos.