Former Hamas Hostages Describe Sexual Assaults During Captivity in Gaza

Guy Gilboa-Dalal said he had been held captive in the Gaza Strip for nearly 18 months when one of his Hamas captors pulled him from his cell. The militant made the blindfolded 24-year-old strip naked and sit on a chair. The captor asked whether he wanted to make porn and then kissed and touched his neck and rubbed his genitals against him.

Gilboa-Dalal said the man placed a hand on his pounding heartbeat, asked if he was frightened and then held a knife to his neck with a threat to kill him if he told anyone. That first assault and another a day later each lasted only a few minutes. He was captured when Hamas fighters stormed the Nova music festival during the Oct.

7, 2023, attack on Israel. Gilboa-Dalal was released in October as part of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that included the return of hostages to Israel and around 2,000 Palestinian detainees to Gaza. He described those assaults as the worst moments of two years of isolation, starvation and beatings.

The thoughts return during fitful sleep, he said. "When I got sexually assaulted, it's not only that I had to go through it — I was alone and I couldn't share this with anyone," Gilboa-Dalal said. "Those thoughts that I had at that time were really destroying my brain.

Maybe it was my fault. " The same guard assaulted him again days later after a beating. The guard held him back from rejoining other hostages, refused to let him dress, threw him onto a sofa and sexually assaulted him before repeating the death threat.

Fear for his life kept him silent during captivity, he said.

Soussana, 42, said she carried a sanitary pad to the bathroom to try to dissuade potential attackers by pretending her period was continuing. She said the guard eventually entered her shower armed with a gun, pointed it at her and forced her to commit a sexual act.

Romi Gonen, 25, told Israel's Channel 12 last month that she had been repeatedly raped by multiple men during her two years in captivity. She said a senior Hamas official offered to prioritize her in the next hostage release if she stayed silent about the abuse.

Several former hostages, mostly women, have spoken publicly about the alleged sexual assaults. Hamas has denied that its militants committed sexual crimes during or after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. There have also been numerous allegations of sexual assault against Palestinians in Israeli detention.

In one case, five Israeli reservists were charged with aggravated abuse and causing serious bodily harm over the alleged gang rape of a man at the Sde Teiman military prison in 2024. They denied the charges and the case was dropped in March. Since Oct.

7, 2023, one Israeli soldier has been sentenced for torturing a Palestinian detainee, according to Amnesty International. Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, a founder of the Dinah Project, said a report released by the group on July 8 alleges that Hamas systematically used sexual violence as a weapon of war.

The group denies the claims. She said many victims who were raped on Oct. 7 were killed and some former hostages remain unable to speak because of trauma.