A male Nova festival survivor has spoken publicly for the first time about how Hamas terrorists raped him in a horrific assault on October 7.
The survivor gave his testimony to Israel’s Channel 12 news and it is the latest of several accounts that detail the sexual violence carried out by terrorists who attacked both male and female victims.
The first-hand testimony was given to the channel anonymously and is rare due to the fact most victims of sexual violence were murdered in the attack.
The man described his attack in detail, he said: “There was a circle, [people] laugh, and you don’t know what to do in the moment, whether you should resist or let it pass, how to deal with the situation. There was a very difficult rape. At some point, more people arrived and called for them and so they had to stop.”
The man, identified only by the Hebrew initial Dalet, added: “It’s a very tough moment. Weakness in the entire body. As if your blood is cheap. They were wildly intoxicated, celebrating, laughing with their pistols, with their knives.”
Dalet said: “You disassociate yourself from the situation, but on the other hand experience it very strongly. Very difficult.”
He told reporters he was able to escape because Israeli forces showed up.
Dalet said coping with the assault has been challenging. “It wasn’t simple in the beginning,” he said.
“I was very closed off.”
He said he had become obsessed with cleaning himself because of the attack.
He said he takes “a lot, a lot of showers, to get all that energy off me, everything that happened.”
The testimony he has given has been handed to the police unit in charge of investigating sexual crimes committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7.
Dalet said he knew that people would seek to deny his experience and as a result shared reports carried out by medical experts that testify to the harm done to him.
He said he had also taken part in a polygraph test to further prove what he went through.
His testimony is the latest that joins mounting evidence of the sexual nature of the abuse and violence experienced by October 7 victims and survivors.
Israeli Defence Forces reservist Shari Mendes said that she personally dealt with the mutilated bodies of women on October 8.
In an interview with Sky’s Yalda Hakim, five months ago, Mendes described what she and her team thought “seems like a systematic genital mutilation of women”.
She said she saw and dealt with women with very “bloodied underwear” and “women shot in the crotch, the genitals”.
She said her team saw “women shot in the breasts.” She also described some bodies coming in “booby trapped” with explosives.
In March the UN envoy focusing on sexual violence in conflict found evidence that Hamas’s October 7 terror attack on Israel involved rape and sexual violence including against dead women.
A report by the UN representative Pramila Patten detailed two incidents from witnesses involving the rape of women's corpses.
Former Israeli hostage Amit Soussana revealed how Hamas sexually abused her when she was held hostage in Gaza.
Soussana, 40, first described how she was kept chained in a bedroom in the dark for several weeks while a Hamas terrorist named Muhammad forced her to commit sexual acts on him at gunpoint.
KFAR AZA, ISRAEL - JANUARY 29: Amit Soussana (r), who was held hostage by Hamas and released reacts after speaking to the press near her house where she was kidnapped during the Oct 7 attack on the kibbutz, on January 29, 2024 in Kfar Aza, Israel. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)
The Israeli lawyer who was held captive for 55 days appeared in a documentary produced by former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, Screams Before Silence, which detailed the sexual abuse experienced by people on October 7.
Israeli teenager Agam Goldstein-Almog, also released in the November deal, reported having been groped by her captors.
After she was released, she said she was constantly afraid she would be raped.
Agam Goldstein-Almog watched Hamas terrorists murder her father and older sister during their attack on Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7. (Photo: Screenshot via X)
She said: “Half of the girls and young women I met in captivity told me they experienced sexual or physical abuse or both. They are still living there with their rapists.”
Dalet’s testimony is part of a lawsuit filed by more than 100 survivors of the Supernova festival against the State of Israel.
The action demands the government pay out more than NIS 500 million (USD $137 million) in support to victims.
Einat Ginzburg, one of the lawyers representing the survivors said: “Many of them aren’t able to return to work, and aren’t able to return to their lives.”
Speaking about Dalet’s experience Ginzburg said “of course it’s impossible, at this stage, to return to normal life after what happened.”
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