In interrogation clip, terrorist confesses to raping Israeli woman on Oct. 7
IDF says footage is ‘further proof of the onslaught of murder and sexual violence by terrorist organizations’ during rampage in southern Israel
The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday released new interrogation footage of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who was seen confessing to raping an Israeli woman in a kibbutz in southern Israel during the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught on Israeli communities.
The terrorist, Manar Qassem, who was captured by the IDF earlier this month in Khan Younis, said he was a member of Islamic Jihad’s naval forces.
In the interrogation carried out by the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 — which specializes in HUMINT, or human intelligence — Qassem is asked what he did on October 7, to which he provided a detailed response.
Qassem said he entered Israel through a breach in the Gaza border fence between the Khan Younis area towns of al-Fukhkhari and Khuza’a, armed with a handgun and two grenades.
He said that as he reached the unnamed kibbutz, he entered the closest home, where he encountered a woman who was startled.
“I took her and threw her on the couch,” Qassem told the interrogators, recalling in detail what she looked like and what she was wearing.
“The devil took over me, I laid her down, started undressing her, and did what I did,” he said.
Pressed by the interrogator as to what he had done, Qassem responded by saying: “I slept with her.”
Asked again, Qassem said, “I raped her.”
“She pushed me, it didn’t last long… Two minutes. Maybe a minute and a half,” he was heard saying.
At that point, according to Qassem, two members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades terror group entered the home and put the woman together with her mother for a short while, before taking both out of the house.
Qassem said he was left alone and decided to head back to the Gaza Strip. He said he heard gunshots and then shot one Israeli man near him before throwing one of his grenades and fleeing the kibbutz.
The IDF said the footage is “further proof of the onslaught of murder and sexual violence by terrorist organizations on October 7th,” adding that it released the clip “in an effort to give voice to those who can no longer be heard.”
Officials did not say whether they knew the fate of the woman, though the latter comment suggested she did not survive.
The release of the video came three weeks after the United Nations envoy on sex crimes during conflict presented a report at the UN indicating that rape and gang rape likely occurred during the October 7 Hamas invasion.
The 24-page report, based on more than two weeks of meetings on the ground, states that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that Hamas committed rape and sexual abuse during its murderous rampage on October 7, and that there is an even higher standard of evidence to indicate that hostages kidnapped by Hamas that day were subject to rape in captivity.
Freed hostage Amit Soussana told The New York Times in an interview published Tuesday that she was sexually assaulted by her Hamas guard during her captivity in Gaza.
The war in Gaza started on October 7 with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 253.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza claims that more than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the war. The number cannot be independently verified, and is believed to include both Hamas terrorists and civilians, some of whom were killed as a consequence of the terror group’s own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 13,000 terrorists in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 who were killed inside Israel on and immediately following October 7. PJC
Times of Israel staff and Amy Spiro contributed to this report.
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