‘I Raped Her’: Palestinian Terrorist Admits Sexually Assaulting Israeli Woman on Oct. 7

Jerusalem, 28 March, 2024 (TPS) -- The Israel Defense Forces released footage of a Palestinian terrorist describing to his interrogator how he raped an Israeli woman during Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israeli communities near the Gaza border.

The terrorist, identified as Maner Qassem, was a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s naval forces who was apprehended by Israel in March.

“The documentation of the investigation is further proof of the murder and sexual violence attack by the terrorist organizations on October 7, in an attempt to make the voice of those who can no longer tell be heard,” the IDF said in a statement releasing the video.

Interrogated by Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504, Qassem explained that he entered Israel through a border breach between the Gaza towns of al-Fukhkhari and Khuza’a. He said he was armed with a handgun and two grenades.

The video did not indicate which kibbutz Qassem went to, though the border breach he described was not far from Kibbutz Nirim and Kibbutz Nir Oz.

He said he entered the first house he saw.

“At first there was no one, then I entered the room and there was someone there who was scared of me. She told me ‘help me’ – and I threw her on the couch.”

Asked to describe the woman, Qassem said, “She had not very long hair, normal like that, and she was thin. She wore a blue skirt and a white shirt, and wore sandals.”

When asked what happened next, he responded, “The devil took over me. I laid her down and started undressing her and did what I did.”

“What did you do?” the interrogator pressed.

“I slept with her.”

“You didn’t sleep with her. What did you do?”

“I raped her.”

“What did she do to you?”

“She pushed me. It didn’t last long, because I heard shouting outside.”

Qassem recalled that the woman’s bra and panties were pink, and that the rape lasted “two minutes, maybe a minute and a half” before two other men forced their way into the house. He said the two men pulled the woman’s mother into the room “and they started comforting each other — according to what I understood.”

The fate of the woman and her mother is not known.

Afterward, he shot several Israelis, killing at least one. “Civilians,” Qassem specified.

A report released in February by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel said that Hamas committed “brutal sexual assaults, carried out systematically and deliberately” on October 7, the first such report to detail the day’s sexual violence.

The ARCCI is an umbrella organization of Israel’s regional rape crisis centers.

The report specified that sexual violence took place at the Nova Music Festival, in the communities near the Gaza border, on the army bases that were attacked, and addressed the continuing abuse of hostages still held in Gaza.

At least 1,200 people were killed and 240 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the remaining 134 hostages, Israel recently declared 31 of them dead.