At first, she was known only as “The Lady in the Black Dress”.
In the blurry video, she can be seen lying on her back, her dress torn, her legs open and her vagina exposed. His face is unrecognizable and his right hand covers his eyes.
The video was filmed early on October 8 by a woman looking for a missing friend at the site of a rave party in southern Israel, where the day before, Hamas militants had killed hundreds of young Israelis.
The video went viral and thousands of people responded, desperate to know if the woman in the black dress was their missing friend, sister or daughter.
One family knew who she was: Gal Abdush, a mother of two from a working-class town in central Israel who had disappeared from the rave with her husband.
As the terrorists reached her, trapped on the highway in a line of cars trying to escape, she sent one last WhatsApp message to her family: “They don’t understand.”
Based largely on video evidence — verified by The New York Times — Israeli police officials said they believe Abdush was raped. It has become a symbol of the horror that Israeli women and youth faced on October 7.
Israeli officials say that wherever Hamas militants attacked that day — Rav, military bases along the Gaza Strip border and kibbutzim — they brutalized women.
Based on videos, photographs, mobile phone GPS data and interviews with more than 150 people, The Times has identified at least seven locations where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or vandalized on October 7.
Four witnesses described in graphic detail seeing women raped and murdered at two locations on Route 232.On the road where Abdush’s half-naked body fell on the road at the third place.
And several soldiers and medical volunteers together described finding the bodies of more than 30 women and young women in and around the rave site and in two kibbutzim, with their legs spread, clothes stripped and signs of abuse in their genital areas.
Hamas has denied Israeli allegations of sexual violence. Israeli activists are outraged that United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UN Women have not acknowledged the allegations weeks after the attack.
Investigators from Lahav 433, the main unit of Israel’s national police, are gathering evidence but have not given a figure on how many women were raped, saying most are dead – and buried – and will never know. Neither man has spoken publicly.
Many bodies were buried as quickly as possible due to a combination of chaos, grief, and Jewish religious obligations. Most were never investigated and, in some cases, such as at the rave scene, where more than 360 people were murdered in a few hours, the bodies were trucked away. This has left Israeli authorities unable to fully explain to families what happened to their loved ones. Abdush’s relatives never received the death certificate. They are still looking for answers.
Sapir, a 24-year-old accountant, has become one of the Israeli police’s key witnesses. She doesn’t want to be completely identified.
She attended the rave with some friends. In an interview, he described seeing groups of heavily armed men rape and murder at least five women. He said that at 8 a.m. on October 7, she hid under a tamarind tree near Route 232, about four and a half miles southwest of the party. He was shot in the back. He felt weak. She covered herself with grass and remained as still as possible.
About 15 meters from his hideout, he said, he saw “about 100 men” getting into and out of vehicles. He said the men passed each other assault rifles, grenades, small missiles – and seriously wounded women. He said the first victim he saw was a young woman with blood running down her back and pants down to her knees. A man grabbed her hair and forced her to bend it. Another lunged into him, Sapir said, and whenever he ducked, he stabbed him in the back.
He said he then saw another woman “torn”. While one of the militants raped her, she said, another took out a box cutter and cut off her breasts.
He said he saw three other women being raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three other women.
Sapir provided photographs of his hiding place and his injuries. Police officials have corroborated her testimony and released a video of her, her face blurred, describing what she saw.
That same morning, along Route 232, about a mile southwest of the party area, Raz Cohen — a young Israeli who attended the rave — said he was hiding in a dry creek bed.
About 35 meters in front of him, he recalled, a white van stopped. He said he then saw five men, all with knives and one with a hammer, dragging a woman along the ground. She was young, and she was naked and screaming.
“They start raping her,” Cohen said. “I saw men standing in a semicircle around him. One penetrates him. she screams. I still remember her voice, a wordless scream.
“Then one of them picks up a knife and they kill him.”
Hours later, the first wave of volunteer emergency medical technicians arrived. Four of them said they found bodies of women – legs spread and without underwear – some with their hands tied with ropes, in the party area from the rave place, on the side of the road, in the parking lot and in the surrounding fields.
Similar discoveries were made in two kibbutzim, Beri and Kfar Aza. Eight volunteer doctors and two Israeli soldiers said that in A total of at least 24 bodies of naked or semi-naked women and girls were found in at least six different homes, some mutilated, others tied and often alone.
A week after Abdush’s body was found, three government social workers came to the family’s home in Kiryat Akron. They reported that Abdush, 34, had been found dead.
But the only document the family received was a macho one-page letter from Israeli President Isaac Herzog, expressing his condolences and sending him hugs. The body of Abdush’s husband, Nagi, 35, was identified two days after his wife’s. He was badly burned and investigators determined who he was based on a DNA sample and his wedding band.
Their sons, Eliav, 10, and Raphael, 7, are now orphans. Abdush’s mother and father have applied for permanent custody.
Night after night, Abdush’s mother, Iti Bracha, sleeps in bed with the children until they fall asleep. A few weeks ago, she said she tried to quietly leave her room when the little boy stopped her.
“Grandma,” he said, “I want to ask you a question.”
“Honey, you can ask anything,” he told her.
“Grandma, how did mom die?”
Jeffrey Gettleman, Unt Schwartz and Adam Sela. The New York Times
BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html, Date of import: 2024-01- 04 22:15:04