On December 28, 2023, The New York Times published an exposé entitled "Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7" on rape and sexual violence during the October 7 attacks and Gaza war, describing such violence as having been "weaponized" by Hamas. The investigative team, led by Times staffer Jeffrey Gettleman and including Israeli freelancers Adam Sella and Anat Schwartz, spent October to December 2023 collecting video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews from more than 150 people, and concluded that sexual assaults and mutilations of Israeli women and girls were carried out in least seven locations on 7 October.
Critics of the piece have described it as atrocity propaganda. In February 2024, Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, and Daniel Boguslaw published "Between the Hammer and the Anvil" in The Intercept, which called into question the journalistic practices that went into the making the piece as well as the qualifications and motivations of Anat Schwartz, an Israeli filmmaker who contributed to the piece. The editorial process behind the article was criticized, with concerns raised including the use of inexperienced reporters, an overreliance on witness testimony, weak corroboration, and a lack of supporting forensic evidence.
The Times stood by its story, saying that it was "rigorously reported, sourced and edited".
Investigation and conclusions The investigation was led by Times staffer Jeffrey Gettleman, who had won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012, specializes in reporting conflicts and human rights issues, and has covered Iraq, Sudan, Somalia and Ukraine. Gettleman recruited freelancer Adam Sella shortly after arriving in Israel in October 2023. Sella is a Jewish-American journalist who speaks Hebrew, Arabic and German, and has written for Al Jazeera English and Haaretz. He co-wrote several Times articles, including one with Gettleman on settler violence. Gettleman later recruited left-wing Israeli filmmaker and television director Anat Schwartz, whose partner was Sella's nephew. Schwartz had previously worked on complex documentaries, but according to The Intercept did not have prior reporting experience.
They spent two months collecting video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews from more than 150 people, and drew the conclusion that there were at least seven locations where sexual assaults and mutilations of Israeli women and girls were carried out. The resulting article titled "'Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7", was published on December 28, 2023.
Evidence cited in the article includes accounts of 8 individuals or groups and a video circulated on social media. The beginning of the article describes a video as showing a murdered victim "lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed"'; she is identified as Gal Abdush. The article reported that the Times viewed photographs of a dead woman "with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin", and an Israeli military video of two dead female Israeli soldiers "who appeared to have been shot directly in their vaginas".
Schwartz said in her podcast that she contacted Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centers, trauma recovery facilities, sex assault hotlines, and kibbutzim, and visited the alleged rape sites, but found no witnesses to corroborate reports of sexual assault on October 7. In visits to the Merhav Marpe center, Schwartz didn't find direct evidence of sexual violence. However, statements of witnesses, including from Shari Mendes, Raz Cohen, and a rave attendee called Sapir, convinced Schwartz that the pattern of sexual violence was systematic.
The NYT investigation concluded that there were "mass rapes" and that these were part of a broader pattern in which Hamas "weaponized sexual violence". The article states that Israeli officials told them that "everywhere Hamas terrorists struck... they brutalized women".
The article states that Israeli police organization Lahav 433 has "been steadily gathering evidence but they have not put a number on how many women were raped, saying that most are dead—and buried—and that they will never know. No survivors have spoken publicly." The article notes Israeli police's admission that "zero autopsies" were conducted, as during the "shock and confusion" of the day of the attack, they were "not focused on collecting semen samples from women's bodies, requesting autopsies or closely examining crime scenes", and "many bodies were buried as quickly as possible" in accordance with Jewish funeral customs. The article goes on to state that "most were never examined". The article cites experts as asserting that "it is not unusual to have limited forensic evidence" during wartime, quoting law professor Adil Haque stating that prosecution of sexual crimes may be able to move forward years later just based on victim and witness testimony. Volunteers of the Israeli community emergency response alliance ZAKA serving as witnesses did not take photographs per organizational policy and respect for the dead. Yossi Landau, head of ZAKA operations, later told the New York Times that he regrets having not collected photographic evidence.
The article cites one Israeli official as stating that at least three women and one man survived sexual assaults during the attack but were not "willing to come physically for treatment", and further cites two therapists saying that were assisting a woman who was gang raped, but she was "in no condition to talk to investigators or reporters". It then quotes Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI), who says: "don't put this pressure on this woman. The corpses tell the story." The article also cited rape counsellors as saying that rape survivors do not discuss sexual assault for years due to trauma.
Keys Inconsistent reports and/or witnesses accused of fabrication +Accounts of sexual violence by witnesses quoted in "Screams Without Words"WitnessRoleAccount in "Screams ..."Other account / Notes Re'im music festival massacre Eden Wessely "searching for a missing friend at the site of the rave"Took a video showing Gal Abdush, "a woman in a black dress lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed" with her face completely charred, whom Israeli police officials believed to have been raped.Other accounts: Eti Bracha, Gal's mother; Rami Bracha, Gal's brother; and Gal's mother-in-law all believe that Abdush was raped. Eti stated that "there are witnesses who saw the sexual assault of my daughter" and emphasized the importance that the world knows about "the sexual assaults committed by these monsters, that they don't close their eyes and say they don't believe it really happened." Nagi's mother lamented how her son saw his wife sexually assaulted before being shot. Rami stated that "the feeling was difficult" learning his sister was raped and "knowing what she went through before she was shot and murdered". Eti stated she "didn't know about the rape at first, only when the New York Times reporter contacted us did we know. They said they cross-checked the testimonies and said Gal had been sexually assaulted. We still don't know exactly what happened."
Gal's sisters, Tali Brakha and Miral Altar, and one brother-in-law, Nissim Abdush, contested claims that she had been raped, stating it didn't make sense given the timing of events. MondoWeiss said that Miral had posted on Instagram: "At 6:51, Gal sent us a message on WhatsApp saying 'we are at the border, and you can't imagine sounds of explosions around us.' At 7 o'clock, my brother-in-law called his brother and said they shot Gal and she's dying. It doesn't make any sense that in four minutes, they raped her, slaughtered her, and burned her?" Miral later clarified that she was trying to "protect her sister", adding: "Did she suffer? Did she die right away?"..."I want to hope she didn't suffer, but we will never know."