Hamas’s Use of Sexual Violence ‘Likely’ to Inspire Other Terrorist Groups, Says Israeli Expert

An Israeli legal expert warned that Hamas’s use of sexual violence on October 7 will likely inspire other terrorist organizations to carry out similar atrocities in other countries.

Yifat Bitton, an Israeli law professor and advocate for sexual violence victims, said that terrorist organizations often imitate each other and called Israel “the most prolific lab for imitations of terrorist actions.” Bitton, who is the president of Achva Academic College, visited New York this month for meetings at the U.N., where she presented the findings of her research on the use of sexual violence on October 7.

Hamas terrorists carried out gruesome sexual crimes against Israelis at the Nova Music Festival and other sites after they crossed into Israel.

“This is something that is likely to be imitated in other cases of a terrorist attack, even if it’s a short-lived terrorist attack, even if it’s a one-day terrorist attack, even if it happens in a strong state, a developed state, such as Israel,” Bitton told National Review in an interview while she was in New York. She added that this raises additional questions about the difficulty of obtaining justice for the victims of sexual crimes, as it can be more difficult to identify them than the victims of other crimes.

The findings contained in her report, Bitton said, revealed how trauma makes it difficult for survivors and witnesses to sexual assault and first responders to come forward immediately.

Despite public testimony from witnesses, the revelation that Hamas had used sexual violence on October 7 was met with denialism by U.N. officials, nonprofit groups ostensibly dedicated to supporting women, and others.

“My thought was that, first of all, we need to understand how we got to the point where we are struggling to prove that the sexual crimes happened on October 7, and also to try and look at how to enhance doing justice with victims in other cases in the future. And for that, we need to be — both Israel and other countries — more prepared, way more prepared,” she said.

“Some of the interviewees who we spoke to were people for whom it was the first time ever to speak about what they saw, because they felt that they were just not ready for that” and who later recalled observations that were relevant to Hamas’s use of sexual violence, Bitton said.

“The fact that this has been a way to target Israel for political reasons doesn’t change the reality in which these victims have now needed to endure this extra burden of not being believed and disrespected,” she said. “I think that the way for us to tackle this is to come up as professionals and to speak out as professionals and to look at the at the facts, at the details, at the field work that has been done in this report.”

Bitton said that she met with various countries’ diplomats and members of the U.N. secretariat, as well as with organizations focused on terrorism and counterterrorism, and with Pramila Patten, the international organization’s top official on sexual violence.

“It is very clear that she is committed to understanding more what happened on October 7, and she understands that their work on the issue in the earlier stages of this year are more limited than what can be done now,” Bitton said of her conversation with Patten, who published a report this year corroborating findings that Hamas had used sexual violence.