By Jeremiah Hassel
For 55 days, Amit Soussana endured unimaginable fear and pain as she was sexually assaulted by a guard while she was held hostage by Hamas following the invasion of Israel on October 7.
The Israeli lawyer has now for the first time described how she was forced to perform sexual acts on her captor, known only as Muhammed, in a child's bedroom while she was held against her will. He would threaten her with a gun, forcing her to do whatever he wanted.
It wasn't until a ceasefire in November that she and 21-year-old Mia Schem were released together, allowing them to go home finally. Ms Soussana said she was beaten and tortured as well as sexually assaulted, revealing everything in a tell-all interview with The New York Times. It was 55 days of hell, the 40-year-old said.
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When violence broke out on October 7, Ms Soussana was in a safe room at her home in Kfar Aza, one of the Israeli kibbutzes targeted by Hamas on that fateful day. They entered the home, she said, and attempted to tie her up using a shawl or blanket, but she fought back.
The seven or more men overpowered her, however, and forced her into one of their vehicles, dragging her back to Gaza with them, along with hundreds of other hostages.
When they arrived, Ms Soussana said she was chained, a cuff attached to her left ankle, as she was relegated to the child's bedroom, which she said had pictures of cartoons on the wall.
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Days after her capture, she said the guard began asking her about her sex life and menstrual cycle before finally attacking her on or about October 24. On that day, she said she was unchained and taken into the bathroom, where the guard ordered her to bathe. As she did, she said she heard his voice by the door telling her to hurry.
When she turned around, he was reportedly standing there, his gun pointed at her face, simply watching her. She tried to cover herself with her hands and a towel, but he reportedly advanced and hit her.
So, Ms Soussana sat on the edge of the bathtub. "I closed my legs. And I resisted," she told the Times. "And he kept punching me and put his gun in my face. Then, he dragged me to the bedroom."
In that room, with the cartoon characters overlooking her, she was forced to commit a sexual act on the man before he left her naked, lying in the dark as she sobbed on the small bed. He went away to wash himself, then reportedly showed remorse afterward. "I'm bad, I'm bad, please don't tell Israel," he reportedly said.
Three weeks after she was captured, Ms Soussana said she was moved to a new location, which she said appeared to be some sort of apartment, though where it was, she didn't say. She was reunited with the other hostages, but one day, she said she was summoned into the living room of the space, where she was beaten brutally by several guards.
The men reportedly believed that she was withholding information from them, and they were determined to force it out of her by any means necessary. They hit her, wrapped her head in a shirt, forced her to sit on the floor and then continued beating her with the but of one of their guns before they duct taped her mouth and nose, tied up her feet, handcuffed her and continued wailing on her after they hung her limp body between two couches "like a chicken".
"It was like that for 45 minutes or so," she told the Times. "They were hitting me and laughing and kicking me and called the other hostages to see me." She said it was humiliating.
Shortly after, she said she was untied, taken to a back bedroom and threatened more for the information the guards sought. She said that she still doesn't know what they were after.
When she was released on November 30 during a weeklong ceasefire, Ms Soussana said she spoke to two doctors and a social worker, telling them within 24 hours of her release that she had been sexually assaulted and beaten. She also spoke to a team from the United Nations, the same team that released a report earlier in March citing "clear and convincing" evidence that Hamas had raped and badly beaten hostages and that many were also assaulted during the October 7 raid.
Basem Naim, a spokesperson for Hamas, claimed in a statement to The New York Times that he finds it "difficult to believe" that Ms Soussana was sexually abused in any way, as he said doing so goes against the morales and fundamental aspects of the organisation's religion.
He said: "For us, the human body, and especially that of the woman, is sacred." Nevertheless, the UN report doesn't seem to corroborate Naim's claim, nor do the testimonies of dozens of hostages who have since been freed from captivity. During the same week Ms Soussana and Ms Schem — who had been taken from the Nova music festival — were released, about 80 total Israeli hostages were exchanged for around 240 Palestinian prisoners as 25 other captives, mostly Thai individuals, were reportedly set free as well. Just over 100 remain in captivity, France 24 reported in February.
The October 7 attack led to the death of around 1,200 Israelis, many of whom sheltered in their homes or attended the music festival just like Ms Soussana and Ms Schem. But the death toll in Gaza since then, incurred by the retaliatory wrath of Israel as it seeks revenge for the deadly day, is exponentially higher than that of Israel itself, and it keeps growing.
The Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, estimates that more than 32,000 people have now been killed since the onset of the war, with the vast majority of that number being children and women. Israel has incessantly bombed hospitals, refugee camps and other areas the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had designated safe for fleeing Gaza citizens, sometimes slaughtering dozens of innocent people in airstrikes meant to target a single person.
The US, one of Israel's staunchest allies, and the entire world, for that matter, have called on Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pay more attention to civilian casualties and mitigate them, but their pleas have largely gone unanswered. The bombings, raids and brutal attacks continue in the region as over 2 million Gaza citizens now find themselves without homes and hundreds of thousands of them starve and struggle to find clean drinking water, let alone shelter or medical supplies.
It's a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, and it keeps worsening. The UN is calling for an immediate ceasefire to allow for the flow of aid into the region, but Netanyahu has shirked many attempts at negotiations and diplomacy aimed at mitigating the situation. He wants Hamas gone once and for all, eradicated in retaliation for the worst attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust — and he doesn't seem to care who gets hurt along the journey to achieving his goal, many of Israel's allies, including the US, now believe.