Amit Soussana, an Israeli lawyer, was kidnapped from her house on Oct. 7, overwhelmed and dragged into Gaza by not less than 10 males, some armed. A number of days into her captivity, she stated, her guard started asking about her intercourse life.
Ms. Soussana stated she was held alone in a baby’s bed room, chained by her left ankle. Generally, the guard would enter, sit beside her on the mattress, elevate her shirt and contact her, she stated.
He additionally repeatedly requested when her interval was due. When her interval ended, round Oct. 18, she tried to place him off by pretending that she was bleeding for practically per week, she recalled.
Round Oct. 24, the guard, who known as himself Muhammad, attacked her, she stated.
Early that morning, she stated, Muhammad unlocked her chain and left her within the rest room. After she undressed and commenced washing herself within the bathtub, Muhammad returned and stood within the doorway, holding a pistol.
“He came towards me and shoved the gun at my forehead,” Ms. Soussana recalled throughout eight hours of interviews with The New York Occasions in mid-March. After hitting Ms. Soussana and forcing her to take away her towel, Muhammad groped her, sat her on the sting of the bath and hit her once more, she stated.
He dragged her at gunpoint again to the kid’s bed room, a room coated in photos of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, she recalled.
“Then he, with the gun pointed at me, forced me to commit a sexual act on him,” Ms. Soussana stated.
Ms. Soussana, 40, is the primary Israeli to talk publicly about being sexually assaulted throughout captivity after the Hamas-led raid on southern Israel. In her interviews with The Occasions, performed largely in English, she supplied in depth particulars of sexual and different violence she suffered throughout a 55-day ordeal.
Ms. Soussana’s private account of her expertise in captivity is in step with what she instructed two medical doctors and a social employee lower than 24 hours after she was freed on Nov. 30. Their reviews about her account state the character of the sexual act; The Occasions agreed to not disclose the specifics.
Ms. Soussana described being detained in roughly half a dozen websites, together with personal properties, an workplace and a subterranean tunnel. Later in her detention, she stated, a gaggle of captors suspended her throughout the hole between two couches and beat her.
For months, Hamas and its supporters have denied that its members sexually abused folks in captivity or throughout the Oct. 7 terrorist assault. This month, a United Nations report stated that there was “clear and convincing information” that some hostages had suffered sexual violence and there have been “reasonable grounds” to imagine sexual violence occurred throughout the raid, whereas acknowledging the “challenges and limitations” of analyzing the problem.
After being launched together with 105 different hostages throughout a cease-fire in late November, Ms. Soussana spoke solely in imprecise phrases publicly about her therapy within the Gaza Strip, cautious of recounting such a traumatic expertise. When filmed by Hamas minutes earlier than being freed, she stated, she pretended to have been handled properly to keep away from jeopardizing her launch.
Ms. Soussana stated she had determined to talk out now to boost consciousness in regards to the plight of the hostages nonetheless in Gaza, whose quantity has been put at greater than 100, as negotiations for a cease-fire falter.
Hours after her launch, Ms. Soussana spoke with a senior Israeli gynecologist, Dr. Julia Barda, and a social employee, Valeria Tsekhovsky, in regards to the sexual assault, the 2 girls stated in separate interviews with The Occasions. A medical report filed collectively by them, and reviewed by The Occasions, briefly summarizes her account.
“Amit spoke immediately, fluently and in detail, not only about her sexual assault but also about the many other ordeals she experienced,” Dr. Barda stated.
The next day, on Dec. 1, Ms. Soussana shared her expertise with a physician from Israel’s Nationwide Middle of Forensic Drugs, based on the middle’s medical report, which was reviewed by The Occasions.
Siegal Sadetzki, a professor at Tel Aviv College medical faculty who helps and advising Ms. Soussana’s household as a volunteer, stated Ms. Soussana first instructed her in regards to the sexual assault inside days of her launch. Professor Sadetzki, a former prime Israeli well being official, stated Ms. Soussana’s accounts have remained constant.
Ms. Soussana additionally spoke to the U.N. workforce that printed the report on sexual violence, however The Occasions was unable to overview her testimony.
A spokesman for Hamas, Basem Naim, stated in a 1,300-word response to The Occasions that it was important for the group to analyze Ms. Soussana’s allegations, however that such an inquiry was unimaginable in “the current circumstances.”
Mr. Naim solid doubt on Ms. Soussana’s account, questioning why she had not spoken publicly in regards to the extent of her mistreatment. He stated the extent of element in her account makes “it difficult to believe the story, unless it was designed by some security officers.”
“For us, the human body, and especially that of the woman, is sacred,” he stated, including that Hamas’s non secular beliefs “forbade any mistreatment of any human being, regardless of his sex, religion or ethnicity.”
Mr. Naim criticized The Occasions for inadequate protection of Palestinian struggling, together with reviews of sexual assault by Israeli troopers on Palestinian girls, which have been the subject of investigations by U.N. officers, rights teams and others. He additionally stated “civilian hostages were not the target” of the raid and stated “we have from the first moment declared our readiness to release them.”
A Hamas planning doc present in one village shortly after the Oct. 7 raid, which was reviewed by The Times, stated: “Take soldiers and civilians as prisoners and hostages to negotiate with.” Video from Oct. 7 exhibits uniformed Hamas militants abducting civilians.
The Abduction
Ms. Soussana lived alone in a cramped single-story house on the western aspect of Kibbutz Kfar Azza. After listening to sirens warning of rocket assaults on Oct. 7, she stated, she sheltered in her bed room, which was additionally a bolstered secure room. From her bed room, Ms. Soussana listened because the attackers’ gunfire grew nearer.
The small kibbutz stands roughly 1.5 miles from Gaza, and it was one in all greater than 20 Israeli villages, cities and military bases overrun that day by hundreds who surged throughout the Gazan border shortly after daybreak. Some 1,200 folks had been killed that day and about 250 kidnapped, Israeli officers say, setting off a struggle in Gaza that native well being officers say has killed not less than 31,000 Palestinians.
Ms. Soussana was on the kibbutz nearly by likelihood. Sick with a fever, she had been recuperating the day gone by within the close by metropolis of Sderot, along with her mom, Mira, who pressed her to remain the evening. However Ms. Soussana drove house to Kfar Azza to feed her three cats, she stated.
The youngest of three sisters, Ms. Soussana had grown up in Sderot. She certified as a lawyer at an area school and labored for a regulation agency specializing in mental property. Her colleagues thought-about her a diligent, quiet and personal one that stored her distance, her supervisor, Oren Mendler, stated in an interview. In Kfar Azza, Ms. Soussana stated, she hardly ever concerned herself in village life and was not a part of the native WhatsApp teams, which left her unaware of the extent of the assault on the kibbutz.
At 9:46 a.m. that day, she heard gunmen exterior, prompting her to cover inside her bed room closet, based on messages on her household WhatsApp group reviewed by The Occasions. Twenty minutes later, her cellphone died.
Moments later, “I heard an explosion, a huge explosion,” she stated. “And the second after that, someone opened the closet door.”
Dragged from the closet, she stated, she noticed roughly 10 males rifling by way of her belongings, armed with assault rifles, a grenade launcher and a machete.
A part of the home was on hearth — a blaze that might break the constructing.
Over the following hour, the group dragged her by way of a close-by area towards Gaza. Safety footage from a photo voltaic farm close to the kibbutz, which was extensively circulated on the web, exhibits the group repeatedly tackling her to the bottom as they struggled to restrain her. At one level, a kidnapper picked her up and slung her throughout his again. The video exhibits her flailing so exhausting, her legs thrashing within the air, that the person tumbled to the bottom.
“I didn’t want to let them take me to Gaza like an object, without a fight,” stated Ms. Soussana. “I still kept believing that someone will come and rescue me.”
The Abuser
The abductors tried to restrain her by beating her and wrapping her in a white material, the video exhibits. Unable to subdue her, the attackers tried and failed to hold her by bicycle, she stated. Lastly, they sure her fingers and ft and dragged her throughout the bumpy farmland into Gaza, she stated.
She was badly wounded, bleeding closely, with a break up lip, she stated. The hospital report ready shortly after her launch stated that she returned to Israel with fractures in her proper eye socket, cheek, knee and nostril and extreme bruising on her knee and again. The report acknowledged that a number of accidents had been associated to her abduction on Oct. 7, together with punches to her proper eye.
After reaching the sting of Gaza, Ms. Soussana stated, she was shoved right into a ready automotive and pushed a number of hundred yards into the outskirts of Gaza Metropolis. She was untied, wearing a paramilitary uniform and transferred to a different automotive full of uniformed militants. A hood was positioned over her head, although she may nonetheless catch glimpses of her environment from underneath it, she stated. After a brief drive, she was hurried up a staircase and onto a rooftop, she stated.
After the hood was eliminated, Ms. Soussana stated, she discovered herself in a small construction constructed on the roof of what she would later understand was an upscale personal house. She remembered that militants had been busy taking extra weapons from a field. Then the gunmen hurried downstairs, and he or she was left alone, going through a wall, with a person who stated he was the proprietor of the home and known as himself Mahmoud, she recalled.
“After a couple of minutes, he said I can turn around,” Ms. Soussana stated. “And I was shocked,” she added. “I find myself sitting in a house in Gaza.”
She stated Mahmoud was quickly joined by a youthful man, Muhammad. She remembered Muhammad as a chubby, balding man of common top with a large nostril.
Later that day, they dressed her in a thick brown garment that coated her physique, she stated. They gave her three capsules, which they stated had been painkillers. It was the one time that she remembers receiving any sort of drugs in Gaza, not to mention medical therapy.
Fitted with a fan and a tv, the room appeared to have been ready for her arrival, she stated. There have been three mattresses, she stated, one for her and two for the guards.
Early in her captivity, her guards chained her ankle to the window body, she stated. Round Oct. 11, she stated, she was led by the chain to a bed room downstairs. She understood that it belonged to one in all Mahmoud’s sons, and that his household had been moved to a different place.
The chain was reattached to the door deal with, she stated, subsequent to a mirror. For the primary time since her seize, she may see what she regarded like.
“I saw the chains and I saw that my face was all swollen and blue,” she stated.
“And I just started to cry,” she stated. “This was one of the lowest moments of my life.”
The Jail
For the following two and a half weeks in October, Ms. Soussana stated, she was guarded solely by Muhammad.
She recalled that the room was nearly completely shrouded in darkness. The curtain was often drawn shut and there have been rolling energy outages for a lot of the day, she stated.
She stated Muhammad slept exterior the bed room, within the adjoining lounge, however steadily entered the bed room in his underwear, asking about her intercourse life and providing to therapeutic massage her physique.
When he took her to the lavatory, Ms. Soussana stated, he refused to let her shut the door. After giving her sanitary pads, Muhammad appeared significantly within the timing of her interval, she stated. She stated she had spoken in a mixture of primary English and Arabic; she had discovered a bit of Arabic at college and her mom’s household — Jews from Iraq — had generally spoken it throughout her childhood.
“Every day, he would ask: ‘Did you get your period? Did you get your period? When you get your period, when it will be over, you will wash, you will take a shower and you will wash your clothes,’” Ms. Soussana recalled.
When it arrived, Ms. Soussana stated, she was exhausted, afraid and undernourished; her interval lasted simply at some point. She managed to persuade him that her menstruation continued for practically per week, she stated.
She tried to humanize herself in his eyes by asking the which means of Arabic phrases she heard on tv. She additionally promised that her household would reward him financially if she was returned with out additional hurt to Israel, she stated.
Within the afternoons, two associates of Muhammad would be part of him on the condominium, bringing him a cooked meal, she stated. A few of this meals was given to her as her one meal of the day.
The Israeli strikes on the neighborhood turned extra frequent and scary, Ms. Soussana stated, noting that some shattered the home windows. Because the bombing intensified, she stated, she began feeling sorry for the civilians, questioning why Hamas had by no means constructed bomb shelters for its folks.
“I felt for them,” Ms. Soussana stated. “Just think about growing up like this — it’s scary.”
The Assault
Early on the morning of the assault, she stated, Muhammad insisted she take a bathe, however she refused, saying the water was chilly. Undeterred, he unchained Ms. Soussana and introduced her to the kitchen and confirmed her a pot of water boiling on the range, she stated.
Minutes later, he introduced her to the lavatory and gave her the heated water to pour over herself, she stated.
After washing for a couple of minutes, she heard his voice once more from the door, she stated.
“‘Quickly, Amit, quickly,’” she recalled him saying.
“I turned around and I saw him standing there,” she stated. “With the gun.”
She remembered reaching for a hand towel to cowl herself as he superior and hit her.
“He said, ‘Amit, Amit, take it off,’” she recalled. “Finally, I took it off.”
“He sat me on the edge of the bath. And I closed my legs. And I resisted. And he kept punching me and put his gun in my face,” Ms. Soussana stated. “Then he dragged me to the bedroom.”
At that time, Muhammad compelled her to commit a sexual act on him, Ms. Soussana stated. After the assault, Muhammad left the room to clean, leaving Ms. Soussana sitting bare in the dead of night, she stated.
When he returned, she recalled him exhibiting regret, saying, “I’m bad, I’m bad, please don’t tell Israel.”
That day, Muhammad repeatedly returned to supply her meals, Ms. Soussana stated. Sobbing on the mattress, she turned down the preliminary choices, she stated.
Realizing that Ms. Soussana craved daylight, she stated, he refused to open the curtains, leaving the room in darkness. Determined for daylight, she accepted the meals, believing that she had no different choice however to placate her abuser.
“You can’t stand looking at him — but you have to: He’s the one who’s protecting you, he’s your guard,” she stated. “You’re there with him and you know that every moment it can happen again. You’re completely dependent on him.”
The Israelis
Ms. Soussana stated her captors moved her away from the border after a serious, hourslong bombardment in a single day. Based mostly on the extent of the explosions and snippets she caught on tv, she later concluded it was across the begin of Israel’s floor invasion of Gaza on Friday, Oct. 27.
On the next day, she was hurried right into a small white automotive, she stated. The driving force headed southwest towards what she would later be instructed was the central metropolis of Nuseirat.
“Muhammad is sitting in the back seat next to me, and with the gun pointed at me,” she stated.
The automotive stopped exterior what regarded like a United Nations faculty and Ms. Soussana was ushered right into a busy avenue, she recalled.
She stated she was handed over to a person who known as himself Amir. He marched her up the steps of a close-by condominium block and into one other personal house, she stated.
For the primary time in weeks, she was freed from Muhammad — however terrified to be coming into one more unknown. “‘Oh my God,’” she remembered questioning. “‘What’s going to happen to me?’”
The person ushered her right into a bed room and shut the door behind her, she recalled. Inside, she discovered two younger girls enjoying playing cards, subsequent to an older man mendacity on a mattress and an older girl sitting in a chair, she stated. Ms. Soussana was sporting conventional garments from Gaza, she recalled.
“They looked at me and I looked at them, for like half a minute,” she stated. “Then I asked, ‘Are you Israelis?’”
“Are you Israeli?” Ms. Soussana remembered one of many girls replying.
The Tunnels
Three weeks after her kidnapping, Ms. Soussana had been united with 4 different hostages. Hugging them, Ms. Soussana broke down in tears, she stated.
The identities of the 4 others had been shared with The Occasions on the situation that their names wouldn’t be used to guard these nonetheless in captivity.
A number of days after her arrival, she was summoned to the condominium’s lounge, Ms. Soussana recalled. Amir usually performed right here along with his kids.
On that day, the guards wrapped her head in a pink shirt, compelled her to sit down on the ground, handcuffed her, and commenced beating her with the butt of a gun, she stated.
After a number of minutes, they used duct tape to cowl her mouth and nostril, tied her ft, and positioned {the handcuffs} on the bottom of her palms, she stated. Then she was suspended, hanging “like a chicken” from a stick stretching between two couches, inflicting her such ache that she felt that her fingers would quickly be dislocated.
They carried on beating and kicking her, specializing in the soles of her ft, whereas concurrently demanding info they believed she was hiding from them, Ms. Soussana stated.
She nonetheless doesn’t perceive what precisely they wished or why they thought she was concealing one thing, she stated. At one level, the top guard introduced over a spike, and made as if to poke her eye with it, pulling away simply in time, she stated.
“It was like that for 45 minutes or so,” she stated. “They were hitting me and laughing and kicking me, and called the other hostages to see me,” she stated.
Ms. Soussana recalled that the abductors untied her and returned her to the bed room, telling her she had 40 minutes to provide the knowledge they wished or else they’d kill her. She stated one of many younger girls was so frightened that she requested Ms. Soussana if she had any final messages for her household.
In mid-November, the hostages had been separated: The 2 youngest girls had been taken to an unknown location, she stated, whereas Ms. Soussana and the older couple had been pushed to a home surrounded by farmland.
They discovered the home stuffed with gunmen, who ordered them to sit down on the ground. Instantly, the older girl started to scream, Ms. Soussana stated.
The girl was trying right into a shaft that descended into the bottom, Ms. Soussana stated. “I hear one of the drivers telling her: ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. It’s a city down there.’”
“Then I realized,” Ms. Soussana stated. “We’re going into the tunnels.”
The Launch
A ladder, a number of stairs and a sequence of slim sloping passageways led the three hostages deep underground, she stated.
By the point they reached the underside, the guards stated they had been 40 meters deep, one thing they hoped would reassure the hostages, she stated: The Israeli bombs couldn’t attain them there.
Ms. Soussana stated a giant gunman in a masks was ready for them on the backside. Initially, he began shouting at them, telling them that Israel had killed his household, she stated, however then shortly stopped, eliminated his masks and took a unique tone.
She stated the person launched himself in English as Jihad and instructed them his father had labored in Israel and had even had his Israeli boss to dinner, within the years when Israeli civilians may nonetheless enter Gaza. He spoke in Hebrew at instances. Jihad stated he had discovered some from watching Israeli tv and sang them a well-known tune that he had heard on a kids’s present, Ms. Soussana remembered.
“I was shocked,” Ms. Soussana stated. “Suddenly, he was the most humane guy we met there.”
The bottom shook each time a missile struck close by, making her worry they is perhaps buried alive, she stated. The tunnels had been darkish, damp and too slim for 2 folks to move one another. And their subterranean cell was so wanting air that they had been left dizzy and panting after taking a number of steps, she stated.
Israeli troops would later seize and {photograph} the tunnel. Ms. Soussana recognized materials and mattresses within the footage.
Their captors spent little greater than an hour a day within the tunnel, ascending to greater ranges in a single day for contemporary air, Ms. Soussana stated. The hostages pleaded with the guards to deliver them, too.
After a number of days, the abductors gave in, introduced them again to the floor and drove them to a different personal home, Ms. Soussana stated.
They had been nonetheless there when Israel and Hamas agreed to a hostage deal and a short lived truce, which went into pressure on Friday, Nov. 24. The next day, the three hostages had been pushed to an workplace in Gaza Metropolis — Ms. Soussana’s last detention website.
Daily introduced hope and disappointment. It was by no means clear which hostages could be freed, or when.
On Thursday, Nov. 30, which turned out to be the final full day of the truce, the guards had been making lunch when one in all them completed a cellphone name and turned to Amit.
“He says: ‘Amit. Israel. You. One hour,’” Ms. Soussana recalled.
Inside an hour, Ms. Soussana stated, she was separated from the older hostage and pushed by way of Gaza Metropolis. The automotive stopped, and a girl in a hijab climbed inside. It was one other Israeli hostage: Mia Schem, who was additionally being launched.
They had been taken to a junkyard, Ms. Soussana recalled. Round them, she stated, their guards modified from civilian garments into uniforms.
Lastly, the 2 girls had been pushed to Palestine Sq., a serious plaza on the coronary heart of Gaza Metropolis, the place a raucous crowd waited to see them handed over to the Crimson Cross. Social media video confirmed that Hamas struggled to regulate the onlookers, who surrounded the automotive, pressed up towards its home windows and at one level started to rock the car, Ms. Soussana stated.
After a tense couple of minutes, the Crimson Cross officers managed to switch the ladies to their jeep.
As they approached the Israeli border, a feminine Crimson Cross official handed Ms. Soussana a cellphone. An individual who stated he was a soldier greeted her in Hebrew.
“He said, ‘A couple more minutes and we’re going to meet you,’” Ms. Soussana stated. “I remember, I started to cry.”
Aaron Boxerman and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.
