Hamas Brought Phrase Lists for the Rape

Hamas planned rape as a weapon and carried the script in printed lists. The lists said take off your pants. The lists said spread your legs. The lists were issued before the gates were breached. The lists were folded in the pockets of Hamas men who used them.

This is what was decided in advance. This is what was rehearsed. This is what was carried across the wire at dawn on the seventh of October.

The Civil Commission on October 7th has compiled the record. Ten thousand photographs. Four hundred and thirty testimonies. The “Silenced No More” report, released in May 2026. Forensic pathologists. The phrase lists themselves, retrieved from the bodies of dead Hamas invaders, Arabic in one column and Hebrew in the other, with spread your legs in the third row. Three hundred ninety-six dead at the Nova Music Festival. Kibbutzim emptied. Military bases overrun. The phrase lists were not interpretive material. The phrase lists were operational orders Hamas issued before the operation began.

Raz Cohen escaped Nova alive. He saw. He says: I saw them raping her. Then they murdered her. And then they raped her again. That is one sentence. Read it twice. The men he saw were Hamas operatives.

Eden Wessely went to Nova to pull a friend out. She found a body and filmed it. Her dress was pulled up, and she wasn’t wearing underwear, not because it burned, because there was no trace. The forensic pathologists confirmed what Eden filmed. The men who left the body were Hamas.

Yoni Saadon survived by pulling a shot woman’s body over his own and smearing her blood across his face so the next pass of Hamas fighters would not see he was alive. He wakes up to her face every night. Then he tells you what he saw next: a woman beaten and raped by eight or ten Hamas men at the same time. The last one shot her in the head.

Ilana Gritzewsky was taken into Gaza by Hamas captors. A Hamas man slid his hand down her leg until she fainted. She woke surrounded by Hamas men with her clothes pulled apart. After her release, doctors discovered her pelvis had been broken. Romi Gonen reports sixteen days of assault in Hamas captivity. Arbel Yehud reports four hundred and eighty-two days in Hamas captivity. Two children, minor family members, were forced by their Hamas captors to perform sexual acts on each other.

These are not allegations. The named survivors testified. Forensic pathologists confirmed the physical evidence. The phrase lists were retrieved from the bodies of the operatives Israeli forces killed and from the operatives Israeli forces captured.

The prophets called this whoredom. Ezekiel named the rulers who did it. The Hamas leaders who signed off on the phrase lists are in Doha. They eat breakfast in hotel suites paid for in Qatari riyals. One of them reaches across a white cloth for the salt. The hand that reaches for the salt is the hand that signed off on the phrase list. It will not be washed. Yahya Sinwar is dead. Ismail Haniyeh is dead. Khaled Mashal is alive. Khalil al-Hayya is alive. The Hamas infrastructure that produced the operatives is alive. The Hamas leaders who watched the videos of their operatives’ work from the tunnels beneath Gaza City and clapped are alive. The naming is not historical decoration. The naming is what Ezekiel did, because the conduct is what Ezekiel named.

The witness records. The witness will not forget.

The witness has two open eyes. The witness names what is on the second ledger.

The UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has documented, in its 2024 and 2025 reports, patterns of sexual violence by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian women held in Israeli military detention. Strip searches conducted by IDF personnel in front of male soldiers. Rape threats used as IDF interrogation pressure. Documented assaults on Palestinian women detainees at Sde Teiman, Anatot, and Ofer. These findings are not from the antisemitic global left the WSJ Editorial Board is right to name; these findings are documentary records produced by UN investigators using the same methodology the same publications cite without qualification in other conflicts.

Hind Rajab was six years old. She was Palestinian. She hid in a car in Gaza City with her dead family around her while she called the Palestine Red Crescent on a phone. The dispatcher recorded the call. The recording exists. A six-year-old girl whispering I’m so scared, please come. An Israeli tank shell ended the recording. The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance crew that went to retrieve her was killed in the same Israeli strike. The car was found later with three hundred and thirty-five Israeli bullet holes in it and a six-year-old Palestinian girl inside. Her name was Hind. Read her name twice. Hind Rajab.

The pregnant women of Gaza have given birth without anesthesia under Israeli bombardment. Physicians for Human Rights documents Israeli strikes on the obstetric wards at Al-Shifa, Al-Ahli, and Nasser. Pregnant Palestinian women who tried to reach a hospital have died at Israeli checkpoints. Pregnant Palestinian women whose babies died because Israeli strikes cut power to the incubators have buried the babies in shrouds. The shrouds are very small.

None of this relativizes the phrase lists. Nothing relativizes the phrase lists. Hamas planned sexual atrocity as a weapon of war and the operational evidence is final. And the witness has two open eyes. The witness sees the women in the UN file at Sde Teiman. The witness sees Hind Rajab in the car with three hundred and thirty-five Israeli bullet holes in it. The witness sees the pregnant Palestinian woman bleeding on the floor of Al-Shifa after the Israeli strike took the power. The witness does not close one eye to see with the other.

Hamas leaders in Doha. Hamas operatives who survive them. The Israeli officers who authorized the tank shell that ended Hind Rajab’s call. The Israeli soldiers in Sde Teiman whose conduct the UN file documents. The Israeli politicians who authorized the obstetric collapse. The witness names them all. The witness records that none of their hands will be washed.

Joan Chittister wrote that a world that does not nurture its weakest does not know God the birthing mother. The phrase lists Hamas distributed are that refusal. The strip-search in the Israeli detention cell is that refusal. The small clean shroud over the small Palestinian body is that refusal.

Mary Oliver wrote: I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world. The witness has told. The named survivors testified. Hind Rajab existed. The witness asks only that your heart not close.

— Mary Magdalena