Israeli report accuses Hamas of using sexual violence as a weapon of war on Oct. 7

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — An Israeli report released Tuesday said that Hamas used sexual violence as a “tactical weapon of war” in its Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, building on other investigations by international and Israeli rights groups and the United Nations.

The report by the Dinah Project, a team of legal and gender experts, based its findings on survivor and witness testimonies, accounts from first responders, and forensic, visual and audio evidence. It called for a shift in how conflict-related sexual violence is prosecuted, saying Hamas silenced its victims by killing them, robbing investigators of key evidence.

“Most victims were permanently silenced — either murdered during or after the assaults or remain too traumatized to talk — creating unique evidentiary challenges,” the report said, calling for a more tailored legal approach.

The report comes as Israel and Hamas are negotiating a ceasefire for the 21-month war in Gaza, which began with the militants’ surprise cross-border raid. The deal would pause the fighting in the Palestinian territory and release some of the remaining 50 hostages, more than half whom are said to be dead.

The report said it relied on dozens of accounts, including from one survivor of attempted rape at a music festival, 15 returned hostages, 17 witnesses and multiple first responders.

In some cases, the Dinah Project carried out its own interviews, while in others it relied on publicly available testimony or published accounts.

Citing accounts in Israeli and international media, it said 15 former hostages either experienced or witnessed some form of sexual assault which included physical sexual violence, forced nudity, verbal sexual harassment and threats of forced marriage. Two male hostages said they faced forced nudity and physical abuse when naked.

The report said witness accounts indicated at least 15 separate cases of sexual assault, including at least four instances of gang rape.

The report said its findings showed patterns in the assaults, including victims found partially or fully naked with their hands tied, evidence of gang rape followed by killing, genital mutilation and public humiliation, indicating they were intentionally used as a weapon of war.

A Hamas official did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hamas has previously denied claims that its forces carried out sexual violence on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage.

In a report last year, the United Nations said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape, “sexualized torture,” and other cruel and inhumane treatment of women during its attack.

In issuing arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders who were eventually killed by Israel, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said they bore responsibility for “rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity” during the Oct. 7 attack.

The report included testimony from more than a dozen returned hostages.

“In captivity, I went through hell: Hunger, thirst, loneliness,” said Ilana Gritzewsky, who was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz and held hostage for 55 days, at an event in Jerusalem marking the publication of the report. “Physical and psychological torture. My body ached. My bones were broken. But the humiliation, the fear, the feeling of being someone else’s property — that is the pain that never leaves.”

Gritzewsky said after passing out during her kidnapping, she awoke in Gaza, half undressed, surrounded by militants who pointed their weapons at her while groping her. “Today — almost two years later — people still ask if it really happened. If they really raped, burned, murdered, kidnapped. If they really hurt women. If men were really harmed too. So I tell you — yes. It happened. And it’s still happening.”

Gritzewsky has been an outspoken campaigner for her boyfriend, Matan Zangauker, who was also kidnapped and has been held hostage in Gaza for 21 months.

The report recommended that conflict-related sexual violence should be treated differently from regular sexual crimes to allow for evidence that doesn’t primarily rely on testimony from victims, to account for “the systematic silencing of victims.”

It called for different forms of evidence to be admitted in any prosecution and for joint criminal responsibility to be applied to all participants in the attack, rather than trying to link individual perpetrators to specific acts and victims.

This approach would create “a pathway to justice for victims of the Oct. 7 attack and potentially for victims in other conflict zones," the report said.

“We must learn from past experience and the understanding that we, as Israeli women, must shout our voices for those who can no longer shout, and we must bring them justice," said Michal Herzog, the first Lady of Israel.

Associated Press writer Fatma Khaled in Cairo and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed to this report.

FILE -Hamas militants transport Adina Moshe, 72, inside the Gaza Strip after kidnapping her from her home in Nir Oz, a kibbutz in Israel near the Gaza border, on Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo), File)

Israel's first lady Michal Herzog, center, is presented with a report by the Dinah Project on sexual violence committed on Oct. 7, 2023 by Hamas, in Jerusalem, Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

A woman reacts to testimony by freed hostage Ilana Gritzewsky at a ceremony presenting a report by the Dinah Project on sexual violence committed on Oct. 7, 2023 by Hamas, to Israel's first lady Michal Herzog, in Jerusalem, Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Freed hostage Ilana Gritzewsky is embraced after her testimony at a ceremony presenting a report by the Dinah Project on sexual violence committed on Oct. 7, 2023 by Hamas, in Jerusalem, Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

A copy of the report by the Dinah Project on sexual violence committed on Oct. 7, 2023 by Hamas is displayed by a journalist before a ceremony presenting the report to Israel's first lady Michal Herzog in Jerusalem, Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after the audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela, President Donald Trump on Sunday renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.”

The comments from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the ouster of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro underscore that the U.S. administration is serious about taking a more expansive role in the Western Hemisphere.

With thinly veiled threats, Trump is rattling hemispheric friends and foes alike, spurring a pointed question around the globe: Who's next?

“It’s so strategic right now. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place," Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington from his home in Florida. "We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”

Asked during an interview with The Atlantic earlier on Sunday what the U.S.-military action in Venezuela could portend for Greenland, Trump replied: “They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know.”

Trump, in his administration's National Security Strategy published last month, laid out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a central guidepost for his second go-around in the White House.

Trump has also pointed to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which rejects European colonialism, as well as the Roosevelt Corollary — a justification invoked by the U.S. in supporting Panama’s secession from Colombia, which helped secure the Panama Canal Zone for the U.S. — as he's made his case for an assertive approach to American neighbors and beyond.

Trump has even quipped that some now refer to the fifth U.S. president's foundational document as the “Don-roe Doctrine.”

Saturday's dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas and Trump’s comments on Sunday heightened concerns in Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a statement that Trump has "no right to annex" the territory. She also reminded Trump that Denmark already provides the United States, a fellow member of NATO, broad access to Greenland through existing security agreements.

“I would therefore strongly urge the U.S. to stop threatening a historically close ally and another country and people who have made it very clear that they are not for sale,” Frederiksen said.

Denmark on Sunday also signed onto a European Union statement underscoring that “the right of the Venezuelan people to determine their future must be respected” as Trump has vowed to “run” Venezuela and pressed the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, to get in line.

Trump on Sunday mocked Denmark’s efforts at boosting Greenland’s national security posture, saying the Danes have added “one more dog sled” to the Arctic territory’s arsenal.

Greenlanders and Danes were further rankled by a social media post following the raid by a former Trump administration official turned podcaster, Katie Miller. The post shows an illustrated map of Greenland in the colors of the Stars and Stripes accompanied by the caption: “SOON."

“And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Amb. Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark's chief envoy to Washington, said in a post responding to Miller, who is married to Trump's influential deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

During his presidential transition and in the early months of his return to the White House, Trump repeatedly called for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has pointedly not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island that belongs to an ally.

The issue had largely drifted out of the headlines in recent months. Then Trump put the spotlight back on Greenland less than two weeks ago when he said he would appoint Republican Gov. Jeff Landry as his special envoy to Greenland.

The Louisiana governor said in his volunteer position he would help Trump “make Greenland a part of the U.S.”

Meanwhile, concern simmered in Cuba, one of Venezuela’s most important allies and trading partners, as Rubio issued a new stern warning to the Cuban government. U.S.-Cuba relations have been hostile since the 1959 Cuban revolution.

Rubio, in an appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press,” said Cuban officials were with Maduro in Venezuela ahead of his capture.

“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” Rubio said. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.” The secretary of state added that Cuban bodyguards were also in charge of “internal intelligence” in Maduro’s government, including “who spies on who inside, to make sure there are no traitors.”

Trump said that “a lot” of Cuban guards tasked with protecting Maduro were killed in the operation. The Cuban government said in a statement read on state television on Sunday evening that 32 officers were killed in the U.S. military operation.

Trump also said that the Cuban economy, battered by years of a U.S. embargo, is in tatters and will slide further now with the ouster of Maduro, who provided the Caribbean island subsidized oil.

“It's going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It's going down for the count.”

Cuban authorities called a rally in support of Venezuela’s government and railed against the U.S. military operation, writing in a statement: “All the nations of the region must remain alert, because the threat hangs over all of us.”

Rubio, a former Florida senator and son of Cuban immigrants, has long maintained Cuba is a dictatorship repressing its people.

“This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live — and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States," Rubio said.

Cubans like 55-year-old biochemical laboratory worker Bárbara Rodríguez were following developments in Venezuela. She said she worried about what she described as an “aggression against a sovereign state.”

“It can happen in any country, it can happen right here. We have always been in the crosshairs,” Rodríguez said.

AP writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana, Cuba, and Darlene Superville traveling aboard Air Force One contributed reporting.

In this photo released by the White House, President Donald Trump monitors U.S. military operations in Venezuela, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (Molly Riley/The White House via AP)