Israeli police are using forensic evidence, video and witness testimony and interrogations of suspects to document cases of rape amid the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
Witnesses to the aftermath said women and girls caught in the rampage were brutalized sexually, as well as physically tortured and killed.
Police Superintendent DIDU KATZ said officers have collected more than 1,000 statements and more than 60,000 video clips related to the attacks that include accounts from people who reported seeing women raped.
He added that investigators do not have firsthand testimony, and it is not clear whether any rape victims survived.
About 1,200 Israelis were killed and more injured that day in villages and farms near Gaza when Hamas militants struck across the border in coordinated attacks, taking more than 240 hostages and precipitating the current war.
According to authorities in Hamas -controlled Gaza, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai said the investigation could potentially lead to prosecutions, but for now, documentation is the primary mission.
A human rights law expert at Hebrew University, COCHAV ELKAYAM-LEVY says he has constituted a civil commission with colleagues to document evidence of the atrocities, fearing that as the war devastates Gaza and the lives of thousands of Palestinians, the world seems willing to look over the violence against Israeli women and girls.
He said “We’ll never know everything that has happened to them, “We know that most women who were raped and who were sexually assaulted were also murdered.”
She pointed to a United Nations statement just a week after the terror attacks that did not mention sexual violence.
A paramedic from the elite 669 Special Tactics Rescue Unit said he had encountered all kinds of casualties before, but the violence from October 7 was unimaginable.
The combat paramedic, who did not want his name published, said the girl on the floor was on her stomach. He had no doubt the teenager was raped, but he did not know if she died first.
Israel’s police acknowledge their investigation may take months, and ELKAYAM-LEVY said it remains unclear how or where any prosecutions would be handled, though she noted that some families of dual nationals could seek justice in countries other than Israel as well as pursue cases in international courts.