TVA Nouvelles Says Hamas Tortured and Raped Israeli Women During October 7 Attack

A dispute over sexual-violence narratives from October 7 is at the center of competing accounts, with Middle East Eye arguing that Al Jazeera’s documentary shows “many of the macabre narratives emanating from Israeli sources are fallacious.”

“War in Gaza: Al Jazeera reveals the October 7 narrative that the major media have neglected to report”

Middle East Eye

Middle East Eye says a ZAKA member, Yossi Landau, told reporters that Hamas burned “two piles of ten children each alive in a Be'eri kibbutz house,” and it adds that the media seized on this narrative and that Benjamin Netanyahu repeated a version of it during an interview with U.S. President Joe Biden.

Middle East Eye

The same Middle East Eye account says an examination of the list of the dead found that “there were no other children on the premises,” and it claims that “None were burned or decapitated.”

In contrast, TVA Nouvelles frames the October 7 attack as involving sexual violence and torture inflicted on Israeli women by Hamas terrorists, citing images provided to The New York Times by Israeli authorities and describing a corpse identified as Gal Abdush.

TVA Nouvelles also includes a witness account from someone identified only as Sapir, who said, "One continues to rape her, and the other tosses her breast to someone else".

While Middle East Eye argues that major media narratives were false, it also cites British lawyer Madeleine Rees of the International League of Women for Peace and Freedom, saying, “nothing seen so far suggests that the rapes were widespread and systematic.”

Middle East Eye further quotes then-Foreign Minister Eli Cohen to the United Nations, saying, “I hear calls for a ceasefire,” and it presents Marco Rubio’s view that “I do not think we can expect Israel to coexist or to find a diplomatic way out with these savages.”

The Grayzone

TVA Nouvelles, however, describes new testimonies and says images show a woman with “dozens of nails driven into her thighs and genitals,” and it identifies another image nicknamed “the woman in the black dress.”

In a different direction, إ يلاف reports “Daily Mail” claims that women under Hamas rule are forced to have sex in exchange for aid, and it says human rights organizations in Gaza told the outlet that “as many as 60,000 women are at risk.”

إ يلاف also includes a direct statement from a pseudonymous journalist for Jisoor News, Abdullah, saying, “unfortunately, there are many cases, and they are very widespread.”

The Grayzone frames the controversy as a “Daily Mail lies” dispute, saying the tabloid published a fake news story claiming an Israeli woman, May Hayat, avoided rape because “a scar like [hers] means a strong woman.”

The Grayzone quotes Hayat’s account that “if something happened to her because of them, the 72 virgins they are promised will not come looking for them in heaven,” and it says the Daily Mail “fully endorses Hayat’s extraordinarily suspicious claim.”

Middle East Eye, meanwhile, links the narrative fight to the broader war, asserting that these narratives “opened the way to the murderous savagery of the Israeli assault on Gaza that followed” and referencing the International Court of Justice’s description of a plausible genocide.

إ يلاف adds a separate set of consequences by citing a UNFPA report that found “at least 400 girls aged 14 to 16 married in just four months in 2025,” and it says the Associated Press documented incidents in 2025 involving a 38-year-old woman.

Across the accounts, the central thread is that sexual-violence claims and counterclaims are used to argue about responsibility and policy, with Middle East Eye describing how Israeli narratives were disseminated and with The Grayzone describing the Daily Mail story as propaganda.