Former Israeli hostage Dafna Elyakim shares her trauma from sexual abuse in Hamas captivity

Former Israeli hostage Dafna Elyakim revealed during an interview on Tuesday that she was sexually abused by a Hamas terrorist during her captivity in Gaza.

"One of the terrorists would touch me all the time," Elyakim said at the TEEN SPIRIT program, the Israeli news outlet N12 reported. "He said they would release everyone and I would stay with him so he could marry me. He insisted on accompanying me to the shower, but I wouldn't let him," she continued. 

Elyakim, who was 15 years old at the time of her captivity, was released during the first hostage deal in November 2023. 

During a previous interview in February, Elyakim said that she and her younger sister Ella were kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a rural community in southern Israel next to the Gaza border. She shared the traumatic experience when Hamas terrorists invaded her community on Oct. 7, 2023. 

"After half an hour or an hour, they entered our kibbutz, and my dad entered my room with Dikla and Tomer [his partner and her son]." Hamas terrorists forcibly entered their home and murdered her father, Noam. His body was discovered later. 

Elyakim revealed that Hamas terrorists threatened to kill her and Ella unless they did what they were told. 

"Do everything we say, or we will kill you," the terrorists warned them. 

There is ample evidence that Hamas terrorists committed systematic sexual violence against Israeli women both during and after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. However, much of the international community has largely ignored Hamas’ crimes against humanity and especially against Israeli women. 

In December 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted international human rights organizations for ignoring Israeli female victims of Hamas atrocities. 

“I didn’t hear the human rights organizations, or the women’s organizations, or the women’s organizations of the UN… and I ask them: Where are you? Were you quiet because we were talking about Jewish women? I want to say this in a language that everybody understands,” Netanyahu said. “I expect all civilized leaders, governments, nations to speak up against this atrocity."

In March 2024, Israeli President Isaac Herzog urged the United Nations to formally recognize Hamas' crimes against Israeli women. 

“The report issued by UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, and her team is of immense importance. It substantiates with moral clarity and integrity the systematic, premeditated, and ongoing sexual crimes committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli women,” Herzog stated. 

However, the UN eventually excluded Hamas from its sexual violence blacklist despite considerable incriminating evidence of sexual violence and rapes against Israeli civilians. 

Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Israel Katz condemned UN Secretary-General António Guterres, saying he was “disgusted” by the report’s failure to acknowledge Hamas’ systematic crimes.

“Guterres has turned the UN into an extremely antisemitic and anti-Israel institution during his tenure, which will be remembered as the darkest in the organization's history,” Katz stated. “If the crimes of the Nazis had come up for debate, he [Guterres] would have refused to denounce them if it suited his political interests."