Moran Gaz, the former head of the security cases division at the Southern District Prosecutor’s Office in Israel and a member of 'Team 7.10,' which is responsible for cases involving captured Palestinians in connection with the October 7 attacks recently admitted that her department has found no evidence to substantiate the claims of "mass" and "systematic" rape by Hamas.
In an interview with Israeli media outlet Ynet, Moran said that the prosecutors are not filing a case on sexual assault or rape by Hamas militants as her department has failed to find any evidence despite having over fourteen months to investigate the claims.
"In the end, we don’t have any complainants. What was presented in the media compared to what will eventually come together will be entirely different…" Moran said.
"We approached women’s rights organisations and asked for cooperation. They told us that no one had approached them," she added.
Moran claimed that the failure to gather evidence could be because the victims are dead or unwilling to approach women's rights organisations.
However, though not proven, the claims were pushed by the Western media and several politicians during the initial days of Israel's "genocidal" war on Gaza, to allegedly downplay its war crimes and justify the relentless attacks on civilian structures and hospitals in Gaza.
The media has also used a UN report to substantiate the claims of mass rape being committed by Hamas despite the report actually concluding that the UN team was "not able to verify" any of the cases.
"There were two allegations we looked into that were unfounded and they are very well described in the report, they were highly publicised in the press. The rest we could not verify... So in short, we could not verify any sexual violence" cases, UN representative Chloe Marnay-Baszanger told the press after the report was published.
The UN report also noted that in the absence of forensic evidence and survivor testimonies it would be impossible to determine the scope of such violence.