The reality is they did not target civilians, they only targetted soldiers and policemen, and they did not rape anyone on the 7th of October. The first point is corroborated by the testimonies of the Israelis in kibbutz be’eri who said the fighters did not harm them but asked them to call the police. In addition to the testimonies that the IDF shelled homes with their inhabitants and fighters inside, fired from helicopters onto the music festival, and shot their own citizens while trying to target qassam fighters, and the casualty figures reported by Israel itself, where 200, half of the burned unidentified bodies turned out to be Palestinians, its evident that Israel caused the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths on 7/10.
The rape and sexual assault allegations are completely uncorroborated to this day, not even one testimony or piece of evidence supports them.
This is not to imply that Palestinian resistance would be wrong to target Israeli “civilian” settlers, they would not. Settlers are active participants and beneficiaries of violence, murder, oppression, and ethnic cleansing. The social order where their comfortable lives depend on Palestinian death and subjugation must be upended. For the oppressed to inflict violence on their colonizers is for them to assert their humanity.