Report is 'act of documentation, accountability, remembrance'

Sexual violence was ‘systematic, integral’ to Hamas-led October 7 terror assault, study finds

Rape, sexual torture, mutilation and postmortem sexual abuse found to have been used to ‘terrorize’ Israeli society, with images of the atrocities ‘weaponized’ through social media

An investigation has found that sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated during the October 7, 2023, massacre and atrocities by Hamas and other terror groups in Israel was systematic, widespread, and a key, calculated component of the brutal terror assault.

The investigation, conducted by the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, determined in a report that the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists was deliberately designed not just to brutalize the victims but also to terrorize Israeli society as a whole, using the savagery to torment the entire nation.

“What we have witnessed is deep hatred to humiliate us and terrorize us as a people, as a nation, as women, as vulnerable people who found themselves in captivity and in a prolonged hell,” Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, an international law expert and founding chair of the Civil Commission, told The Times of Israel.

The 300-page study produced by the Civil Commission, an Israeli NGO established to document the October 7 atrocities, detailed 13 types of sexual violence during the attack and against hostages, including rape, gang rape, sexual torture and mutilation, executions linked to sexual violence, postmortem sexual abuse, and sexual assaults carried out in the presence of family members, among other acts.

It is based on 430 formal and informal interviews, testimonies, and meetings with survivors, witnesses, former hostages, experts, and family members.

“The scale, coordination, and repetition of the conduct demonstrate a widespread and systematic attack against civilians in which sexual violence was deliberately used as a method of terror,” the investigation found.

The study, entitled “Silenced No More,” also documented the deliberate manner in which Hamas and other terrorists recorded and disseminated videos and pictures of their violence on social media, including sending images and footage directly to the families of their victims and sharing them online, “with the intent to intimidate, humiliate, and terrorize.”

The acts committed, the Civil Commission concluded, constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocidal acts under international law, and the authors recommended that Israeli authorities prosecute the perpetrators specifically for such acts of sexual and gender-based violence.

The organization said its investigation was “an act of documentation, accountability, and remembrance,” and asserted that its work preserving testimonies, documenting evidence, and analyzing the patterns and legal implications of the crimes was designed “to ensure that the suffering endured by the victims will not be denied, erased, or forgotten.”

The Civil Commission was founded to document the sexual violence committed by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7 and against hostages. Elkayam-Levy headed the study, which was researched and written together with a team of lawyers and other contributors.

Former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler served as a principal contributor, and the report was endorsed by former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide Alice Wairimu Nderitu, former chief prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone Prof. David Crane, and former Israeli Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, among numerous other prominent international law experts.

For its study, the Civil Commission said it reviewed more than 10,000 photographs and video segments; collected, transcribed, translated, and cross-referenced survivor and witness accounts; conducted visits to the sites of the October 7 atrocities; and met with families and affected communities.

In total, the commission relied on over 430 formal and informal interviews, testimonies, and meetings with survivors, witnesses, returned hostages, experts, and family members in compiling its report.

On October 7, 2023, some 5,600 Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists stormed across the Gaza-Israel border and perpetrated massacres at numerous sites in the border region, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages to Gaza.

During the massacres, the terrorists also perpetrated numerous atrocities, including mutilation, torture, and sexual violence.

Israeli security forces captured around 300 of the perpetrators inside Israel on October 7 during in the week after the invasion. On Monday, the Knesset passed a law that will establish a special tribunal to try the October 7 terrorists for the crimes committed during the brutal assault, specifically including “sexual crimes,” among the other alleged war crimes committed on that day.

Atrocity denial and the origin of the Civil Commission report

Elkayam-Levy, a legal scholar and Israel Prize laureate, said that, in the wake of the October 7 atrocities, she found herself responding to the denial of the crimes in different forums, including at the United Nations.

“Unfortunately, we saw silence and denial — and very quick denial — which made me understand that we have to collect evidence as quickly as possible, and establish an archive under stringent international standards,” she said.

“For two years, we have listened to survivors and witnesses, painstakingly examined the evidence, and confronted material that is often beyond comprehension,” Elkayam-Levy noted in the report.

“We have worked to preserve this evidence within a dedicated war crimes archive to ensure their voices are heard and that the world knows what happened. The report reveals that sexual violence was a deliberate strategy, carried out with exceptional cruelty.”

‘Screams you have never heard anywhere’

The commission’s report includes testimony from eyewitnesses, former hostages, and survivors of October 7, in order to demonstrate the prevalence and systematic nature of the sexual violence perpetrated on that day.

“I heard one rape where they were passing her around. She was probably injured, judging by her screams — screams you have never heard anywhere. It’s between silence and screams, between pain and wanting to die,” eyewitness Darin Komarov told the Civil Commission of crimes at the Nova music festival.

“And after one finished, he told another to go up: ‘Ta’al’ [in Arabic], like to the next one. And apparently there was a round… And after they finished, they shot her,” she said.

Along with numerous firsthand witness accounts of rape on October 7, the study also cites numerous witnesses who reported having seen murdered victims in poses and conditions testifying to the fact that sexual violence had been perpetrated against them.

Those included numerous victims found naked or without underwear, mutilated bodies, including mutilations and gunshot wounds to the genitals of male and female victims, and murdered women with their legs in an open position.

Nachman Shai Reviv, a first responder, described seeing five women who had been shot in the groin at or near the Nova site, and the bodies of two additional women found with their legs spread and the upper part of their pants torn.

Sexual violence was also perpetrated against men on October 7, with one victim whose name was given as D telling the Civil Commission that he was subjected to a violent gang rape and torture at the Nova festival.

“We went through abuse of every kind. They spat in our faces, humiliated us, said things about Jews… the more I resisted, the harder they beat me. They injured my genitalia . . .. I was beaten with a belt, they also laughed at me,” testified D.

“There were several of them, and they genuinely enjoyed it. They laughed, they were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll. It felt like all boundaries were broken. . . . There were no boundaries. I was completely naked. They did whatever they wanted to me. You feel dirty all the time. Today, I shower a thousand times a day, and I still feel disgust and filth. I never returned to myself physically. . .”

Sexual violence against hostages

Numerous hostages, female and male, taken to Gaza also reported being sexually assaulted by their captors, including family members who testified that they were forced to perform “sexual acts on one another.”

Female hostages reported being assaulted during and after showering and being forced to commit sexual acts on their captors.

The Civil Commission also said that, in at least one case, family members held hostage in Gaza were coerced into acts of sexual abuse against one another, which it characterized as “kinocidal sexual violence.”

The report also detailed how the terrorist perpetrators “weaponized” the online distribution of their crimes as part of the violence itself, including sexualized content, noting how armed groups recorded acts of abuse, humiliation, and killing, and circulated the footage “through social media platforms and victims’ own digital accounts.”

The efforts by the terrorists to publicize their crimes as widely as possible were themselves evidence that the motivation of the sexual violence was to make Israeli society in its entirety suffer, Elkayam-Levy said.

The study said that in numerous cases, family members first learned of the fate of their loved ones through images or videos distributed by the perpetrators, in a deliberate effort to transform acts of violence “into instruments of psychological warfare directed not only at victims, but also at families and society at large.”

Elkayam-Levy said that the Civil Commission will send the report to national parliaments and foreign decision-makers to ensure that the investigation does not just remain inside civil society, but becomes a formal, adopted record of the atrocities committed by Hamas and its partners on October 7.

“Taken together, the Commission’s investigation reveals a coordinated assault in which sexual violence was used to terrorize victims, families, communities, and society at large,” the study asserted. “Our conclusion is unequivocal: sexual and gender-based violence formed a central component of the October 7 attack and of hostages’ captivity.”