Sexual violence allegations from the Oct. 7 attacks have remained a flashpoint since the war in Gaza began, with Israel and Hamas trading accusations and the claims disputed by opponents of those allegations. A new report released by an Israeli nonprofit, the Civil Commission, argues that sexual violence was not incidental but “systematic, widespread and integral” to the Hamas-led attack and what followed.
The report, titled “Silenced No More,” was published Tuesday by the Civil Commission, which documents and researches gender-based violence tied to Hamas after its 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war. The commission said it conducted a two-year investigation drawing on more than 400 testimonies and nearly 2,000 hours of visual analysis to document what it describes as 13 patterns of violence, including gang rape, sexual torture and forced nudity.
Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the commission’s founder and chair and the report’s lead author, said the findings “demonstrate that it was a deliberate tactic within the broader architecture of the terror inflicted on victims and hostages.” The report’s framing describes sexual violence as part of an organized plan rather than isolated abuse.
The Associated Press said it could not independently verify the report’s findings. The AP also noted that critics have challenged some of Elkayam-Levy’s previous research, and it described prominent endorsements of her work by public figures including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rahm Emanuel and Sheryl Sandberg.
International and legal bodies have also made public statements about wartime sexual violence by Hamas. The United Nations said it has found “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas militants committed rape and other sexual violence during their rampage, and the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan said he had reason to believe that three key Hamas leaders bore responsibility for “rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity.”
The Civil Commission said Hamas and its collaborators primarily targeted women and hostages, while also describing violence and abuse affecting children. In one example, the commission said two returning young hostages were forced to perform “sexual acts on one another,” including taking off their clothes while captors touched their private parts.
The commission said sexual torture was used to maximize pain and suffering, with survivors reporting burning, mutilation and forced insertion of objects. It said victims were sometimes found handcuffed or bound, and it described how armed groups recorded abuse and killing and circulated footage through social media.
The report said assaults occurred at multiple sites, including the Nova Music festival, where hundreds were killed and others taken hostage. The AP said it previously found evidence that sexual assault was part of Hamas’s Oct. 7 rampage, including a witness account by a man at the festival who said he heard a woman screaming for help and shouting, “They’re raping me, they’re raping me!”
Hostages, the report said, were subjected to sexual harassment and assault for some for months at a time. The commission also pointed to accounts from released hostages who said they were abused in captivity, including Romi Gonen, who told Israeli media she was repeatedly sexually assaulted and harassed by three men, and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, who told The New York Times he was sexually abused by one of his captors and threatened with death if he said anything.
Human rights groups and Palestinians detained by Israel after the attacks have shared detailed testimonies of sexual violence and torture in Israeli prisons. In March, Israel dropped charges against five soldiers accused of beating and sodomizing a Palestinian detainee in an alleged assault partially caught on camera, and while hard-line politicians hailed the dismissal, human rights groups said it reflected Israel’s reluctance to investigate abuses. Israel’s government and Hamas did not respond immediately to requests from AP for comment.
As a rule, AP said it does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted or subjected to severe abuse unless those individuals have identified themselves publicly or consented to have their names used.