EDITOR’S NOTE: This report incorporates details of sexual assault and violence.
Hamas militants and their allies raped, assaulted and sexually tortured their victims during and after the October 7, 2023 terror attack on southern Israel “to maximize pain and suffering,” a landmark new report has concluded.
Shared first with NCS, the report presents essentially the most complete physique of proof but of sexual and gender-based violence towards ladies, males and youngsters, which it describes as “systematic, widespread, and integral to” the assault.
“The most important finding is the fact that the sexual violence on October 7 and against hostages in captivity has been a calculated strategy by Hamas,” lead creator and human rights professional Cochav Elkayam-Levy advised NCS.
The report contains firsthand testimonies from greater than 10 survivors who endured excessive sexual violence and sexual abuse during the attack, their abduction or whereas held in captivity in Gaza.
Some of them, together with former hostages Romi Gonen, Rom Braslavski, Arbel Yehud, Amit Soussana, Ilana Gritzewsky and others, have spoken publicly about their ordeal. Other victims have solely shared their experiences confidentially with consultants, investigators and medical workers.
But the report additionally contains beforehand unknown allegations, together with a case of two minors who, whereas held hostage in Gaza, say they had been sexually abused and compelled by their captors to carry out sexual acts on one another.
Some of those details solely emerged after a few of the earlier reviews had been printed, together with after the discharge of hostages from Gaza. Some got here from testimonies supplied on to the researchers, whereas others had been gathered in quite a few conferences with medical consultants, legal professionals representing a few of the victims, and others.
In one significantly harrowing instance, the report details three separate incidents of rape on the web site of the Nova Music Festival close to the Gaza perimeter, citing a survivor who was hiding within the instant neighborhood of the attack.
“I heard one rape where they were passing her around. She was probably injured, judging by her screams—screams you have never heard anywhere,” the survivor is quoted as saying. Their account is corroborated by one other survivor, in keeping with the report, who additionally spoke about listening to the rapes, in addition to others who later noticed the our bodies of the victims, their garments torn, legs unfold and intimate areas mutilated.
At least six different incidents of individuals instantly witnessing rapes and gang rapes are outlined within the report, with all the witnesses describing victims being shot lifeless. In one case, a witness mentioned she noticed a younger lady being raped by a number of males, mutilated and shot lifeless.
Elkayam-Levy mentioned the objective of the report – and a digital archive that incorporates all of the proof the workforce collected – is ensuring that the struggling endured by the victims couldn’t be “denied, erased, or forgotten.” Like different archives of this sort, the fabric is not going to be accessible to the general public for a set time period to guard the privateness of the victims. NCS has not been in a position to confirm all the contents of the archive, but it surely has seen most of the visible supplies included in it.
The report was publicly endorsed by quite a few high-profile consultants and campaigners, together with Sheryl Sandberg and Hillary Clinton.
The workforce has spent greater than two years painstakingly gathering, reviewing and cataloguing proof from the attack. They say they carried out lots of of interviews and conferences with survivors, first responders, forensic examiners and medical consultants, and spent some 1,800 hours analyzing greater than 10,000 images and video segments from the attack, together with hours of grotesque materials recorded by the perpetrators.
The Civil Commission, which describes itself as an impartial non-governmental group, was arrange by Elkayam-Levy so as to doc and protect proof from the attack. Its report has recognized what the authors say is “clear and convincing evidence” of “patterns” of sexual and gender-based abuse that occurred on a number of events throughout a number of websites.
They say that the repeated nature of the violence – together with sexual torture, killings following sexual violence, compelled nudity, restraint of victims, threats of compelled marriage, and filming and disseminating imagery of sexual violence – signifies this was an integral a part of the attack and its aftermath, dedicated towards each ladies and males.
The report says that most of the victims’ our bodies had been mutilated on October 7, with the attackers typically focusing on ladies’s faces and intimate areas. The researchers reviewed images of most of the our bodies and interviewed forensic consultants in addition to individuals who labored on identifications on the IDF Shura base the place many of the our bodies had been introduced. They mentioned dozens had been shot or burnt within the chest and groin areas, mutilation that was typically inflicted on them after they had been lifeless.
Elkayam-Levy mentioned she believed this was a deliberate a part of the attack.
“Sexual violence is meant to torture, humiliate. They mutilated (the victims’) intimate organs, they burned their genital areas, creating such a pain and suffering that will be remembered for generations to come,” she mentioned.
“The victim is a symbol of a nation. It’s the collective impact of it, the collective trauma that it creates, the collective suffering.”
The difficulty of sexual and gender violence on October 7 grew to become closely politicized in its aftermath, partly as a result of some accounts of horrific violence shared by officers instantly after the attack had been later discovered to be false.
To counter potential deniers, Elkayam-Levy mentioned each piece of proof included within the report had been rigorously cross-referenced and fact-checked.
Each case cited has been corroborated by witnesses, together with first responders who attended the scene. She mentioned the workforce behind the report – comprising some 25 consultants and contributors – had additionally labored with a bunch of researchers who geolocated pictures and movies from the scene, pinpointing the situation of every sufferer and cross-referencing it with different proof.
The authors say they determined to not rely on any data obtained by state interrogations – an ordinary observe in compiling such reviews, geared toward preserving the independence of the work. Hamas has repeatedly denied sexual and gender-based violence came about during the assaults or towards these held captive.
The denials continued regardless of the United Nations’ particular consultant on sexual violence in battle, Pramila Patten, concluding after a fact-finding mission that there have been “reasonable grounds to believe that conflict related sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred.” Patten mentioned she was not in a position to meet any survivors during her go to, however her workforce visited the websites of the assaults and interviewed dozens of witnesses and officers.
The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, an impartial group of Israeli researchers referred to as the Dinah Project, and numerous nationwide and worldwide media investigations all additionally concluded that rape and sexual abuse had been a part of the attack. The new report goes additional, calling the violence systematic and calculated.
Hamas has beforehand denied that its militants dedicated rape during the October 7 attack.
The International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for 3 Hamas leaders over their alleged duty for battle crimes, together with rape and different types of sexual violence. However, all three had been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza, so the court docket closed the proceedings.
Some Israeli officers criticized worldwide our bodies for not paying sufficient consideration to the problem of sexual and gender-based violence, arguing this was all the way down to antisemitism.
Meanwhile, a few of Israel’s critics denied it came about and accused Israel of utilizing the allegations as an excuse for its brutal battle in Gaza. More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza for the reason that battle started two and a half years in the past, in keeping with the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Those who questioned the allegations homed in on the absence of first-hand testimonies from victims instantly after the assaults. Israeli authorities say it is because lots of them had been murdered on October 7.
It was solely when forensic consultants examined their our bodies and checked out images and movies from the attack, seeing clear indicators of sexual violence, that researchers had been in a position to piece collectively what occurred.
Another issue was that within the instant aftermath of the preliminary attack – with combating nonetheless raging within the space – some emergency crews broke regulation enforcement protocol, failing to gather forensic proof and study victims on the scene. There had been virtually no data or images of the crime scenes as they had been discovered.
Within days of the assaults, whereas emergency employees had been nonetheless recovering the our bodies, Israeli authorities introduced journalists, together with NCS, to a few of the websites. Access was practically limitless, with dozens of individuals allowed to stroll by the crime scenes in non-public properties.
When NCS has beforehand requested about proof gathering, Israeli authorities and emergency responders pointed to the safety constraints of working inside an lively fight zone in addition to the necessity to determine and bury the victims.
This will not be uncommon in circumstances of sexual violence, Elkayam-Levy mentioned. What was uncommon was the weaponization of the shortage of forensic proof to discredit the allegations.
“Anyone who has ever represented victims of sexual violence knows that questioning and denials come almost immediately. But what pains me the most was actually not the hesitation by the public, it was the experts who said, ‘Show me the evidence,’” Elkayam-Levy mentioned.
“I don’t remember ever in my 20 years of experience that I heard a feminist scholar come and say, show me the evidence to a victim of sexual violence,” she added.
Some of the primary responders had been volunteers with no formal coaching on how you can deal with proof. Many had been overwhelmed and traumatized, and some gave accounts of issues that they had seen that later turned out to be false – however not earlier than they had been broadly circulated within the media, by Israeli officers and, in a single case, by Elkayam-Levy herself.
She was criticized publicly by some colleagues as effectively nameless authorities officers who had been quoted in Israeli and worldwide media questioning her motives.
These incidents had been later utilized by some critics to discredit different claims, even when proof was clear and corroborated by a number of sources.
Elkayam-Levy rapidly grew to become probably the most vocal advocates for the victims. She was awarded the 2024 Israel Prize, broadly thought of to be the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Like many advocates for victims of sexual violence, Elkayam-Levy has acquired threats, together with demise threats, associated to her work – work which she believes is price it.
“These men and women, victims of sexual violence, have been silenced in the worst way and cruelest way possible. Hopefully what we did is to put an end to this.”
Editor’s be aware: Help is on the market. For assist in the US, name the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or chat 24/7 on RAINN.org.
Internationally, a worldwide listing of directories is supplied by UN Women, with nationwide businesses on The Pixel Project.