Report: Hamas carried out ‘deliberate, coordinated’ acts of sexual violence on and after Oct. 7 attack

 

(Background) Palestinian militants of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades move towards the Erez crossing between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.

The findings of a major two-year investigation into Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel have been published in a report that revealed the terror group committed ‘deliberate, coordinated’ sexual violence against victims, including entire families.

On Tuesday, the Civil Commission on October 7^th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children published a 300-page report titled, “Silenced No More: Sexual Terror Unveiled.” The commission emphasized that the report is “the first to systematically assemble, verify, and analyze the evidence on sexual and gender-based violence during the attacks and in captivity, drawing on a uniquely constructed and independently secured war crimes archive.”

The commission compiled over 10,000 photographs and video segments, more than 1,800 hours of visual material, over 430 testimonies and interviews with survivors, witnesses, released hostages, experts, and family members from 52 nationalities, in addition to the Israeli victims. The vast collection of data was cross-referenced through an “interdisciplinary review,” the human rights group said.

The years-long war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists carried out terror attacks on Israel, including at the Nova music festival, which resulted in at least 354 deaths and dozens of kidnappings, marking the deadliest massacre in Israel’s history.

 

A team of researchers, lawyers, documenters and trauma experts identified 13 recurring and systemic forms of sexual and gender-based violence across the Nova music festival, homes, roads, shelters, military bases and Gaza captivity. These were categorized as:

• Rape and gang rape
• Sexual torture and mutilation
• Forced nudity
• Executions linked to sexual violence
• Postmortem sexual abuse
• Sexual assaults carried out in the presence of family members

Atrocities were documented across the Nova music festival, homes, roads, shelters, military bases and Gaza captivity, indicating a pattern of abuse that was “part of a broader operational method,” not isolated incidents, according to researchers.

The commission cited at least one documented case in which family members held captive together were coerced into performing acts of sexual violence on each other.

 

“The Commission defines this as kinocidal sexual violence, violence deliberately designed to destroy family structures by weaponizing familial bonds,” the group stated.

Witnesses from the music festival described scenarios where terrorists raped and mutilated women, both alive and dead.

Yoni Saadon, who hid beneath a stage, reported many separate acts of violence. In one instance, a woman was raped, then shot in the head.

 

An hour later, he said he saw a “beautiful woman with the face of an angel” who was being beaten by eight or 10 terrorists.

“She was screaming, ‘Stop it, already, I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’” Saadon recounted. He said they laughed and shot her in the head, as well.

Raz Cohen, another survivor of the massacre, saw several terrorists exit a vehicle, dragging a woman who was then raped and stabbed to death.

 

“They pulled a woman out of the vehicle. I saw them raping her. While they were raping her, we heard her screaming. Then they murdered her. And then they raped her again, even after she was no longer moving,” Cohen stated.

Men, children and elders were also victimized.

A male survivor said he was subjected to “a violent gang rape and torture by multiple perpetrators” and heard others being sexually abused at the festival. A polygraph examination confirmed his testimony, according to the report.

“They were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll,” he said of perpetrators who he said strangled him to the point of bleeding through his eye, beating him with a belt and injuring his genitalia.

Eden Wessely told the commission she drove to the area of the festival in an attempt to rescue a friend. On a nearby road, she found and filmed the burned body of a woman who was shot through her cheek. She said the woman’s dress was pulled up and her underwear had been removed.

 “They removed her underwear. Her legs were spread. Her genitals were exposed,” the witness said.

Perpetrators also “recorded, livestreamed, and distributed acts of abuse and torture through social media and victims’ own digital accounts,” according to the commission, weaponizing the digital dissemination of the abuse past the individual acts of violence.

“These acts were designed not only to harm victims, but to terrorize families, communities, and society at large, transforming individual acts of violence into instruments of psychological warfare,” the group wrote.

The commission asserted that the atrocities committed by Hamas were “deliberate, coordinated and embedded in the attack itself.”

Due to the systemic nature of sexual violence, the commission concluded that the acts constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal acts under international law.

“For two years, we have listened to survivors and witnesses, painstakingly examined the evidence, and confronted material that is often beyond comprehension,” Israel Prize laureate and international law expert Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who led the investigation, said. “The report reveals that sexual violence was a deliberate strategy carried out with exceptional cruelty.”

The report provides “a legal roadmap for prosecution,” the commission said, outlining a pathway to hold direct perpetrators and enablers of violence accountable.

Nearly coinciding with the report’s release, the Israeli parliament passed a bill to establish a military tribunal that would prosecute perpetrators of the October 7^th attacks.

The investigation was endorsed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, former French Ambassador for Human Rights François Zimeray, former Special Adviser to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mukesh Kapila, and several others.

“We dedicate this report to all the victims and survivors of the sexual atrocities committed on October 7^th and in captivity, those whose names appear within these pages and those who remain in the shadows but are no less present in our hearts,” the commission stated.

The Civil Commission Report: Our response

TW: Sexual violence, torture, hate

For many of us, especially the Jewish women in our ranks, the months following October 7th have been a period of deep pain and isolation. We found ourselves at odds with a feminist movement that seemed… pic.twitter.com/TDjomh0n93

— FeministsAgainstAntisemitism (@FAAntisemitism) May 12, 2026