Newly released interviews and documentation further bolster evidence that Hamas systematically used sexual violence as a weapon of war during its Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack, according to a report by a group of Israeli gender and law experts unveiled Tuesday.
The report, titled “A Quest for Justice,” was published by the Dinah Project, a legal research initiative led by law professor and women’s rights activist Ruth Halperin-Kaddari of Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University, Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, a lawyer and the former chief military prosecutor at the Israel Defence Forces, and Nava Ben-Or, a former judge and deputy attorney general.
Partly funded by the British government and Jewish non-profit organizations, the report contains previously unheard testimony from 15 returned hostages from Gaza, along with a rape survivor from the Nova music festival, one of at least six different locations where Hamas carried out its attacks.
It also includes eyewitness testimony from at least 17 different incidents of sexual assault, as well as accounts from first responders, forensic evidence, and audio and visual documentation.
The issue of sexual assault and rape during the Oct. 7 attacks is highly emotive and charged, with some in Israel accusing United Nations observers of betraying survivors by downplaying the issue. Meanwhile, some international observers, including a U.N. official appointed to investigate, say that while there is evidence of cases where rape and sexual assault took place, it does not point to those incidents having been systematic or directed by militant leaders.
Hamas has denied its militants committed sexual crimes on Oct. 7, 2023.
The report states that clear patterns emerged of sexual violence being perpetrated, including victims who were found “partially or fully naked with their hands tied, often to structures like trees or poles; evidence of gang rapes followed by execution; genital mutilation; and public humiliation.” The details add to and corroborate past reporting on sexual violence that took place during the attacks.
The sexual violence “continued in captivity, with many returnees reporting forced nudity, physical and verbal sexual harassment, sexual assaults and threats of forced marriage,” the report adds.
The victims also include two returned male hostages who were released in January and February after being held captive for about 500 days, where they were subjected to “sexual humiliation, which included forced nudity and physical abuse when naked,” according to the report.
In light of the testimonies, the report aims to have the sexual violence acknowledged as crimes against humanity and to hold the perpetrators accountable.
Notably, it calls on the U.N. to send a fact-finding mission and blacklist Hamas as a group. “We hence call upon the U.N. Secretary-General to blacklist Hamas as an organization responsible for the tactical use of sexual violence as a weapon of war,” it states.
Reem Alsalem, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said in a statement that she and fellow rapporteurs and experts emphasized that reports of such violence needed to be independently verified and investigated and perpetrators be held accountable.
She added that the U.N. special commission appointed to investigate “found patterns indicative of sexual violence against Israeli women at different locations. The Commission was also unable to independently verify specific allegations of sexual and gender-based violence due to Israel’s obstruction of its investigations.”
“It is my understanding that neither the Commission nor any other independent human rights mechanism established that sexual or gender-based violence was committed against Israelis on or since the 7th of October as a systematic tool of war or as a tool of genocide,” Alsalem wrote in the statement.
The Dinah Project report’s findings follow previously published reports by the U.N. and the International Criminal Court on sexual violence and gang rape during the attack.
In March 2024, a report compiled by Pramila Patten, the U.N. Special Representative on sexual violence in conflict, stated that it had found “reasonable grounds” to believe some victims of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 were raped and sexually assaulted.
There was “clear and convincing” information that some of those taken captive were subjected to sexual violence, the U.N. team of experts said in their report, including rape and sexualized torture — violence it said “may be ongoing.”
In December 2023, NBC News published a separate report which reviewed evidence suggesting that dozens of Israeli women were raped, sexually abused or mutilated during the Oct. 7 attack, where more than 1,200 people were killed in Israel.
Since then, Israel’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 56,000 people and seriously injured thousands more, according to health officials in the enclave.
It also comes after a U.N.-backed body, the Human Rights Council, released an extensive report in March this year which accused Israel of “the systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence” in the Gaza Strip.
The report by the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that the widespread destruction of Gaza, the use of heavy explosives in civilian areas, and Israeli attacks on hospitals and health facilities had led to “disproportionate violence against women and children.”
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not address the report’s findings, he called the organization an “anti-Israel circus.”
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