Why did the world look away when Israeli women were raped?
The true depravity of Hamas’s crimes on October 7 can now never be denied.
This week, a new report, Silenced No More, presents ‘the most comprehensive evidentiary record to date of the sexual atrocities committed on October 7 and during captivity’. It has been produced by the Civil Commission, an independent organisation established in the aftermath of the attack, to advocate for the victims of sexual and gender-based violence and atrocities, in an effort to prove to the world once and for all that women in Israel were raped and assaulted.
The report’s findings are stark: ‘sexual and gender-based violence was systematic, widespread, and integral to the October 7 attacks and their aftermath.’ Unlike the #MeToo movement, the commission’s researchers do not simply rely on believing women, they have systematically assembled, verified and analysed evidence. It includes over 10,000 photographs and video segments, and more than 430 testimonies and interviews with survivors, witnesses, released hostages, experts and family members.
What emerges is ‘not a collection of isolated incidents, but a coherent and repeated pattern of violence, carried out across multiple locations and phases, from the initial attacks, through abduction and transfer, to prolonged captivity and the deliberate digital circulation of abuse.’ The Silenced No More report shows that sexual violence was not incidental to Hamas’s terror; ‘it was deliberate, coordinated, and embedded in the attack itself’.
The Civil Commission researchers identified 13 recurring forms of sexual and gender-based violence across multiple sites, including rape and gang rape, sexual torture and mutilation, executions linked to sexual violence, post-mortem sexual abuse and sexual assaults carried out in the presence of family members. As the report’s authors point out: ‘The repetition of these patterns demonstrates that the crimes were not isolated acts of brutality, but part of a broader operational method used during the attack and its aftermath.’
Significantly, the Civil Commission highlighted the way Hamas operatives deliberately filmed and photographed much of the abuse, even as it was being perpetrated. They livestreamed their depravity, sometimes through the victims’ own social-media accounts. In this way, not only were close friends and family members made to bear witness to the abuse being inflicted on their loved ones, but survivors will forever suspect the existence of a record of their torture. In this way, Hamas created a form of psychological horror that exists beyond the initial act of rape and afflicts whole communities. As Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the founder and chair of the Civil Commission, notes: ‘The perpetrators did not conceal these acts – they glorified them. They filmed and broadcast them in real time, transforming their violence into spectacle and human suffering into an instrument of terror.’
Based on these findings, the commission concludes that what happened on October 7 constituted war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal acts under international law. The revelation of such depravity should, by rights, put an end to the shameful displays of solidarity with Hamas that are still seen on the streets of Britain’s towns and cities. Those who insisted that more ‘conclusive’ evidence was needed before they could begin to acknowledge that Hamas terrorists systematically raped and abused women should apologise, or, at very least, fall silent.
Of course, this is not happening. No amount of evidence will ever convince Hamas fan-boys and Israelophobes that Jewish women were victims. The warped imagination of the anti-Semite is capable of conceiving of all manner of things that did not and could not happen – dogs trained to rape Palestinians being just the latest example – while casting aspersions on things that did actually happen, the rape and torture of women by Hamas.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/05/14/why-did-the-world-look-away-when-israel...The Silenced No More Report
https://www.civilc.org/silenced-no-more/executive-summary
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