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One 17-year-old hostage called her mother from Gaza: “Mum, they’re going to rape me.” Her testimony is one of 430 gathered by the Civil Commission as evidence of what it calls kinocide: Hamas’s deliberate weaponisation of family bonds to maximise suffering.

A two-year independent investigation has concluded that Hamas and its collaborators used rape, gang rape, sexual torture and the deliberate destruction of families as systematic weapons of war on October 7, 2023, and throughout the months of hostage captivity in Gaza that followed.

The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children released its 298-page report this week, titled Silenced No More: Sexual Terror Unveiled: The Untold Atrocities of October 7 and Against Hostages in Captivity.

Led by Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy — a 2024 Israel Prize laureate and the Commission’s founding chair — the report is the most comprehensive evidentiary record yet assembled of the sexual atrocities of October 7.

The report’s central conclusion is unequivocal: sexual violence was “systematic, widespread, and integral” to the October 7 attacks and their aftermath.

“Sexual violence was not incidental — it is systematic, deliberate, and embedded in the attack itself,” Dr Elkayam-Levy said. “Documenting these crimes is essential to give voice to victims and ensure their stories are not erased.”

The Commission identified thirteen recurring patterns of sexual violence across multiple sites — kibbutzim, the Nova Music Festival grounds and adjacent Route 232, military bases, roadsides and captivity in Gaza. They include rape and gang rape, sexual torture and mutilation, forced nudity, executions linked to sexual violence, postmortem sexual abuse, sexual assaults carried out in front of family members, and the filming and social media dissemination of atrocities in real time.

The Evidence

In compiling the report, investigators reviewed more than 10,000 photographs and video segments — including more than 1,800 cumulative hours of visual material — and conducted over 430 interviews with survivors, witnesses, released hostages, experts and family members.

In addition to Israeli nationals, 52 other nationalities were represented among the victims.

Because the Commission began collecting evidence immediately after the attacks, its archive preserves footage and communications that were later removed or lost from public platforms.

Nova survivor Raz Cohen witnessed the rape and murder of a woman during the attack. “I saw them raping her,” he told investigators. “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.”

Another Nova survivor, Darin Komarov, described listening from hiding as a woman was gang raped nearby. “I heard one rape where they were passing her around,” she said. “She was probably injured, judging by her screams — screams you have never heard anywhere. It’s between silence and screams, between pain and wanting to die.” Komarov described hearing each perpetrator call the next forward. “And after they finished, they shot her.”

A third survivor, Tali Biner, described the scene after the attack. “Women with their legs spread open,” she told investigators. “There wasn’t a single body that just ‘died normally’. Every single one had gone through torture… From the fact that they had no underwear. From injuries in the lower areas.”

Thirteen Patterns of Systematic Terror

The report’s Key Findings section details all thirteen patterns of sexual violence:

• rape and gang rape
• sexual torture, including intentional burning and mutilation
• deliberate shootings to the head, face and genital area
• killings and executions committed in conjunction with sexual violence
• postmortem sexual abuse, humiliation and desecration of bodies
• forced nudity and exposure
• handcuffing, binding and restraint of victims
• public displaying and parading of women and children
• abduction of mothers and children together
• sexual violence inflicted in the presence of family members
• filming and digital dissemination of atrocities via social media
• threats of forced marriage
• rape and other forms of sexual violence against boys and men

The Commission notes that women and girls constituted the majority of victims, but found a “discernible pattern” of boys and men subjected to extreme forms of sexual violence, sexual torture and humiliation, including rape, forced nudity, mutilation and targeted burning of genitals.

Men, women and children, including “the elderly and the very young,” suffered ongoing sexual violence, threats of rape and psychological terror throughout captivity. The foreword records that parents were murdered in front of their children, and siblings assaulted in front of one another.

Kinocide: Families as Instruments of Terror

The Commission introduced a new legal concept to describe a defining pattern in the attack: kinocide. They used the term to refer to the deliberate weaponisation of family bonds — targeting parents and children together, inflicting sexual violence in front of relatives, and in at least one documented case, coercing family members into acts of sexual violence against one another.

“We conceptualise this pattern as kinocide,” Dr Elkayam-Levy wrote in the report’s preface: “the deliberate and systematic torture of families and weaponisation of familial bonds through the destruction and exploitation of family relationships in order to maximise suffering.”

Sexual violence continued against hostages — women, men and minors — throughout months of captivity in Gaza.

Former hostage Amit Soussana, held alone and chained by her ankles, described her assault in detail. “He forced me to go to the shower and entered the room, pointed his gun at me. He was breathing heavily and had a monstrous, beast-like face. He meticulously planned his assault.” When it was over, she was forbidden to cry. “You have to face it all alone. And not only that — you also have to be nice to him.”

Male hostages were also subjected to sexual violence. One anonymous survivor, referred to in the report as “D.”, described gang rape at the Nova festival. “They genuinely enjoyed it. They laughed, they were really pleased… It felt like all boundaries were broken.”

Armed groups recorded acts of abuse, humiliation and murder, then circulated the footage through social media and victims’ own digital accounts. In multiple cases, families first learned of their loved ones’ fate through footage the perpetrators sent them.

Ricarda Louk, mother of Shani Louk — whose body was paraded through Gaza in the back of a ute — said of the perpetrators: “They filmed everything. They wanted the world to see what they did to her.”

Agam Goldstein-Almog, taken hostage at age 17, later described the lasting effect of captivity: “It’s these little things that break you. When you have no control over your body and no control over how to take care of your body.”

The Case for Accountability

Based on the evidentiary record, the Commission concludes Hamas and its collaborators committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal acts under international law. It further identifies conduct amounting to torture, sexual slavery, persecution and terrorism-linked sexual violence.

The report outlines a legal roadmap for prosecution, identifying pathways of accountability for perpetrators, those who planned and ordered the crimes, and actors who amplified the violence online. The Commission also calls for specialised prosecutorial mechanisms and coordinated international action.

Its joint recommendations to Israel and the international community include:

• investigating and prosecuting sexual crimes within domestic counterterrorism frameworks
• targeted sanctions — including asset freezes and travel bans — against those responsible for carrying out or materially supporting the attack
• formal institutional recognition of the report’s findings as part of the historical record
• reparations and psychosocial support for survivors and their families
• active measures to counter denial, minimisation or politicisation of the crimes

The report acknowledges evidentiary challenges, including the fact that many victims did not survive, while others remain in captivity or carry trauma that inhibits their testimony. But the archive — built from materials collected in the immediate aftermath of October 7 — preserves what might otherwise have vanished.

“Societies are judged by the truths they are willing to confront,” Dr Elkayam-Levy wrote. “This report is part of that choice: a refusal to look away, and an insistence that what happened on October 7th, and in captivity thereafter, be carried forward not as history alone, but as a persistent demand for justice.”

The full report, Silenced No More, is available at the Civil Commission’s website. Read more of The Daily Declaration’s reporting on October 7 here.

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Image courtesy of The Civil Commission.