Mick Hartley

From the Jerusalem Post:

A two-year independent investigation into the sexual and gender-based crimes committed during the October 7 massacre and against hostages in Hamas captivity argues that the next stage is no longer only documenting that the crimes occurred, but determining how they can be prosecuted. 

The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, led by Israel Prize laureate and international law expert Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, on Tuesday published its report, “Sexual Terror Unveiled: The Untold Atrocities of October 7 and Against Hostages in Captivity,” presenting what it describes as the most extensive evidentiary record compiled to date on the sexual atrocities of October 7, 2023, and the captivity in Gaza.

The report’s central contribution is not only its conclusion that sexual and gender-based violence was systematic, widespread, and integral to the attack, but its attempt to move from recognition to prosecution – a question that has shadowed the issue since the earliest days after the massacre, when many victims were murdered, scenes were burned or destroyed, forensic documentation was partial, and surviving witnesses were often traumatized, saw only fragments, or were unable to testify.

The answer offered by the report is an evidentiary model built not on a single witness, video, or forensic finding, but on cumulative proof: preserved materials, cross-referenced accounts, recurring patterns, and the legal connection between specific proven crimes and the wider machinery of October 7.…

Video here.

Two and a half years after October 7, Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy is publishing a 300-page report she says establishes “beyond any doubt” that Hamas’s sexual violence was systematic, strategic, and inherent to the attack — and she’s confronting a world that, in some corners, still denies it.

In this interview with Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Report, Ruth Marks Eglash, the founder and chair of the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children walks through the evidence her team has gathered over two years: testimonies from survivors and returned hostages, forensic analysis of crime scenes, and videos taken by Hamas terrorists themselves. “We cannot prevent what is not known,” Elkayam-Levy says. “This was sexual terror in the most exceptional cruelty.”

Elkayam-Levy also confronts the wave of denial that followed October 7, from prominent feminist scholars to a senior UN official as recently as November 2025, and introduces “kinacide,” a term her team coined to describe the systematic torture of families, which has since been cited by parliaments and tribunals around the world. She explains why this report is a watershed moment, why the denial fuels antisemitism, and what she hopes will change once the world finally reads it.