Silenced no more: The Israeli women who documented Hamas's October 7 sexual crimes

When the privately funded Civil Commission on the Oct. 7 crimes against women, men, and children released its landmark report on May 12, Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy felt something she had not experienced in a very long time: a deep sense of relief.

Elkayam-Levy, the commission’s principal author, accepted responsibility for work so heartbreaking and disturbing – documenting crimes of extraordinary cruelty – that many on her team simply could not continue. For two and a half years, she sat with the evidence as well as with survivors, and reviewed testimony about the sexual crimes committed by Hamas-led terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, and thereafter.

“One of the most important takeaways is the before-and-after reality of the report,” noted Danae Marx-Callaf, director of international communications and one of the four co-founders of the Civil Commission. “Our report shifts the conversation from ‘whether it happened’ to ‘what are the consequences.’

“Another important thing is recognition of the victims. The report will go around the world to different policy makers and not remain just the knowledge of a few in the world,” Marx-Callaf added.

The comprehensive 298-page document details the sexual terror committed on and after Oct. 7, which the Civil Commission concluded was central to Hamas’s war strategy.

An expert in international law, human rights, and feminist legal theory, Elkayam-Levy serves as a Sophie Davis Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was a 2024 Israel Prize laureate for her tireless work on the report. For years, she taught and wrote about war crimes, gender-based violence, and the responsibility of legal systems to protect the vulnerable and pursue justice.

In the days following the massacre, while Israel was still counting its dead, and families were searching for missing loved ones, Elkayam-Levy traveled to New York to address the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. There, she reported on the sexual atrocities that were being retrieved from both Hamas’s and the victims’ phones, from survivors’ testimonies, and the accounts of those charged with the holy task of identifying the mangled corpses.

She arrived in New York expecting that evidence of the atrocities committed against women would command urgent international attention. Instead, she found herself surrounded by the UN Committee’s apathy and hatred, as dozens of pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas activists came out to accuse Israel of genocide. The experience left a profound impression.

For a scholar of international law and human rights, that moment became a turning point. “The silence was deafening,” she said.

“I remember thinking we had to establish an organization. If the crimes were not being investigated, documented, and preserved with the urgency they demanded, we in Israel would have to do it ourselves,” she continued.

“Hamas itself had uploaded and distributed large quantities of material to cause as much psychological damage as possible. We knew we had to preserve those images before they vanished,” Elkayam-Levy added.

What began as an emergency response soon evolved into the Civil Commission, an NGO established as an independent civilian initiative, separate from government institutions. The purpose was not only to investigate the crimes but to do so according to the highest international legal and evidentiary standards, ensuring that the findings could withstand scrutiny in courts, tribunals, academic research, and historical inquiry.

For Elkayam-Levy, the goal was to place a meticulously documented historical record before the world – a wake-up call not only to governments and legal institutions, but to humanity itself. The report, for instance, highlights an account from Raz Cohen, a Supernova music festival survivor: “The men pulled a woman from the vehicle... forcibly removed her clothing, and raped her… They repeatedly stabbed her, killing her… they continued to rape her after her death.”

Said Elkayam-Levy: “I never imagined something like this would happen here in Israel. For hours, terrorists moved freely through communities in southern Israel, murdering families in their homes, burning houses, taking hostages, raping them, and broadcasting much of it live.

“The attacks shattered more than Israel’s border defenses. They shattered a basic sense of security. One of the things we lost from the outset was our sense of safety. It felt like it could happen to any of us. Even today, that sense of vulnerability lingers,” Elkayam-Levy said.

Recalling her 51 days in Hamas captivity, Agam Goldstein, who was 17 when she was abducted, is quoted in the report, saying: “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.”

Elkayam-Levy is the mother of four children. Her youngest son was two-and-a-half years old when she co-founded the commission. Each day, she moved between two worlds. One was filled with evidence of cruelty, degradation, and suffering. The other was filled with children, homework, family dinners, and ordinary life.

“My children were the reason I did this,” she said. “They were what kept me sane.” Time with family became a form of emotional recovery. At the same time, she worried constantly about what she was missing. “I wasn’t there enough. They needed me,” she said wistfully.

Elkayam-Levy worried about what her family was also sacrificing. While she immersed herself in evidence, interviews, and the daily demands of the investigation, her husband carried most of the burden of raising their four children. “He understood and supported me. But it was a lot.”

When Elkayam-Levy was awarded the Israel Prize in the newly created category of Arvut Hadadit (Mutual Responsibility) in 2024, the honor was deeply meaningful, she said, but not primarily for professional reasons. Her older children suddenly saw the work through the eyes of the nation, after years of watching their mother disappear into a mission they were too young to fully understand.

“They take pride in it now. The recognition helped them understand why I had been absent so often, why the work mattered, and why I had felt compelled to continue despite its enormous toll emotionally and on family life,” she added.

The Civil Council tapped legal experts, trauma specialists, archivists, researchers, and volunteers. It was headed by a board of high-level international advisers, including the Hon. Irwin Cotler, a former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada, and Sheryl Sandberg, the American technology executive and Lean In Foundation founder. According to a commission spokesperson, Sandberg provided steadfast support, mentorship, and moral leadership from the earliest days.

“Very few people agreed to bear witness to these crimes,” explained Marx-Callaf, the communications director. “The exposure to this violent material is one of our biggest challenges, and the fact that [the authenticity of] these crimes were questioned even by prominent figures kept us motivated to do this work, despite the difficulties. We wanted to ensure that the world knows what happened and the victims receive the dignity they deserve.”

Among the key figures was Karen Jungblut, director of archives, whose task was both technical and deeply human, Elkayam-Levy said. “Before evidence could become part of a legal record, someone had to view it, authenticate it, classify it, preserve it, and ensure it would remain accessible to future investigators, prosecutors, and historians. That responsibility fell to Jungblut.

“She was among the first people to confront much of the material that would eventually form the backbone of the commission’s findings: evidence of murder, torture, humiliation, sexual violence, rape, and gang rape in the aftermath of the attacks. The scope of that effort was staggering.”

By the time the report was completed, the commission had reviewed more than 10,000 photographs and video segments representing approximately 18,000 minutes of footage, and conducted 430 in-depth interviews with survivors, former hostages, eyewitnesses, first responders, medical professionals, bereaved families, and others connected to the events of Oct. 7 and its aftermath.

Her task was not only to see it, but to create order from chaos – to transform scattered fragments of evidence into a permanent historical archive. Without such documentation, much of the evidence might have disappeared into deleted accounts, broken phones, fading memories, and the endless churn of social media. Instead, it became part of a carefully preserved historical record, Elkayam-Levy explained.

What emerged from a collection of seemingly isolated incidents were patterns that the Civil Commission studied to better understand the broader picture.

The report found recurring patterns of sexual violence, torture, humiliation, and degradation across multiple locations, leading investigators to conclude that these crimes reflected a wider operational method rather than the actions of a few individuals acting alone.

One of the report’s most consequential findings concerns the role of social media itself. The videos, photographs, and live streams were not incidental byproducts of the attacks. According to the commission’s findings, they were part of the strategy.

“The terrorists were trained, instructed, and encouraged to maximize pain and suffering,” Elkayam-Levy said. “Many of these acts were documented by the perpetrators themselves and uploaded onto social media and other digital platforms.”

For investigators, this became one of the clearest indications that psychological warfare was not incidental to the attacks but part of the strategy itself. Among the videos captured were acts of extreme cruelty, helplessness, torture, degradation, and humiliation. Family members were often forced into impossible situations, compelled to witness the suffering of loved ones or participate in unspeakable acts intended to shatter personal dignity and destroy the sanctity of family bonds.

“They leveraged social media and digital platforms to maximize the terrorization,” the report concludes.

Hamas made families bear witness, prompting the commission to come up with new terminology to describe a type of deliberate, widespread use of violence to impact an entire family.

Family members often learned what had happened to loved ones through videos circulating online before any official notification arrived. The report found that the violence was designed to harm the victims, traumatize families, communities, and the wider public through deliberate acts of forced witnessing.

“The videos created so much suffering for people who were not physically there,” Elkayam-Levy said, adding that the tactic represents an evolution in modern terrorism. The violence did not end at the crime scene. The phone became part of the weapon, and the screen an extension of the battlefield, intended to target family and loved ones by amplifying their trauma.

Elkayam-Levy noted that she is deeply troubled that the phone usage in warfare now serves another purpose. “I have no doubt that these videos serve as inspiration for other terrorist groups around the world.”

The Civil Commission team was made up largely of women, many of whom had spent years working in the fields of human rights, sexual violence, and victim advocacy. At the center of that effort was adv. Merav Israeli-Amarant, the commission’s CEO. “She’s my ‘partner in justice,’” Elkayam-Levy said.

Noted Israeli-Amarant: “To produce this report, our team spent months immersed in some of the most painful evidence imaginable.

“This is deeply lonely work, because so few people are willing to look at these materials, or even hear about them,” she added. “We understood from the outset that it would come at a personal cost. With the guidance and support of trauma experts, we carried not only a responsibility to the victims and survivors, but also to one another.

“The solidarity within the team was not simply a source of strength; it was a form of protection. In order to bear witness to such profound suffering, we had to ensure that no one carried that burden alone.”

The report includes evidence and pictures documenting a range of sexual atrocities, including the burning of genital areas, the insertion of foreign objects into genital areas, sexual torture, and sexual humiliation. These materials contributed to the identification and mapping of the 13 categories of sexual violence documented in the report. Throughout the process, extensive measures were taken to protect the privacy, dignity, and identities of victims and survivors whenever possible.

For all the evidence collected by the commission, nothing prepared investigators for the conversations they would have with former hostages. People often assume the hardest part of the work was watching the videos.

Elkayam-Levy disagreed. “The hardest conversations were with families, the bereaved, the first responders, the search-and-rescue teams, and the doctors and nurses who treated survivors and returning hostages.

And, most difficult of all, the former hostages. The investigators found themselves confronting experiences that seemed to resist language.

“There aren’t enough words,” she said. “We don’t have enough legal definitions.”

From the outset, the commission partnered with the Israel Trauma Coalition to provide professional support for Civil Commission staff and volunteers exposed to profoundly disturbing material. Founded in 2001 at the initiative of the UJA-Federation of New York, the Israel Trauma Coalition is an NGO that serves as a cornerstone of trauma treatment in Israel.

“We realized from the beginning that we needed emotional support,” Elkayam-Levy said.

As the project evolved, the commission began establishing new criteria for those joining the effort. Professional experience became increasingly important, not only because of the complexity of the work, but because of the emotional demands it imposed.

“We understood that you needed people with significant professional experience,” Elkayam-Levy said. “People with young children were often especially affected.”

As a mother herself, Elkayam-Levy understood the challenge. After long days immersed in testimony, evidence, and legal analysis, she would leave the office and return to her family. Simply holding her toddler-age son became a source of comfort.” My children kept me sane,” she said. Time spent with them reminded her of what she was fighting for.

The commission’s report records testimony from former hostages who described reaching a point where they no longer wanted to live. Yet something kept them going. Some say it was important to go back to their families and survive for their families. Others drew strength from faith, or the deep spiritual experiences in captivity that kept them alive, and fighting for their lives.”

Yet even as she spoke about resilience, Elkayam-Levy was careful not to romanticize survival. The report makes clear that many victims, witnesses, and former hostages continue to carry profound psychological wounds. Among the accounts that remain with Elkayam-Levy is that of a psychiatrist who stayed beside a newly released hostage for three days – without sleeping the entire time.

As the report neared completion, Elkayam-Levy found it increasingly difficult to set the work aside, even during the time she treasured for her family.

“The work often followed me home,” Elkayam-Levy recalled.

On one recent Shabbat, she caught herself thinking about the report’s final edits. “What if something happened to me before the report was finished?” she worried. The weight of the responsibility was enormous.

The commission’s report would even follow her into her dreams. One night, after reviewing agonizing evidence of sexual violence inflicted upon a woman, whose name and story had become etched in her mind, Elkayam-Levy found herself wrestling with a question that had accompanied the commission from the beginning. How much should be shown? How much could be revealed while still protecting the dignity of the victim?

That night, the victim appeared to her in a dream and said: “Share it. People need to know.”

Scrolling through her notes, she found a message she had written to herself: “In order to do this work, I had to believe that there is as much goodness in this world as there is evil.”

She paused. “The cruelty is real. But so is human courage. So is love. So is humanity. So is the goodness in people. Hold on to that. Especially now.”