The Civil Commission

Background

The Civil Commission was founded by Cochav Elkayam-Levy in the weeks following the October 7 attacks on Israel.^[2][9][4] According to the organization, its establishment was a response to what its founders characterized as an absence of immediate engagement by international institutions on the subject of sexual violence and other crimes against women and children committed during the attacks.^[9][10] Elkayam-Levy is a lecturer in international relations at Hebrew University and an expert specializing in international law, gender and human rights.^[11][12][13] After serving in the IDF spokesperson unit, she studied law at Bar-Ilan University.^[13] While a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, she published a paper providing legal guidance for force feeding prisoners on hunger strike.^[11][14][15] She and her uncle Yaakov Bardugo are allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.^[11][16][14] According to The Times, Elkayam-Levy is "the most prominent public voice on the sexual violence of October 7."^[11]

Early work

In October 2023, Elkayam-Levy and other researchers submitted a letter to UN Women^[7][17] and, on October 20, 2023, submitted a preliminary legal report to the United Nations.^[18] That report was updated on November 1, 2023.^{[citation needed]} In the weeks after the October 7 attacks, the Commission began creating an archive of videos, photographs, and other materials documenting allegations of violence against women and children on October 7. The commission also collected testimonies of survivors, ZAKA emergency responders, and confessions of Palestinian militants interrogated by the Israeli military. Based on the evidence gathered, the Commission concluded that Hamas systematically committed widespread sexual violence on October 7. Elkayam-Levy told Haaretz: "The torture of women was weaponized in the destruction of communities, in sowing general horror and in breaking the spirit of the Israelis."^[13]

In the beginning, the commission consisted of 15 volunteers, including legal scholar Yifat Biton.^[13] Legal scholar Ruth Halperin-Kaddari was initially involved in the Commission but later left due to her concerns about Elkayam-Levy's methodology.^[11] According to Halperin-Kaddari, Elkayam-Levy spread misinformation about the October 7 attacks, including photographs of slain female Kurdish soldiers she misidentified as Israelis.^[11] Additionally, Elkayam-Levy repeated false claims made by ZAKA about a fetus cut out of a pregnant woman.^[11][12][19] In response to allegations of spreading misinformation, a spokesman for the Commission referred to the challenges of working in wartime conditions and stated that Elkayam-Levy stopped talking about the story after finding out it was untrue.^[11][19]

In March 2024, Elkayam-Levy was awarded the Israel Prize for her work with the Civil Commission.^[11][12] The award announcement mentioned that she wrote a report about Hamas atrocities.^[20] Channel 13 journalist Raviv Drucker published an article alleging that Elkayam-Levy had not in fact published a report on the subject but only a brief letter.^[16][12] The Ministry of Education stated that Elkayam-Levy received the award for her work to raise awareness and not for writing a report.^[12] Elkayam-Levy stated that a comprehensive report documenting the crimes committed by Palestinian militants was in progress.^[16][12] Around the same time, a Ynet article cited a government official stating that the Civil Commission consists solely of Elkayam-Levy and that she had solicited millions of dollars in donations.^[12][21] Additionally the government official characterized her work as unreliable.^[12]

2026 Civil Commission report

On 12 May 2026, the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children published Silenced No More, a report on sexual and gender-based violence during the 7 October 2023 attacks and against hostages held in Gaza by Palestinian militants including Hamas. The report was based on a two-year investigation, including more than 10,000 photographs and video segments, more than 1,800 hours of visual material, and over 430 testimonies and interviews with survivors, witnesses, released hostages, experts and family members.^[22]

The report concluded that sexual and gender-based violence was “systematic, widespread, and integral” to the attack and its aftermath. It identified thirteen recurring patterns of abuse, including rape and gang rape, sexual torture and mutilation, forced nudity, executions linked to sexual violence, and abuse during captivity. The commission argued that the repetition of these patterns across several locations, including the Nova music festival, roads, homes, kibbutzim, military bases and places of captivity in Gaza, showed that the violence was not a set of isolated incidents but part of a broader method of terror and humiliation.^[23]

Le Monde described the report as the most comprehensive investigation to date into sexual violence committed during the attacks. It noted that the commission attempted to reconstruct events site by site, while also highlighting the evidentiary difficulties created by the scale of the attack, the destruction and burning of bodies, the chaotic conditions after the massacres, and the limited collection of forensic evidence during the initial recovery of victims.^[24]

The report also examined testimony from released hostages, including accounts of sexual assault, threats of sexual violence and sexualised humiliation during captivity. It stated that men and children were also victims of sexual and gender-based violence. The Associated Press reported that it could not independently verify the commission’s findings, while noting that the United Nations had previously found reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred during the 7 October attacks, and that the International Criminal Court prosecutor had alleged responsibility by Hamas leaders for rape and other forms of sexual violence as crimes against humanity.^[25]

The Civil Commission characterised the documented acts as war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture, persecution, terrorism-linked sexual and gender-based violence, and genocidal acts under international law.^[26] The report’s conclusions add to earlier findings by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel and the Dinah Project, while the extent, organisation and legal classification of the crimes remain subjects for judicial determination.^[27]