The Evidence: “Silenced No More”

Greg Bouwer
IINZ

For nearly two years, discussion surrounding the sexual atrocities committed on October 7 has unfolded amid denial, minimisation, political discomfort, and evidentiary confusion.

Now comes perhaps the most comprehensive attempt yet to systematically document what occurred.

The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children has released a 300-page report titled Silenced No More: Sexual Terror Unveiled – The Untold Atrocities of October 7 and Against Hostages in Captivity. 

The report is a substantial evidentiary and legal undertaking built over two years using methodologies associated with war crimes documentation and international legal analysis.

According to the commission, the investigation included:

• more than 430 interviews, testimonies, and meetings with survivors, witnesses, returned hostages, experts, and family members,
• over 10,000 photographs and video segments,
• more than 1,800 cumulative hours of visual analysis,
• extensive cross-referencing and geolocation-supported analysis,
• site visits,
• and the construction of a dedicated evidentiary archive. 

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

That conclusion matters because the report is not attempting merely to catalogue brutality. It is attempting to establish operational pattern, evidentiary coherence, and historical permanence.

Beyond Isolated Incidents

One of the report’s most important contributions is its rejection of the idea that the atrocities constituted disconnected acts committed by rogue individuals amid battlefield chaos.

Instead, the Commission identifies 13 recurring operational patterns of sexual and gender-based violence appearing across multiple attack locations and phases of captivity. 

These include:

• rape and gang rape,
• sexual torture and mutilation,
• forced nudity,
• public humiliation,
• filming and dissemination of abuse,
• threats of forced marriage,
• and sexual violence against men and boys. 

The report also documents postmortem sexual abuse and desecration of bodies, a category of violence that occupies a distinct place within international humanitarian law because it targets not only victims themselves, but the dignity of the dead and the moral boundaries governing human treatment even in war. 

Taken collectively, the commission argues these patterns demonstrate operational coherence rather than random brutality.

In practical terms, the report asserts that sexual violence functioned not as an accidental byproduct of the attack, but as part of the architecture of terror itself.

The Weaponisation of Visibility

Perhaps the report’s most chilling contribution concerns the deliberate use of digital dissemination as part of the violence itself.

The perpetrators filmed killings, humiliation, abuse, and sexual violence, then circulated the material through social media and victims’ own digital platforms. In multiple documented cases, perpetrators reportedly used victims’ own phones, messaging accounts, and social media networks to distribute footage directly to family members and contacts, transforming personal digital systems into instruments of psychological warfare.

The commission describes this as transforming “visibility itself” into a weapon. 

This observation is important because it reflects how modern terrorism increasingly operates simultaneously in both physical and informational spaces. Violence is no longer merely committed. It is staged, recorded, amplified, and psychologically distributed to audiences far beyond the immediate victims.

October 7 was therefore not only an assault on bodies and communities. It was also an assault on the psychological fabric of Israeli society itself.

“Kinocide”

The report also introduces a new conceptual framework: “kinocide.” 

The Commission uses the term to describe the deliberate targeting of familial relationships as instruments through which suffering could be amplified. In several documented cases, victims were assaulted or humiliated in front of family members, while relatives were forced to witness or participate in acts of degradation against one another. 

The significance of this concept lies in recognising that the destruction inflicted on October 7 was not merely individualised violence. It was relational violence.

Families themselves became targets.

This matters legally, historically, and psychologically. Modern atrocity scholarship increasingly recognises that terror movements often seek not merely to kill individuals, but to rupture the social bonds that sustain communal life. The commission’s framework attempts to situate October 7 within that broader understanding.

Whether “kinocide” ultimately becomes an enduring legal category remains uncertain. But the attempt itself reflects an important analytical insight: atrocities often operate through relationships as much as through direct physical harm.

The Historical and Legal Context

The report explicitly situates its findings within the history of conflict-related sexual violence seen in Bosnia, Rwanda, and against Yazidi communities. 

The importance of this comparison lies not merely in historical similarity, but in jurisprudential development. The International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda helped establish that rape and sexual violence in conflict are not merely incidental byproducts of war, but can constitute instruments of genocide, crimes against humanity, torture, and ethnic persecution.

Those tribunals fundamentally altered how international law understands conflict-related sexual violence.

The Civil Commission’s report clearly situates October 7 within this evolving legal framework.

Whether international institutions ultimately adopt every legal conclusion advanced by the report remains to be seen. But the commission’s work seeks to ensure that the atrocities are documented within the broader jurisprudential evolution surrounding sexual violence in armed conflict.

Recognition and the Historical Record

One of the recurring themes throughout the report is the importance of recognition.

The commission repeatedly frames documentation as an act against erasure. Its authors argue that victims of sexual violence are often dependent on others to preserve testimony, establish factual records, and pursue justice on their behalf. 

This is especially true where victims were murdered, bodies destroyed, or trauma fragmented testimony.

The report therefore serves multiple purposes simultaneously:

• evidentiary,
• historical,
• legal,
• archival,
• and moral.

It is attempting not only to document what happened, but to preserve collective memory against denial, distortion, political discomfort, public fatigue, and eventual historical erosion.

Because atrocities do not disappear only through denial.

They also disappear through distraction, exhaustion, moral desensitisation, and the gradual weakening of public attention over time.

A Document That Will Matter

The long-term significance of Silenced No More will likely extend beyond immediate political debate.

The report has already assembled engagement and endorsement from international legal scholars, former prosecutors, diplomats, experts in atrocity documentation, and specialists in international humanitarian law. 

Its archival work may prove particularly important in future legal proceedings, academic research, historical analysis, and investigations into the use of sexual violence by terrorist organisations.

But perhaps most importantly, the report represents an insistence that these crimes enter the permanent historical record in a structured, methodologically rigorous form.

The scale, rigor, and evidentiary ambition of this report ensure that it will become part of the enduring historical and legal record surrounding October 7.

That alone makes it impossible to ignore.

This article was originally published by the Israel Institute of New Zealand.