Israel's October 7 Rape Hoax Gets a Reboot, the Hasbara still Doesn’t Justify the Ongoing Genocide

Last week, major media outlets across the West did what they always do when Israel needs cover: they amplified a report without scrutiny.

The "Civil Commission" — an Israeli NGO founded by legal scholar Cochav Elkayam-Levy — released Silenced No More, a roughly 300-page report claiming that sexual violence was "systematic, widespread, and integral" to the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack. The New York Times, Le Monde, CBC, Euronews, and others ran the story. Headlines declared it "landmark." The tone was unanimous: this was the definitive proof the world had been waiting for.

Except it's built on the same rubble as every previous iteration of this narrative — discredited witnesses, debunked claims, a serially unreliable author, and a report that cannot be independently verified.

Even the Associated Press — which ran the story — admitted it "could not independently verify the commission's findings."

CBC went further, noting that "critics have challenged some of Elkayam-Levy's previous research."

That's putting it mildly.

Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, founder of the Civil Commission, at a press conference in Jerusalem in 2024. Elkayam-Levy authored the Silenced No More report on October 7 sexual violence, which has been criticized for relying on debunked sources.

The Author Has a Misinformation Problem

Cochav Elkayam-Levy is not a neutral investigator. She is an ally of Benjamin Netanyahu — she and her uncle Yaakov Bardugo are both close to the Israeli Prime Minister, according to The Times. She served in the IDF spokesperson unit. Her organization has collected millions in donations.

She also has a documented history of spreading false information about October 7.

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an internationally recognized Israeli legal scholar and women's rights advocate who was initially involved with the Civil Commission, left the organization over Elkayam-Levy's methodology. According to Halperin-Kaddari, Elkayam-Levy spread misinformation about the October 7 attacks — including presenting photographs of slain female Kurdish soldiers as Israeli victims of sexual violence at the Nova music festival.

Elkayam-Levy also repeated the widely debunked ZAKA claim that a pregnant woman's fetus had been cut from her womb by Hamas militants. That story — one of the most circulated atrocity narratives of October 7 — has been thoroughly discredited. No forensic evidence ever supported it. It was a fabrication.

An Israeli government official, cited by Ynet, went further: the Civil Commission "consists solely of Elkayam-Levy," and characterized her work as "unreliable." She was awarded the Israel Prize in March 2024 — but Channel 13 journalist Raviv Drucker revealed that, at the time of the award, she hadn't actually published any report, only a brief letter to the UN.

Now, two years later, she's released the 300-page version. The media is treating it as gospel.

Recycled Debunked Witnesses

The Civil Commission's report rests on testimonies and confessions from the same pool of sources that have already been exposed as unreliable.

ZAKA volunteers, whose accounts formed the backbone of early sexual violence claims, have been caught spreading false information. Chaim Otmazgin, a ZAKA commander, tearfully told Israeli lawmakers and journalists that he found a teenage girl with her pants pulled down — evidence, he said, of sexual assault. The story went global. Months later, ZAKA discovered that Israeli soldiers had dragged the girl's body across the room to check for explosives. Her pants came down in the process. Otmazgin corrected himself — but by then, the story had done its work.

That's the thing about atrocity propaganda: the correction never travels as far as the lie.

Forced confessions from Palestinian detainees form another pillar of the report. The IDF released video footage of Manar Mahmoud Muhammad Qassem, a captured Palestinian, allegedly confessing to rape at kibbutz Nir Oz. The video was deleted and reposted multiple times after commentators noted inconsistencies in the testimony and subtitle mistranslations. The alleged confession was first reported in December 2023. Despite Qassem providing a "detailed description" of the victim, Israeli forces have never identified the woman he allegedly assaulted.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both refused to consider such interrogation footage credible, given Israel's documented history of torturing Palestinian detainees. Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at HRW, stated that the organization "does not rely on, nor consider credible, accounts recorded in videos of interrogations of detained Palestinians" given "Israel's decades-long track record of mistreating and torturing Palestinian detainees."

The men in these videos are bloodied, wincing in pain, speaking under military interrogation. This is not evidence. This is theater.

No Evidence, No Cases, No Forensics

The most damning fact is one that mainstream coverage consistently buries: no criminal case for sexual violence from October 7 has ever been filed.

In January 2025, Moran Gaz, a former lead prosecutor in Israel's Southern District Prosecutor's Office and member of Team 7.10 — the unit responsible for cases involving captured Palestinians linked to the attacks — disclosed in an interview with Ynet that her department had found no evidence of sexual violence.

"In the end, we don't have any complainants," Gaz stated. "What was presented in the media compared to what will eventually come together will be entirely different."

Her office approached women's rights organizations seeking cooperation. They reported that "no one had approached them."

No forensic investigation was conducted at the attack sites. Bodies were not properly photographed, preserved, or examined. No rape kits were processed. The UN, Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, and the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel have all documented this failure. Morgue officials stated they could not designate individual cases of rape due to a lack of physical proof.

The UN's own Commission of Inquiry found "reasonable grounds" to believe some sexual violence occurred — but also found no credible evidence that Palestinian militants received direct orders to commit sexual violence, and noted that some allegations were false. It stated it could not independently verify allegations of rape due to Israel's obstruction of its investigation.

Palestinians walk through the devastation of Khan Younis after Israeli forces withdrew in April 2024. While Western media amplified unverified atrocity claims about October 7, the actual genocide in Gaza continued with near-total impunity.

The Function of the Narrative

None of this means sexual violence didn't happen on October 7. In the chaos of any military operation, individual crimes occur. What's at issue is the systematic, state-driven manufacturing of an atrocity narrative — one designed not to deliver justice, but to manufacture consent for genocide.

The "mass rape" story serves a specific political function. It transforms a military operation by a resistance movement into a civilizational horror story. It renders nuance impossible. It makes every Palestinian in Gaza a legitimate target — because if "they" are capable of such depravity, then anything done to "them" is justified.

This is not speculation. The timeline speaks for itself:

• Israel's assault on Gaza has killed over 55,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children.
• Israel faces genocide proceedings at the International Court of Justice.
• The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
• Israel has systematically obstructed international investigations while simultaneously demanding the world accept its unverified claims at face value.

Every few months, the narrative gets a reboot. A new report. A new headline cycle. The same recycled claims. The same credulous coverage. The same result: more cover for more killing.

Silenced No More is not a document. It's a weapon — dressed in the language of human rights, built on the rubble of debunked claims, and delivered to a press corps that knows better but publishes anyway.

The rape hoax isn't just a lie about October 7. It's the engine that keeps the genocide running.