Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Allegations of sexual abuse

Editor's note: This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual violence.

Even amid the maelstrom of opinion, there's little doubt the war in Gaza has sparked a humanitarian crisis. As well as starvation, death and destruction, a pair of reports, both released this week, shine a light on the scale of alleged sexual abuse on October 7, 2023 and beyond.

A two-year investigation by The Civil Commission in Israel, which describes itself as an independent non-governmental group, says it has examined thousands of photographs and videos and interviewed hundreds of witnesses of the October 7 attacks.

Its authors, led by Cochav Elkayam-Levy, said the report was "guided by internationally recognized methodologies for documenting war crimes and sexual violence." It is also endorsed by a number of significant political, legal and human rights figures, including Hillary Clinton and former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler.

It found that Hamas "used sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) deliberately and systematically as an inherent part of a wider strategy of the attack, primarily targeting women and hostages, while minors were also subjected to grave forms of such violence and abuse." 

Hamas has consistently denied such allegations.

Harrowing abuse stories told on video

These acts, the report says, were committed at the Nova Music Festival as well as at military bases and, in some cases, in front of family members. It adds that Hamas and the militias associated with it "used sexual torture to maximize pain and suffering. Victims endured brutal acts, including burning, mutilation, rape, restraining, forced insertion of objects into the genitalia, shootings to the faces and genital area, killings and abuses in front of family members, and executions."

Why is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so hard to resolve?

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The report also features a video where released Israeli hostages recount harrowing stories of their own abuse and that of others. 

"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 Raz Cohen, a survivor from the Nova Music Festival.  

UN doubts full scale will ever be known

A 2024 United Nations report concurred broadly with allegations made by Israel. In it, special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, concluded during a fact-finding mission that there were "reasonable grounds to believe that conflict related sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred." 

Palestinian woman recounts harrowing time in Israeli prison

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Patten's findings were not designed to be investigative, and she visited Israel and the occupied West Bank, but not the Gaza Strip, due to the hostilities.

During a visit to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Patten and her team also found that "Interlocutors raised concerns about cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinians in detention, including various forms of sexual violence in the form of invasive body searches, threats of rape, and prolonged forced nudity, as well as sexual harassment and threats of rape, during house raids and at checkpoints." 

Israel hits out at sexual abuse claims

Such patterns of behavior are also detailed in a recent article by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. It is labeled as an opinion piece but relying on a number of interviews with people from the Palestinian territories.

Kristof describes it as "conversations with 14 men and women who said they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces" as well as "family members, investigators, officials and others" the story details some horrendous abuse.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has rejected the claims as "baseless lies" and "blood libel" reflecting an "anti-Israel campaign."

Children's charity finds widespread sexual abuse

Kristof's report also cites a Save the Children report from 2025 that investigated the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli detention. More than half the children interviewed said "they had either witnessed or experienced sexual violence while in detention" reads the report, before noting that: "The actual figure is likely much higher as incidents of sexual violence are often under reported due to stigma or a sense of shame."

The Save the Children report says forms of abuse included: "being touched or hit on the genitals, being forced to perform humiliating acts while stripped, sexual harassment including threats, and sexual assault. Some of the children consulted said they were threatened with rape. The lawyers consulted reported that many of the children they support have experienced sexual assault, which has included instances of rape."

Such claims were also presented in a report by B'Tselem, the Israeli Center for Human Rights, in August 2024, and by The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in May 2025. Testimonies presented revealed repeated acts of sexual violence by Israeli soldiers or prison guards against Palestinian detainees, employed as a form of punishment. 

Sexual violence as a tool of war   

Whereas the The Civil Commission posits that Hamas uses sexual violence as a tool of war, Kristof's article says that "there is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes" before going on to add that "they have built a security apparatus where sexual violence has become, as a United Nations report put it last year, one of Israel's 'standard operating procedures' and 'a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians.'" 

The difficulty UN special representative Pramila Patten's team found in gathering evidence during such a brutal conflict led her to conclude that the "true prevalence of sexual violence during the 7 October attacks and their aftermath, may take months or years to emerge and may never be fully known." 

While that may well be the case, this week's reports do at least suggest that some victims can at least tell the story of their alleged abuse. 

Edited by: Andreas Illmer, Shani Rozanes