What This Article Is About

This article examines the 300-page report released on May 12, 2026 by the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, titled “Silenced No More: Sexual Terror Unveiled.” The report claims that sexual violence by Hamas was “systematic, widespread, and integral” to the October 7 operation. We will examine who produced this report, how it was built, what happened to the earlier claims it rests upon, and why a state with a documented and ongoing propaganda operation cannot be trusted to be the sole narrator of its own victimhood. We will also present the testimonies of released Israeli hostages who described their treatment in Gaza as humane, given in their own words, to Israeli media. This article does not deny that harm occurred on October 7. This article shows that the Zionist entity has a proven, institutional, state-funded history of weaponizing claims of violence to manufacture global consent for genocide, and that the evidence base underpinning this specific report has been severely and publicly challenged, including by the victims’ own families. THERE WILL BE A MORE COMPREHENSIVE ARTICLE

Terms and Definitions

The Civil Commission is an Israeli “non-governmental” organization. It was established by Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy after the October 7 attack to document alleged war crimes and gender-based violence committed by Hamas, allied Palestinian armed groups, and other participants in the attack.

The word “independent” appears frequently in coverage of this report. It requires examination. An organization founded by an Israeli citizen, funded for Israeli legal and political purposes, receiving its primary evidence from Israeli military and government sources, and operating within the Israeli legal and political framework is not independent in any meaningful sense of the word. It is an Israeli advocacy body, and that is what it should be called.

The 300-page study detailed 13 types of sexual violence during the attack and against hostages, including rape, gang rape, sexual torture and mutilation, executions linked to sexual violence, postmortem sexual abuse, and sexual assaults carried out in the presence of family members, among other acts. It is based on 430 formal and informal interviews, testimonies, and meetings with survivors, witnesses, former hostages, experts, and family members.

The report’s findings could not be independently verified by the Associated Press, and critics have challenged some of Elkayam-Levy’s previous research.

This is not a minor detail. The Associated Press is one of the largest wire services in the world. When the AP states it cannot independently verify a report’s core findings, that is a formal declaration of unverified status. Read that again: the most widely distributed news agency in the world looked at this report and said they cannot confirm what it claims.

Now we must understand why.

The Foundation Was Already Broken

Before there was a 300-page report, there were the initial claims. And those initial claims have a documented record of fabrication, manipulation, and collapse.

The “40 Beheaded Babies” Lie. We have documented this fully in our previous article. The story originated from an extremist Israeli settler and IDF officer, was broadcast without verification, and was retracted by Israeli media itself. The lie served its purpose: it hardened hearts before the bombs fell and became the emotional foundation for every subsequent atrocity claim.

The Gal Abdush Story and the New York Times. The most important piece of evidence used to establish a “pattern” of systematic sexual violence was the New York Times December 2023 investigation, titled “Screams Without Words.” Its central story was the alleged rape of Gal Abdush, referred to as “the woman in the black dress.”

The New York Times said Israeli police believe Gal Abdush was raped. But the only evidence given is a “grainy video” of Gal’s burned corpse, “lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed.” The story blew up in the Times’ face. Surviving family members denied she was raped.

The Abdush family’s brother reiterated that his brother’s wife was not raped and that “the media invented it.” Gal’s sisters also denied allegations of rape. Her sister Tali Barakha posted on Instagram, saying: “No one can know if there was rape or if she was burned while alive. Have you gone mad? I spoke to Nagi personally. At 7 o’clock, Gal was killed by those animals, and they shot her in the heart. Nagi was alive until quarter past eight.”

Consider the mathematics of the timeline the family exposed. The Times fails to mention other text and phone messages that make it almost impossible Gal was raped. She messaged at 6:51 a.m. about intense explosions on the border. Nine minutes later, at 7:00 a.m., Nagi Abdush called his brother Nissim to say Gal was shot and dying. The family’s own testimony asked the obvious question: how could she be captured, raped, fatally shot, and burned in nine minutes while her husband was simultaneously calling his brother with no mention of any assault?

Then the family revealed how the Times obtained their cooperation. The Times reporters “mentioned they want to write a report in memory of Gal, and that’s it. If we knew that the title would be about rape and butchery, we’d never accept that.” It appears that the New York Times manipulated a working-class Mizrahi family in the service of Israeli hasbara in order to score a journalistic achievement, which in reality is nothing more than a repetition of fake news and government propaganda.

One of the reporters working on the “Screams Without Words” investigation was later found to harbor deeply troubling bias. In February 2024, Schwartz was found to have liked incendiary posts on social media, including one calling to “turn the strip into a slaughterhouse” and to “violate any norm, on the way to victory.” The Times launched an investigation.

Furthermore, the same reporter described the tension between her identity and her journalism with her own words: Schwartz had told Keshet 12 in January 2024, “I’m an Israeli, but I also work for New York Times, so all the time I’m in this place between the hammer and the anvil.” Eden Wessely, who filmed Gal Abdush’s body, told Ynet that New York Times co-authors Schwartz and Sella had “called me again and again and explained how important her footage and testimony were to Israeli hasbara.”

The reporters themselves described their own work as serving hasbara. That is the word they used.

ZAKA: The Source That Admitted to Fabricating Stories. The NYT investigation and multiple subsequent reports relied heavily on testimony from ZAKA, the Israeli volunteer organization that collected bodies after October 7.

Gettleman relied extensively for “evidence” on ZAKA, an extremist Jewish group that collects bodies and body parts for burial, and whose leaders have fabricated numerous accounts of atrocities from October 7. A recent investigation by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper accuses ZAKA of using bodies of people killed on October 7 as props for fundraising and that as part of its effort “to get media exposure, ZAKA spread accounts of atrocities that never happened, released sensitive and graphic photos, and acted unprofessionally on the ground.” 

Hadas Ziv, director of ethics and policy at Physicians for Human Rights Israel, admitted credibility problems with sources and that she did not review all available evidence. She was “unaware” numerous sources had fabricated atrocity stories about October 7. Ziv said, “Yeah, that’s a problem,” about a soldier she quotes whose claim of rape was changed by the government. She quoted volunteers from ZAKA, a scandal-plagued organization that collected human remains after October 7, but Ziv did not realize ZAKA openly talks of inventing stories.

This is not a hostile Palestinian source saying ZAKA fabricated stories. This is ZAKA itself, reported on by Israel’s own Haaretz newspaper, openly discussing how it invented atrocity narratives for media exposure and fundraising. And this same ZAKA was a foundational source for every major Western media report on October 7 sexual violence.

The Pregnant Woman Whose Womb Was Cut Open. One of the most horrifying and widely shared claims from October 7 was that a pregnant woman had her womb cut open. It was repeated by politicians and the media worldwide. Elkayam-Levy herself has been the subject of criticism, with a March 2024 report in Yedioth Aharonoth citing unnamed government officials questioning the commission’s structure and the accuracy of some of her early public claims, including a widely debunked account that a pregnant woman had been found with her womb cut open.

The official Israeli list of those killed on October 7 did not include a pregnant woman killed in this manner. The claim was debunked. But it circulated for months before the correction. 

The Two Girls “Found in a Bedroom.” The New York Times report also featured claims about two young girls found showing signs of sexual abuse. Channel 12 published an interview in late February 2024 with the girls’ grandparents, which The Intercept said contradicted the Times reporting that the girls were sexually assaulted and found alone in a bedroom. The grandmother said that the girls “were just shot, nothing else had been done to them” and that the girls were “found between the ‘mamad,’ the house’s safe room, and the dining room.” The New York Times later reported that video evidence contradicted the paramedic’s claims about the girls supposedly being found in Be’eri with their clothes removed showing signs of abuse.

The New York Times itself eventually produced video evidence that contradicted its own original story about these children.

Why the 300-Page Report Cannot Be Taken At Face Value

Now we return to the current 300-page report and we ask the legitimate questions that any serious analysis demands.

Question 1: Who commissioned it?

The Civil Commission was established by an Israeli lawyer who received the Israel Prize, Israel’s highest civilian honor, for this very work. The commission was led by Cochav Elkayam-Levy, an attorney and international law expert who was recently awarded the Israel Prize, Israel’s top civilian honor, for her work. She received the state’s highest recognition while the investigation was still ongoing. This means the Israeli state was not waiting for the conclusions: it was rewarding the process. The investigator received her prize from the entity whose narrative she was building. That is not independence.

Question 2: What is the evidentiary standard?

It is based on 430 formal and informal interviews, testimonies, and meetings with survivors, witnesses, former hostages, experts, and family members.

The mixing of “formal and informal” is significant. Formal testimony has legal weight and legal standards. Informal testimony has neither. When an investigation mixes these categories without specifying what proportion of their 430 “interviews” were formal versus informal, the overall credibility of the evidentiary record is unclear.

Question 3: Has the earlier framework been verified?

In June 2024, The Times published a report stating that investigators believed that Israel’s claims about the scale and the formally sanctioned, systematic nature of sexual assaults did not stand up to scrutiny.

The scale and the systematic nature. These are the two precise claims the new 300-page report restates as its headline conclusion. The Times, whose own December 2023 investigation had been used as evidence, reported in June 2024 that investigators could not substantiate the claim that the violence was systematic and formally ordered. The new report doubles down on exactly what investigators found impossible to verify.

Question Four: When was this report released?

The 300-page report was released on May 12, 2026. The report came as The New York Times published an investigation into what it said was “widespread” sexual violence by Israeli prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators against Palestinian detainees, which was strongly rejected by Israel.

The timing is precise and deliberate. On the day the New York Times published a major investigation into Israeli sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners, the Israeli government-linked Civil Commission released its counter-narrative report. This is not a coincidence. This is the Hasbara machine operating in real time: when evidence of Israeli crimes emerges, flood the news cycle with allegations against the other side so the story is buried. The world spends the next week debating the 300 pages rather than the Israeli guards committing documented sexual assault on Palestinian prisoners.

The Testimonies They Did Not Want You to Hear

Now we present a category of evidence that the Hasbara machine worked actively to suppress: the testimonies of released Israeli hostages who described their treatment in Gaza not as torture and abuse, but as careful and humane.

Yocheved Lifshitz, 85 years old, Kibbutz Nir Oz. Released October 24, 2023.

Yocheved Lifshitz told journalists that she “went through hell” and was beaten on the day she was captured, but that she shook the hand of a Hamas militant as she was returned because she was treated well in captivity.

She held a full press conference. Her words were direct. When asked why she shook the hand of the Hamas fighter, she said: 

“They were gentle with us. Our needs were supplied.” Her daughter Sharone, translating: “My mom is saying that they treat them kindly and provided for them. They prepared for this. They were prepared for a very long time, including the needs of the women.”

Lifshitz described the conditions: 

“We reached a big hall where some 25 kidnapped were concentrated. We laid there on mattresses. They took care of the sanitary situation. A doctor came every two or three days to check on us. A paramedic was there as well and provided some medicine.” 

Her daughter added: 

“She’s telling us about sharing food with the people. When they first arrived, they told them that they are Muslims and they’re not going to hurt them, and that they shared the same food that Hamas was eating.”

What happened when this testimony became public? Israeli propaganda officials are reportedly upset because she said she was treated well. “I’m hearing criticism from sources dealing with Israeli hasbara in recent days. The fact that they allowed Yocheved Lifshitz to make a statement on a live broadcast was a mistake,” said Amichai Stein, a journalist with Israel’s state broadcaster Kan. “It’s uncertain if anyone held a discussion on the topic beforehand and asked themselves all the questions.”

An Israeli state broadcaster journalist described a 85-year-old woman giving her own honest testimony as “a mistake.” The question was not whether she was telling the truth. The question was whether the truth served the narrative.

The event was quickly criticized by some Israeli PR professionals and commentators as a major Israeli misstep and a propaganda victory for Hamas.

Her truthful testimony was called a “propaganda victory” for the other side. The Hasbara officials were not upset that she lied. They were upset that she told the truth.

Israeli Channel 13 military correspondent Alon Ben David. Speaking after the first major hostage release in November 2023.

Testimonies collected from Israelis released by Hamas indicate that they were treated “extremely well” and that they were “not subjected to any kind of violence or insult.” The military correspondent for Israeli Channel 13, Alon Ben David, said on Monday that he had spoken with some of the released captives. All apparently said that the Hamas fighters “have gathered the members of each kibbutz together, which gave them a greater sense of comfort.”

Ben David said: 

“I spoke to them and they all repeated the same story: Hamas men took care of them, fed them and tried to provide them with their medications.” He also said that Hamas members “kept them together with members of their Kibbutzim, they organised lectures, interacted together, and even watched YouTube.”

Another speaker on the same show said that they should all feel “ashamed” of themselves, because the testimonies given by the recently released Israeli captives are exactly the same as the testimony given by Lifshitz. “She was telling the truth exactly as those captives said. I sat with them and heard the exact same story from them,” confirmed Ben David.

This is not a Palestinian news source. This is Israel’s Channel 13. This is their own military correspondent. These are the released Israelis themselves, speaking to their own journalist, telling the same consistent story that the Israeli propaganda machine spent months trying to bury.

Putting It Together: The Structure of the Lie

The pattern is now clear.

The Zionist entity needed to justify the genocide of Gaza to its own public and to the Western world. The genocide required consent. Consent required dehumanization. Dehumanization required atrocity narratives. Atrocity narratives were manufactured, deployed, and laundered through Western media. When the individual stories fell apart, the institutional machinery produced larger and larger documents to absorb the collapses. The 300-page report is the latest version of this machinery.

The structure works as follows. First, make the initial extreme claim with maximum emotion, the beheaded babies, the pregnant woman, the mass rapes. Second, allow the claims to circulate globally before any verification. Third, watch some stories fall apart, but by then the emotional landscape has been set. Fourth, produce institutional documents that reference the earlier stories without fully accounting for their collapse. Fifth, release the documents at strategically timed moments, in this case the day a major investigation drops on Israeli abuse of Palestinian prisoners. Sixth, label anyone who questions the methodology as an antisemite or a denier.

Jeremy Scahill wrote: 

“At the center of Israel’s information warfare campaign is a tactical mission to dehumanize Palestinians and to flood the public discourse with a stream of false, unsubstantiated, and unverifiable allegations.”

This is the machine. And it has run without serious institutional challenge for over two years while over 70,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women, children, and elderly, have been killed.

The Obligation of Unity: The Khilafah as the Counter-Narrative Institution

Now we turn to what this means for the Ummah and what the Ummah must do.

The Zionist entity does not fear individuals fact-checking their claims on social media. It fears an institution that can stand in international forums with authority, diplomatic weight, and the political backing of a unified Muslim world, and say: these claims are false, here is the evidence, and you will be held accountable.

Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, says in Surah Al-Hujurat, ayah 6:

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا إِن جَاءَكُمْ فَاسِقٌ بِنَبَإٍ فَتَبَيَّنُوا أَن تُصِيبُوا قَوْمًا بِجَهَالَةٍ فَتُصْبِحُوا عَلَىٰ مَا فَعَلْتُمْ نَادِمِينَ

“O you who have believed, if there comes to you a disobedient one with information, investigate, lest you harm a people out of ignorance and become, over what you have done, regretful.”

This ayah is the Quranic standard for epistemology. Before acting on information, before endorsing a narrative, before accepting a claim, the Muslim is commanded to investigate and verify. When the Zionist entity releases a 300-page document, the Muslim response is not automatic acceptance and is not automatic rejection. It is an investigation. And the investigation, as we have shown, reveals that the evidentiary foundation of this document rests on earlier claims that were fabricated, debunked, or denied by the victims’ own families, that the organization producing it received the state’s highest award before concluding its work, that the AP cannot independently verify its claims, and that Israeli hostages themselves gave consistent testimony of humane treatment that the Israeli propaganda apparatus described as “a mistake.”

The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, said:

“كَفَى بِالْمَرْءِ كَذِبًا أَنْ يُحَدِّثَ بِكُلِّ مَا سَمِعَ”

“It is sufficient for a person to be called a liar that he narrates everything he hears.” (Sahih Muslim)

Narrating everything you hear without verification is itself a form of lying. When Muslims share unverified Israeli atrocity claims because they are afraid of seeming to “defend” the enemy, they are violating this hadith. The duty of the Muslim is truth, regardless of whose truth it serves. And the truth, in this case, is that a state with a documented $2 million bot army, with a media arm that produced the “40 beheaded babies” story, with ZAKA volunteers admitting to fabricating narratives, does not deserve the presumption of credibility simply because its document is 300 pages long.

Now look at the deeper obligation. Why do these lies work on a global scale? Because there is no Khalifah to stand before Israil. There is no unified Muslim state that can fund independent forensic investigators, protect witnesses, and bring its own legal submissions to international courts with the weight of 1.8 billion people behind them.

Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, says in Surah Al-Nisa, ayah 75:

وَمَا لَكُمْ لَا تُقَاتِلُونَ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ وَالْمُسْتَضْعَفِينَ مِنَ الرِّجَالِ وَالنِّسَاءِ وَالْوِلْدَانِ الَّذِينَ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَا أَخْرِجْنَا مِنْ هَٰذِهِ الْقَرْيَةِ الظَّالِمِ أَهْلُهَا

“And what is wrong with you that you do not fight in the cause of Allah and in support of the oppressed among men, women, and children who say: Our Lord, take us out of this city of oppressive people.”

This ayah does not say: fight only with bullets. Fighting in the cause of Allah and in defense of the oppressed includes fighting with the truth when it is being buried. The Palestinian woman whose body was filmed, whose death was weaponized by a state propaganda machine to manufacture consent for genocide, deserves the truth to be told about how her story was handled. The Palestinian men and children dying under bombs justified by these unverified claims deserve the same defense.

The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, said:

“مَنْ رَأَى مِنْكُمْ مُنْكَرًا فَلْيُغَيِّرْهُ بِيَدِهِ فَإِنْ لَمْ يَسْتَطِعْ فَبِلِسَانِهِ فَإِنْ لَمْ يَسْتَطِعْ فَبِقَلْبِهِ وَذَلِكَ أَضْعَفُ الْإِيمَانِ”

“Whoever among you sees a munkar, let him change it with his hand. If he cannot, then with his tongue. If he cannot, then with his heart, and that is the weakest of faith.” (Sahih Muslim, 49)

Exposing lies is changing a munkar with the tongue. It is an act of faith. It is an obligation. And the deepest form of this obligation is to establish the political structure that allows the hand to act when the tongue is not enough. The Khalifah is that hand.

The Khilafah, when it is re-established, will have the political and institutional power to do what no individual Muslim blogger or journalist can do alone: send independent investigators to Gaza before the evidence is destroyed, present verified forensic reports without going through the Israeli military’s channels, fund counter-evidence institutions, protect whistleblowers, and stand on the world stage with the full weight of the Ummah’s unity behind every word.

Until that day, our obligation is to be the tongue. To investigate. To verify. To speak. To refuse to allow a propaganda machine to turn the bodies of the dead, Muslim and Jewish alike, into instruments of genocide.

The truth does not fear investigation. The Hasbara machine does. That asymmetry is itself the proof.

وَقُلْ جَاءَ الْحَقُّ وَزَهَقَ الْبَاطِلُ إِنَّ الْبَاطِلَ كَانَ زَهُوقًا

“And say: Truth has come and falsehood has perished. Indeed falsehood is ever bound to perish.” (Surah Al-Isra, 81)

W’Allahu Alam, Allah Knows Best

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