The Dinah Project report

No more gaslighting and denial; the evidence of sexual assault on 7 October is conclusive

Warning: this article deals with graphic issues of rape and sexual abuse.

I have seen things no one should ever have to see. As the rapporteur for a visit of retired senior military officers to Israel, I was given access to the 7 October massacre evidence at an IDF base in Glilot. The evidence went beyond the infamous 49-minute video. I have seen photographs so graphic and horrifying that they made me physically recoil. Even now, simply recalling those images makes my throat tighten and the hairs on my arms stand on end. Bodies of women naked, mutilated, and bound in unspeakable ways. In interviews with UK media, I was unable to describe these scenes in detail. They were too graphic for public description before the watershed hour.

On social media, I learned there was no point in sharing what I saw. Every time I try to speak about the sexual atrocities Hamas committed on 7 October, a pro-Hamas mob descends with jeers and accusations, claiming it was all “Zionist propaganda.” They have been quite happy to justify the slaughter of innocents that day, but for 21 months, this sea of bots, fake accounts and Hamas fellow travellers smeared survivors and first responders as liars. For 21 months, they demanded “proof” of the rapes and tortures, then sneered at any evidence as fake.

Well, now they can no longer deny it. A comprehensive new report released this week by a team of top Israeli legal and gender experts, The Dinah Project, has laid out the truth in excruciating, documented detail. Its title is “A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond,” and it unequivocally confirms what many of us already knew: Hamas systematically used rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war during the 7 October massacre. The evidence compiled is overwhelming, and it shatters the lie that these atrocities were mere rumours or Israeli fabrications. This report tells the truth; a truth that is both awful to confront and impossible to deny.

The Dinah Project was established in the aftermath of 7 October by five Israeli senior jurists and experts on gender-based violence. For nearly two years, they have meticulously collected every piece of evidence related to the sexual crimes that took place during Hamas’s assault and its aftermath. The result is an 80-page report described by its authors as “the most comprehensive legal analysis to date” of the sexual and gender-based crimes committed on 7 October and against Israeli hostages thereafter. It introduces a new legal and evidentiary framework to prosecute these crimes as crimes against humanity, and it clarifies what truly transpired.

The findings confirm the horror that I had been aware of for over a year, having been privileged to meet some of the authors. According to the report, sexual violence by Hamas was neither isolated nor incidental; it was intentional, widespread, and systematic. The attacks on 7 October were coordinated to maximise terror and humiliation on Israeli civilians, employing rape and other forms of sexual torture as tactical weapons of war. This conclusion carries significant weight; it indicates these acts were not the reckless actions of a few individuals but part of a planned strategy to dehumanise and terrify a population. From ISIS’s genocide of Yazidis to Boko Haram’s kidnappings, we have seen sexual violence recognised as a weapon of warfare in other conflict zones. Now we understand that Hamas belongs in that same hall of shame.

You should read the report yourself, if you can bring yourself to do so. I will not cover the findings in detail here, but sexual atrocities were documented at at least six locations on 7 October: the Nova music festival, Route 232, Nahal Oz military base, and the communities of Re’im, Nir Oz, and Kfar Aza. In each of these places, Hamas terrorists used rape and sexual violence as part of their attack strategy, targeting both women and men. Most victims did not live to tell their stories; many were murdered during or after the assaults. Others remain too traumatised to speak. As the report notes, sexual violence in war is often a “perfect crime”. The perpetrators either kill their victims or rely on their silence, born of trauma and shame. This has made gathering evidence extraordinarily difficult, but not impossible.

Despite these challenges, overwhelming evidence has been compiled. The Dinah Project compiled extensive testimony and forensic data, including survivor accounts, eyewitness reports, first responder statements, and visual documentation. Seventeen eyewitnesses described gang rapes, sexual mutilation, and victims left naked, bound, and brutalised. Medical teams at the Shura morgue recorded genital injuries, including gunshot wounds, and signs of torture too graphic to describe. Hamas’s own GoPro footage and intercepted communications captured moments of rape and sadistic boasting. Distinct patterns emerged: victims were raped, mutilated, executed, humiliated. The horror did not end on 7 October: in captivity, male and female hostages were groped, stripped, threatened with rape, and subjected to sexualised humiliation over weeks and months.

All of this leads to an unavoidable conclusion: Hamas committed organised, intentional sexual atrocities on October 7 as part of its assault. These acts were not random incidents by crazed individuals; they were integral to the operation's overall strategy. The terrorists were motivated by an extreme genocidal ideology that utterly dehumanised Jews, seeing Jewish women’s bodies as just another battlefield. By weaponising rape, they sought not only to kill, but to destroy the dignity and soul of a people. This was a war crime, systematically planned and approved, and it must be treated as such by the world.

Yet, astonishingly, for the past 21 months, many people have refused to accept that any of this happened. 21 months of denial and gaslighting the victims and those of us who have witnessed the evidence firsthand.

From Hamas’s official statements to Twitter activists in the West, there has been a relentless campaign to deny, dismiss, or downplay the accounts of rape and sexual torture on 7 October. Hamas spokesmen have outright denied any sexual crimes on that day, absurdly claiming their fighters did no such thing. Their supporters and apologists amplified these denials. We heard it all: “There’s no proof!”, “It’s Israeli propaganda!”, “They made up mass rape to justify bombing Gaza.”

I experienced this backlash firsthand whenever I attempted to discuss it. On social media, the denialism was rabid. Trolls would swarm, accusing anyone sharing accounts of Hamas rapes of lying or spreading “Islamophobic” tropes. It was a grotesque inversion of reality: they were defending or ignoring actual rapists and murderers, while painting the victims and truth-tellers as the villains. The cruelty of this denial cannot be overstated. Imagine surviving a rape, or knowing your daughter was raped and butchered, and then seeing swathes of people essentially say “Nah, we don’t buy it. Didn’t happen.” It is a form of gaslighting on a massive scale, adding fresh trauma onto the existing trauma of survivors and the bereaved.

Why were so many so keen to deny the rapes? Because acknowledging these atrocities would shatter their narrative. If they admitted Hamas terrorists brutally raped and mutilated Jews on 7 October, then they would have to face the true barbarity of that day and a barbarity that undermines any attempt to romanticise or justify Hamas’s actions. Acknowledging the truth would also humanise the Israeli victims in a way that some anti-Israel activists did not want. It is much easier for them to chant slogans when they convince themselves that stories of raped women are just propaganda.

The Dinah Project report explicitly addresses this issue. It exists to set the record straight, to put the facts in black and white so that no one can continue to pretend these crimes did not occur. It replaces lies and doubts with facts, data, and eyewitness testimony.

Reading through its pages, I felt both vindication and raw anger.

Vindication, because finally here was a definitive, meticulously researched document that confirmed what I and others have been saying: yes, it happened. The rapes happened. The sexual torture occurred. The evidence is there.

Anger, because none of this should have been necessary. The crimes themselves were ghastly enough; having to fight to convince the world that it took place is a second injustice. These victims existed, and their suffering was real. To restore their dignity, we must first speak the truth about what was done to them.

Some ask: if these atrocities were real, why did Israel not immediately flood the media with proof? The answer is evident to all but the pro-Hamas ghouls on social media. The Israeli authorities did possess extensive evidence, but sharing it publicly was a deeply fraught decision. Out of basic human decency and respect for the dead, Israel chose not to release the most graphic images and footage to the general public. Think about what that would entail: broadcasting pictures of Israeli women who had been raped, mutilated, and butchered. These are someone’s daughters, wives, and mothers. Plastering their violated bodies on the internet or TV would not only be incredibly traumatic for their families, but also a post-mortem violation of the victims themselves. Israeli officials rightly worried that publicising such images would be too graphic, too disrespectful to the dead and the survivors, trying to rebuild their lives, not to mention deeply traumatising for the wider public.

When I visited the evidence room in Glilot, it was in a controlled setting. Retired military senior leaders were shown the raw footage and photos behind closed doors. There was zero doubt among those who saw it that these horrors occurred. I saw hardened former soldiers leaving the room sickened and silenced, their faces etched with shock.

Israel showed restraint to maintain some dignity for the victims. It is a cruel irony: that very restraint was cynically exploited by the deniers, who pointed to the lack of publicly available gore as “proof” that nothing happened. In reality, the evidence was always there. It was just handled responsibly, not sensationally.

Now, however, the truth is out in a way that can be shared with the world’s general audience. The Dinah Project report provides detailed descriptions and aggregated data that convey the scale and nature of the sexual violence without splashing explicit gore all over social media. It allows us to discuss the facts in a dignified manner, grounded in research and testimony. There is no longer any excuse for journalists, diplomats, or activists to parrot Hamas’s denials. The evidence is meticulously documented by a panel of legal experts and partially funded by the UK government (hardly an Israeli propaganda outfit). This report is the answer to anyone who still sneers “Where’s the evidence?” when confronted with the rapes of 7 October. Here it is, in black and white. Read it and weep (if you have a soul).

This is a personal issue for me, as it should be for anyone with a conscience. I am not Israeli, but as a human being, as a man, as a former soldier and writer about war who stood on that charred ground in the Gaza Periphery and later held back tears talking with survivors and hostage families, I feel an obligation to amplify their truth. We must ensure that the rape and sexual torture of 7 October are recognised globally for what they were: crimes against humanity. The dehumanisation that Hamas practised, in which Jewish civilians were not only to be killed, but degraded most intimately, needs to be utterly condemned by every decent person, no matter their politics on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Now the question is: what will the world do about it? Acknowledging the truth is the first step. Next must come accountability. No Hamas fighter who took part in the 7 October invasion should escape justice, even if their individual rape victim did not survive to testify against them. The patterns and evidence are enough to indict them as a group for sexual war crimes. The report also pushes for international bodies to step up: it calls on the UN Secretary-General to officially blacklist Hamas as an organisation that uses sexual violence as a weapon of war. (Incredibly, that has not happened yet; a scandal in its own right.) It lays out a roadmap for prosecuting these crimes in forums such as the International Criminal Court. In short, it demands justice.

I am outraged that it took this long and this much effort. I am furious at the chorus of denial that forced survivors to scream into a void for months. I take some solace in knowing that the facts have finally pierced the lies of denial. To those who still want to avert their eyes or peddle conspiracy theories: shame on you. To those who bravely gathered this evidence and spoke out, the Dinah Project team, the survivors who broke their silence, the first responders who testified to what they found: thank you. You have done a service not just to Israel, but to humanity.

In the biblical story, Dinah was a woman who survived a horrific rape, and her brothers sought justice (albeit violently) against the perpetrators. Today, the Dinah Project carries on that legacy in a more enlightened way, through truth and law. Now that the truth is in the open, we must not let it be ignored. The innocents of 7 October deserve to be remembered in full: not only how they died, but how they suffered. We owe it to them to be outraged and to ensure that never again will such barbarity be waved away or denied.

The evidence is here; the world must face it. For the sake of our shared humanity, we must hold the perpetrators of these horrors to account, however long it takes. Anything less would be an unforgivable betrayal of the victims and of truth itself.