EN / HE
Silenced No More
Hon. Irwin Cotler
Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
In an age of resurgent antisemitism and accelerating atrocity, we bear witness to one of the most harrowing chapters of our time: the systematic perpetration of sexual violence during the barbaric onslaught of October 7th. That day marked not only the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust - of horrors too terrible to be believed but not too terrible to have happened - but a calculated campaign of sexual terror that was intended to punish, degrade, and dehumanize its victims. It was an assault on human dignity in its most intimate and devastating forms.
Nor did the horror end on October 7th. For the hostages taken into Gaza, the atrocities became a continuing crime. Women and men, including the elderly and the very young, were subjected to ongoing sexual violence, threats of rape, humiliation, and psychological terror in conditions of enforced disappearance. Families were separated, basic medical care was denied, and the bodies and minds of the hostages were weaponized as instruments of coercion and propaganda. Hostage-taking is itself a grave breach of international law; when compounded by sexual torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, it becomes an emblematic example of the cruelty this report seeks to document and condemn.
Sexual violence was not incidental to the October 7th attacks; it was central. Women and girls, and, in many cases, men and boys, were subjected to rape, sexualized torture, mutilation, forced nudity, and desecration of bodies. Parents were murdered in front of their children; siblings assaulted in front of one another; victims stripped, violated, filmed, and displayed. These were not crimes of passion: they were coordinated and orchestrated to exacerbate the cruelty of crimes that are sexual in nature.
This report is a testament to those who endured the unendurable and to those who did not survive to tell their stories. It names the crime that the world tried to deny, minimizes no survivor, and centers justice for the victims. It is a report rooted in the voices of victims, survivors, witnesses, and first responders, and grounded in the law. It catalogues evidence of a crime so brutal that language itself strains to contain it, reminding us of Churchill’s description of genocide as a “crime without a name.”
For over five decades, I have sought to pursue justice for victims of mass atrocity: in the courtroom, in Parliament, and at the United Nations. I have learned that atrocities do not begin with the machinery of killing; they begin with the machinery of indifference, denial, and impunity. They begin with a failure to believe victims. In the months following October 7, that failure has repeated itself with alarming speed: the silencing of testimony, the politicization of sexual violence, the grotesque inversion in which perpetrators are valorized and survivors shamed into silence.
The survivors of October 7 have already borne the unbearable. It is now for us - the international community, jurists, parliamentarians, policymakers, and civil society - to bear the responsibility of pursuing justice. That justice must be swift, survivor-centered, and anchored in the frameworks of international law, including the Rome Statute, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
It is not only the crime that must be condemned, but the denial that follows it. For as Elie Wiesel taught us, “Silence in the face of evil is complicity with evil itself.” This report is therefore both an archive and a call to action. It honours those whose testimonies it records and those whose voices were silenced. Its value will lie not only in its documentation but in its use, including by prosecutors, legislators, researchers, and advocates committed to ensuring that the sexual atrocities of October 7 are not forgotten, denied, nor left without remedy.
Hon. Irwin Cotler
Prof. Aharon Barak
The work of the Civil Commission constitutes a contribution of substantial legal and historical importance. Through meticulous documentation, the systematic collection of testimonies, the preservation of primary and visual materials, and disciplined legal analysis, the Commission has established a record of considerable weight and enduring significance. Such work demands unusual and exceptional rigor. The documentation of atrocity, and particularly of sexual violence committed in conditions of armed conflict, presents profound difficulties. The evidentiary record frequently requires sustained engagement with material of extraordinary brutality, imposing not only methodological demands but profound human and ethical burdens on those entrusted with its examination. Evidence is often fragmented. Victims are frequently unable to testify. In many cases, those who could have testified are no longer alive.
Under such conditions, the construction of a reliable evidentiary archive becomes indispensable.
Its function is not judicial in the formal sense, yet it serves justice in a fundamental way: it preserves the factual foundation upon which legal, historical, and moral judgment depend.
This is especially true in relation to sexual and gender-based violence. As Catharine MacKinnon’s jurisprudential work has long established, sexual violence in conflict cannot be understood as incidental to war. In many circumstances, it functions as one of its central elements. It becomes a means of domination, humiliation, dehumanization, and terror.
These crimes remain among the most difficult to document. Their evidentiary structure is uniquely complex. Their victims often exist in conditions of profound vulnerability. Their suffering is frequently obscured by the very circumstances in which the crimes occur.
This difficulty creates conditions in which denial can emerge with unusual speed and force.
That reality was evident here. The early denial of these crimes underscores the importance of rigorous documentation. Where facts are contested, the preservation of reliable records becomes a condition for justice itself.
The significance of this report must also be understood in its broader international context. Conflict-related sexual violence has accompanied some of the gravest atrocities of the modern era—in Bosnia, Rwanda, and against the Yazidi community, among other places. It forms part of a persistent pattern in human history, in which the human body becomes an instrument of violence and war. The crimes documented here must be understood within that broader historical framework.
At the same time, they present particular characteristics of singular gravity: the conjunction of killing, sexual violence, hostage-taking, and public humiliation of victims; the large-scale visual documentation of the crimes themselves; and the deliberate infliction of terror not only upon individuals, but upon families and communities. These features give this record distinct evidentiary and historical significance.
In my recent opinion at the International Court of Justice, I observed that genocide is not merely a legal term, but a concept deeply intertwined with my own life experience. That observation reflects a broader truth about atrocity crimes: they exist not only in legal doctrine, but in human memory, in collective consciousness, and in the moral foundations upon which law itself rests.
The importance of this report lies, therefore, not only in its legal findings, but in its act of preservation and formation of collective memory.
It does not replace the legal process, nor can it. But it lays the necessary foundation for justice.
Prof. Aharon Barak