Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy
This week, I was invited to address the UN Human Rights Council on behalf of civil society in response to its latest report accusing Israel of genocidal sexual atrocities. Given only 90 seconds to speak, I could share only a fraction of what needed to be said. Below is the full version of my speech—the words I would have delivered if I had been allowed.
We have always placed faith in international institutions and the human rights system. But when those very institutions engage in conduct that may distort truth and entrenched falsehoods, that trust is shattered. As I said in my remarks: We owe the truth to the victims.
Time was limited. But the truth is not. What follows is everything I wanted to say—everything that needed to be said. These are the words I carry for the victims who can no longer speak and for the justice that continues to be denied:
“On October 7th, Israeli women were raped, mutilated, shot in their genitalia, burned alive, tortured, and violently murdered. Their bodies became battlefields. But the atrocities did not end there. We uncovered something even darker—kinocide—the deliberate systematic destruction of families as a weapon of war. Parents were tortured and slaughtered in front of their children, children in front of their parents. Their terrified eyes still haunt me. These crimes were not hidden; they were broadcast for the world to see. And yet, Hamas is still holding hostages. The horror is not over.
But instead of a global commitment to justice, we have witnessed a campaign of denial and distortion, which was compounded by the UN’s hesitant response. From the very beginning, we were warned: the sexual atrocities Hamas committed would be turned into an accusation against Israel. We refused to believe it. We refused to be silent. Yet, what many don’t know is that only weeks after October 7th, when bodies were still being identified, UN experts conditioned their investigation into Hamas’s crimes on opening a similar investigation against Israel for the very same allegations.
This is not to say that Israel should not investigate its own conduct or that the UN has no role in ensuring accountability. But that the circumstances were deeply disturbing. Why now? Why, at this precise moment in history?
As civil society efforts to document Hamas’s crimes took shape, we raised the alarm. Why was Israel suddenly included in this investigation—just weeks after the worst attack on its civilians in history? We feared that this was not about uncovering the truth but an attempt to manufacture a false historical narrative—one that could be used to create artificial equivalence between Israel and Hamas. To distort the suffering of victims for political ends is its own form of violence—one that denies them dignity and justice.
The global human rights system has treated wartime sexual violence as an unambiguous crime. Yet, when Israeli women were hurt, their pain was met with context, hesitation, and moral equivalence. Would such a response—launching an investigation against a country immediately after one of the worst attacks in its history—have been acceptable if these crimes had occurred anywhere else?
The result? Just months after the attack, in March of 2024, Israel was included in the UN Secretary-General’s annual report on sexual violence—mentioned in the same line as Hamas. Hamas itself was not designated as a terrorist organization in that report. The UN security Council session that followed the publication of the report and that was supposed to be dedicated for the stories of the Israeli victims, had become a political spectacle: nearly every country condemned Israel and Hamas in the same breath. The discussion was no longer about Hamas’s crimes. It was a political maneuver, not a pursuit of truth—one that dishonored the memory of the victims and undermined the justice they deserve.
And now, the latest UN report goes even further—accusing Israel of genocidal sexual violence.
History will judge this moment. When truth is blurred, the first to suffer are women—on both sides. Stripped of agency, absent from decision-making, yet bearing the heaviest consequences of war, we are too often reduced to symbols rather than recognized as human beings. Our suffering is politicized, our bodies weaponized, and our pain either exploited or erased to serve competing narratives. I grieve for all the innocent lives shattered in this devastating war. My heart aches for them, and I pray for an end to the violence and the beginning of a long-overdue process of healing.
I stand here today, as a feminist, as a scholar, and as an advocate for all victims of sexual violence, to say what should be self-evident: justice demands truth, not politics. No cause, no ideology, no agenda should stand in the way of bearing witness to the suffering of victims. We are deeply concerned that the stories of those who were murdered, raped, and tortured on October 7th are being manipulated—not to bring justice, but to serve an agenda. If our fears prove true, this is yet another form of violence—another violation of the victims. It exploits their suffering to serve injustice. It robs them of dignity in death, just as they were stripped of it in life. No institution that claims to stand for human rights should engage in such moral failure.
We deserve better. Humanity deserves better”.
Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a 2024 Israel Prize laureate and expert in human rights and international law, is the founder and chair of the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children. To the full report on Kinocide: https://www.dvora-institute.org/cco7-1-1
