Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy On the sexual violence of October 7

Unholy: Two Jews on the News

Unholy Media

News, Yonit Levi, News Commentary, Society & Culture, Jews, Religion & Spirituality, Israel, Jewish, Judaism, Israel Podcast, Middle East, Jonathan Freedland, Documentary

4.7 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2026

⏱️ 41 minutes

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Summary

Two and a half years after October 7th, the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children has published its comprehensive report — 300 pages of meticulously corroborated evidence documenting what was done to women, men, children, and hostages on that day and in captivity since. This week, Yonit and Jonathan speak with Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the founder and chair of the Commission, 2024 Israel Prize laureate, and expert in international law and human rights — the woman who spent more than two years immersed in 10,000 photographs and videos and 430 testimonies so the world could not look away. They discuss what the evidence reveals about the scale and calculated nature of the atrocities, why so many feminist organisations around the world fell silent, the new legal concept of “kinocide” that the Commission had to coin because no existing term could capture what had happened to families — and what it means that the person who stared deepest into this abyss still believes in peace.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This report kind of allows you to take a step back and see the horror and the scope and the scale in its entirety.
0:08.7	And I want to say this with caution because more is about to emerge.
0:14.0	More hostages that didn't speak.
0:15.9	More hostages that I know want to speak and want to find the right timing to share their stories,
0:22.4	more information that is being sent to us.
0:36.4	It's Unholy. I'm Un Inuit Levy in Tel Aviv.
0:38.8	And I'm Jonathan Friedland in London, one of our unholy conversations this week, and it's an important one.
0:46.3	And in some ways, you're only a difficult one.
0:48.8	Yes, we should say that we have been wanting for a long time, Jonathan, to delve into the sexual violence on October
0:56.9	7th. That is the most harrowing, difficult piece of this terrible puzzle. But I think, as we will
1:03.7	hear later in our conversation, the importance of seeing this with open eyes. And walking into this
1:09.4	terrible sea of evidence is important because
1:14.4	we want to know what happened and how to prevent it from happening again and indeed how to bring
1:19.6	justice to the victims. And we are, of course, discussing the fact that the Civil Commission
1:25.4	on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against women and children presented its comprehensive report last week.
1:31.7	We should say something about this civil commission.
1:34.5	It is set up and found it's an Israeli nonprofit organization founded in 2024 after October 7th.
1:41.5	Its role is to, its goal is to collect materials, evidence of what happened on that day.
1:49.4	And the woman who leads this commission, set it up, in fact, is our guest today on Unholy.
1:56.0	We should tell our listeners, this isn't an easy listen in any way, but I think we think it's an important one.
2:08.0	Last week, the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children
2:12.7	presented its comprehensive report on the sexual atrocities committed on October 7th and during the
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