October 7 “Rape” Hoax Exposed
Norman Finkelstein’s new book debunks Zionist tall tales
By Kevin Barrett – September 13, 2026
Last May, an Israeli commission published a report alleging an organized campaign of rape and sexual abuse by Hamas during its October 7, 2023 concentration camp breakout. The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, chaired by Cochav Elkayam-Levy, titled its report “Silenced No More.”
October 7 rape claims, like similar accounts of babies beheaded and roasted in ovens, have long been greeted with skepticism in nations whose media and politicians are not owned and operated by Zionists. Perhaps for that reason, the Israelis felt the need to “document” their rape stories in the Elkayam-Levy report.
But in publishing their “rape” report, the Israelis inadvertently exposed the mendacity of their own assertions. The Commission included many “rape survivor” testimonies that read uncannily like the breathless stories of alleged Holocaust survivors who claim they were raised by wolves, or who, like Anthony Blinken’s stepfather Samuel Pisar, claim to have sneakily walked backward toward the door of the gas chamber and then snuck out right before it was closed and the gas was turned on.
The “Hamas rape” stories are exaggeratedly lurid and full of outrageously improbable or impossible details. But the real problem is that all Hamas fighters wore bodycams recording everything they did—and roughly half of the 3,000 or so who entered Israel were killed, and in most cases their body cams were recovered by Israeli authorities. The Ekayam-Levy Commission says it had access to 10,000 pictures and videos from those bodycams as well as others from Israelis filming with phones. And then there are the Israeli surveillance cameras. If, as the Commission alleges, Hamas pursued a deliberate policy of terrorizing Israelis with widespread sexual violence, obviously there should be, at minimum, hundreds of images and videos documenting these heinous acts.
But there are none. Zero. As Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein shows in his new book GAZA’S GRAVEDIGGERS: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places:
“Neither the Israeli State nor the Civil Commission has released even one frame, from among the ten thousand photographs and digital segments it amassed, that depicted Hamas committing rape or other acts of sexual violence… Not a single Israeli CCTV, traffic surveillance camera, or individual cellphone captured Hamas committing rape or other acts of sexual violence. The Commission collected ‘extensive’ digital evidence from Hamas digital paraphernalia. Hamas allegedly exploited its gruesome images from 7 October and of the Israelis held hostage as ‘an instrument of terror.’ If inspiring terror was the avowed objective, then, it would seem, the more barbaric the sexual violence it disseminated the better. But not a single confiscated Hamas bodycam, GoPro, or dashcam contained an image of rape or other acts of sexual violence.”
The October 7 Israeli rape allegations, in reality, have always been just as patently ridiculous as the tales of roasted and beheaded babies. Everyone with the slightest knowledge of Hamas and the cultural and religious context in which it operates knows that it would never pursue a policy of sexual misbehavior. Hamas rigorously and scrupulously adheres to futuwwa or “Islamic chivalry.” Anyone who has viewed the videos of hostages being released by Hamas, in which smiling Israelis almost wistfully say goodbye to their chivalrous captors, knows that claims of widespread systematic mistreatment of captives are hysterical exaggerations at best, outright propaganda lies at worst.
This is not to say that no Israelis were harmed on October 7. But Hamas did not deliberately kill or hurt civilians. It engaged in firefights with some of the IDF’s elite units, and in most cases won, as described by Scott Ritter in his memorable article “The most successful military raid of this century: the October 7 Hamas assault on Israel.”
Hamas’s orders were to 1) engage and defeat the IDF, 2) take IDF prisoners as hostages, and 3) as a fallback measure if all else failed, take civilian hostages. Scott Ritter explains:
“The taking of hostages was meant to provide Hamas with negotiating leverage for the release of the 10,000 prisoners held by Israel.”
Hamas fighters stumbled on the Nova Music Festival by accident. In the midst of firefights and chaos, some Hamas fighters took the opportunity to capture Israeli hostages. The abduction scenes, with Hamas fighters dragging off women as well as men and heading back toward Gaza in vehicles, have been well documented. It wasn’t a pleasant experience for the hostages…especially the more than 500 of them who were deliberately massacred by Israel’s tanks and helicopter gunships under its Hannibal Doctrine.
But there is no hard or convincing evidence that a single Hamas fighter perpetrated even one sexual assault, much less that there was any deliberate policy of rape. The Israelis, as usual, are lying outrageously and shamelessly, exhibiting the chutzpah for which they are justly renowned.
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