WARNING: This article includes graphic and disturbing accounts from the October 7 massacre in Israel.

Rape, gang-rape and acts of extreme sexual violence carried out by Hamas terrorists during their brutal Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel were part of a well-planned systematic weapon of war, a report, based on collated, open-source evidence and new testimonies, has found. 

Authored by The Dinah Project, a global initiative advancing justice for victims of conflict-related sexual violence, the 80-page report titled “A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond” calls on international human rights groups to recognize that Hamas weaponized sexual violence as part of its atrocities and demands that the U.N. secretary general blacklist the Palestinian terror group. 

“The main goal is to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive framework, based on all the available information, that has been analyzed and cross-checked from a legal perspective to prove that sexual violence was indeed used as a weapon of war by Hamas on October 7,” Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University, which oversees the Dinah Project, told Fox News Digital.

“Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon, as part of a genocidal scheme and with the goal of terrorizing and dehumanizing Israeli society, a finding with significant implications for international justice mechanisms,” the report’s authors write, outlining some “practical frameworks for achieving accountability.”

Among the recommendations, the report urges the international community to view conflict-related sexual violence as a “distinct category,” different from everyday sexual offenses; to take into consideration “the systematic silencing of victims; to utilize more diverse forms of admissible evidence, including eyewitness accounts and circumstantial evidence; and to apply joint criminal responsibility to all participants in the attack, rather than requiring direct links between individual perpetrators and specific acts and victims.”

Palestinians walk away from the kibbutz of Kfar Azza, Israel, near the fence with the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Hassan Eslaiah)

“We also seek to set the historical record straight: Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon of war,” the authors write, adding, “This report thus sets the stage for future criminal and other domestic and international proceedings against Hamas terrorists, leaders and collaborators.”

Israeli first lady Michal Herzog, who received The Dinah Project’s report on Tuesday, said in a statement that it “lays out the truth.” 

“On behalf of all those harmed, we must continue to fight until their voices are heard everywhere and justice is served,” she said, adding, “as a woman, a mother, and an Israeli, I read the reports with a broken heart… it challenges the global silence, replaces denial with facts, and calls on the world to recognize sexual violence as a crime against humanity and to prosecute those responsible.”