On the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, the Dinah Project is working hard to encourage Israeli prosecutorial authorities to charge Hamas terrorists with using sexual violence as a weapon of war, as well as to increase international awareness of the issue.

The issue of sexual violence as a weapon of war presents unique challenges, according to Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a founding member of the Dinah Project as well as a founding academic director of The Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women’s Status at Bar-Ilan University, where she is a professor of law.

“It is often impossible to connect a specific perpetrator to a specific victim, which is the usual way that prosecution works,” Halperin-Kaddari told JNS in a recent interview. “In the case of Oct. 7, there are very few survivors because most of the women were killed afterwards.”

In addition, she said, much of the forensic evidence that would have proven the use of sexual violence was destroyed in the fighting. “It was a war zone,” she said. “The first priority was to recover the bodies, identify them and bring them to burial, so no forensic tests were performed.”

Halperin-Kaddari previously served three terms on the United Nations Committee on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

The Dinah Project, named after the Biblical Dinah, the daughter of Jacob who was raped, was launched after the Oct. 7 massacre to pursue justice for victims of sexual violence. It was founded by Halperin-Kaddari, a legal scholar and former chief military prosecutor, Att. Col (Res.) Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, and former judge and deputy attorney general Nava Ben-Or.

The project has recently published a book titled A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond, which offers a legal framework to analyze the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war during the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel.

The project had developed a legal concept of “joint responsibility” to enable the prosecution of members of Hamas.

It is difficult to know just how many women endured sexual violence, both on Oct. 7 and afterward, while being held as hostages. Halperin-Kaddari said that there is clear evidence of severe sexual acts such as rape, torture and humiliation as well as incidents of gang rape, including at the Nova Music Festival at which Hamas terrorists murdered 378 people.

In early 2024, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General, Pramila Patten, led an official visit to Israel, accompanied by a team of technical experts.

“The team found a pattern of victims, mostly women, who were partially or fully naked, their bodies shot and mutilated, across multiple locations,” according to a United Nations report of the visit.

“While acknowledging the circumstantial nature of this evidence, the team concluded it indicates deliberate sexual violence, including sexually motivated torture and cruel treatment. The team was also convinced that this violence persists against the remaining hostages,” it stated.

In August 2025, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres added Hamas to the blacklist of entities that use sexual violence as a weapon of war, which is a dramatic move and one of the goals of the Dinah Project.

“Our argument is that all those who entered Israel with the aim of total destruction under the genocidal ideology of Hamas are responsible for everything that took place as part of that attack, even if we cannot prove that this specific person engaged in this special action,” Halperin-Kaddari said.

Zagagi-Pinhas, the director of the Dinah Project, said she believed that the legal doctrine it has formulated will have implications beyond Israel as well.

“We hope our legal doctrine will be adopted in other countries and organizations,” she told JNS. “It could also be relevant to civil lawsuits and international claims.”

So far, Israel has not charged any of the hundreds of Hamas terrorists arrested on Oct. 7.

“It is taking a lot of time,” Ben-Or told JNS. “I know they are working very hard and it’s a complicated issue which involves a lot of policy issues. We are also still in an ongoing situation of war.”

The Dinah Project, which is under the auspices of The Rackman Center at Bar Ilan University, relies on donations from both inside Israel and abroad.

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