The Israeli expert leading a civilian commission to investigate sexual violence committed by Hamas and Israeli soldiers is calling on world bodies to recognize a “new crime against humanity” involving violence targeting families.

Kochav Elkiam Levy said that the world must take a stand against the destruction of families as a specific and specific weapon in the conflict aimed at terrorizing relatives. She suggests calling the crime “genocide.”

In an interview, she also said Canadians can demand that Hamas be brought to justice while also seeking accountability when Israeli forces commit acts of sexual violence against Palestinians, without drawing false equivalences.

“We have to see Canada lead in addressing the lack of moral clarity in international institutions,” Elkayam Levy said in an interview during a visit to Ottawa last month.

Elkayam Levy is a professor of international law at Hebrew University and chairs the Israeli Civilian Commission on Crimes against Women and Children on October 7.

This non-governmental body originally set out to document patterns of sexual violence committed by Hamas and its affiliates during the 2023 offensive and against the hostages they took into the Gaza Strip.

The goal was not to come up with a census of assaults, but rather to document the systemic factors in how women are raped, tortured, and mutilated. The idea was to gain understanding that could help victims and their descendants deal with intergenerational trauma, and to create an archive for researchers and prosecutors to use in potential investigations.

Elkayam Levy’s team reviewed hours of footage showing “very extreme forms of violence” from closed-circuit cameras and what the militants themselves recorded.

They began to notice six patterns of violence related to the circumstances of more than 140 families.

This includes using victims’ social media to broadcast the person’s torture to friends and family, including hostages and the dead. Another is related to killing parents in front of their children or vice versa, and another is the destruction of family homes.

“We’re starting to understand that there’s something here, a unique form of violence,” she said. “Abuse of family relationships to intensify harm, intensify suffering.”

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Elkayam Levy said she developed the term with the help of experts, including Canadians like former Attorney General Irwin Kotler. She pointed out that the rules on which the International Criminal Court is based only mention families in procedural contexts, but not as a factor in war crimes.

“It is a crime without a name,” she said, considering that this hinders the healing of victims.

She said experts on past conflicts agreed with her, saying genocide should have been a factor in how the world understood and sought justice for atrocities committed on various continents, such as the way Islamic State fighters targeted Yazidi families from 2014 to 2017. .

“Justice begins with this recognition; Healing begins with confession, she said.

Elkayam Levy noted that “gender-based violence” had existed for centuries before the United Nations officially recognized the term in 1992.

It also targeted “the silence of many international organizations, and the lack of moral clarity,” in their response to sexual violence on a global scale.

In particular, UN Women did not condemn sexual violence committed by Hamas until nearly two months after that attack, a move that Elkayam Levy said set a bad precedent for upholding global norms.

“They have fueled the denial of sexual atrocities,” she said, adding that the constant demand for physical evidence is spreading on social media “in a very anti-Semitic way.”

Israeli police said forensic evidence was not preserved in the chaos that accompanied the attack, and people believed to be victims of sexual assault were often killed and buried on the spot.

The acts of sexual violence were not part of a 43-minute video the Israeli Foreign Ministry showed to journalists, including The Canadian Press, which was obtained from security footage and videos filmed by gunmen during their October 2023 attack.

In March, the UN envoy said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Hamas committed rape and “sexual torture” during the attack, “including rape and gang rape,” despite the movement’s denials.

In the same month, released hostage Amit Susana publicly announced that her captors had groped her and forced her to perform a “sexual act,” which she requested not to reveal her identity.

As part of its stated feminist foreign policy, Canada funds initiatives abroad to prevent sexual violence and support victims. However, conservatives criticized liberals for not condemning Hamas’ sexual violence until five months after the attack.

In March, Ottawa came under fire for pledging $1 million to groups supporting Israeli victims of Hamas sexual violence, and $1 million to Palestinian women facing “sexual and gender-based violence” from unspecified actors.

Global Affairs did not say whether this referred to domestic or sexual violence by Israeli officials, drawing a rebuke from a senior Israeli envoy.

Human rights groups have long accused Israeli officials of sexually assaulting Palestinian detainees in the West Bank. In July, these concerns escalated when Israeli soldiers were accused of perpetuating the filmed mass rape of a Palestinian prisoner from the Gaza Strip. Far-right ministers in the Israeli government expressed their support for the crowds trying to release the soldiers under investigation.

Alkiam Levy said Canadians can criticize the patterns of sexual violence practiced by Hamas against Israelis, and also demand that the Israeli state investigate and prosecute its soldiers who commit acts of sexual violence against Palestinians.

“The fact that (Western leaders) are trying to make the right political decision, rather than the right moral decision, creates confusion, creates moral uncertainty — rather than making room for all victims to hear what they suffered.” she said.

For her, there is a “false comparison” between individual cases of sexual assault by soldiers who must be held accountable, and a group that uses patterns of sexual violence as a weapon in conflict.

Elkayam Levy said that people must adhere to the principles of international law.

It recognizes that many have argued instead that the Israeli military campaign has violated international law and undermined systems meant to uphold human rights.

Elkayam Levy criticized the Israeli government, and said before the conflict that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought anti-democratic reforms in the country’s judiciary.

She criticized his war cabinet for lacking any women, and highlighted widespread media reports that female military personnel had discovered that Hamas was planning a major attack, but were rebuffed by male commanders.

She said that the world needs to condemn violence against families and try to bring those responsible to justice. Otherwise, it fears that fighters in other countries will adopt its brutal tactics.

She added that otherwise, “we will see an international system that will not last long.”