Israel lawyer who spread Oct. 7 rape allegations against Hamas 'unreliable,' reports media

By Murat Karadag

Israeli attorney Cochav Elkayam-Levy collected millions of dollars in aid by spreading "incorrect research and false stories" about Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks, Israeli daily reported on Thursday, citing official sources, who also described her as "unreliable."

An official pointed out that the "pregnant woman whose belly was cut" story, which was widely publicized in the Western media and turned out to be a lie, harmed Israel's credibility, Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported, citing anonymous Israeli government sources.

The official asserted that "she is an unreliable person" and that much of the evidence presented by Elkayam-Levy, who is also the head of the Deborah Institute and a lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University, showed that it had nothing to do with Hamas, the daily said.

Elkayam-Levy raised millions of dollars to spread fake news, it added.

Another Israeli official told Yedioth Ahronoth that Elkayam-Levy, who gained attention for statements she made to international news channels following the Oct. 7 attacks, received millions of dollars in aid through the "civilians commission" she established and introduced as a state-sponsored organization.

Referring to her request for support for the nearly $8 million budget she required for his 2024 activities, the official said, "US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel also helped her. She collected money from a large number of people and even began requesting money for her conferences.”

Elkayam-Levy's Oct. 28 report, in which she referred to Hamas's "systematic sexual violence," was questioned in the country after the New York Times retracted the claim of "raped young girls' bodies," which was widely used in the Western media because it was a "lie."

According to a US newspaper article dated March 25, the statement of an Israeli medical officer named Guy Melamed to the daily that "she saw the bodies of naked young girls who appeared to have been raped in Kibbutz Beeri" was false.

“A photo taken the same day by an Israeli soldier shows that the three women's bodies were fully clothed and showed no signs of being sexually assaulted,” the article said.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Palestinian territories since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas which killed around 1,200 people.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have since been killed and some 75,000 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Muhammed Yasin Gungor