Following a Freedom of Information request, Novara Media (NM) have informed that the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) paid out £90k for an Israeli report following October 7th 2023. Israeli government-aligned research group The Dinah Project applied to the FCDO for funding, to which the department afforded 75% of its own budget. The report took four months and appears to have been tasked specifically to:
prove that sexual violence by Hamas on 7 October was “systematic”.
An Israeli official stated that the report was:
A significant public diplomacy tool for us.
This blatant bias and conflict of interest should come as little to no surprise. Ever since October 7th, we have seen a concerted push by Israel and its lobby groups to manipulate data, grief and material facts in their own interest. All whilst conveniently and simultaneously demonising Palestinian resistance. If we have learned anything through this horrific 2.5 years, it is the reminder that every life matters and civilians should not pay the price for the sins of the powerful.
Going further, we have also learned in the most disgusting way that the saying ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’ applies all the more in times of conflict. Especially when we consider Israeli and western tactics to manufacture consent for what has been one of the most brutal bombing campaigns the world has ever seen. On the backs of the lack of condemnation afforded by the UK government for crimes against Palestinians, our governments complicity in Israel’s crimes cannot be ignored.
It is for this reason that it is essential we as ordinary people work only from verified, factual information.
Dinah Project — ‘Lowered evidentiary requirements’
The Dinah Project produced an 84-page report ‘A Quest for Justice: October 7 and beyond’ which was published in July 2025. NM note that this publish date came at a time when Israel was under increasing international pressure to end its genocide in Gaza. Most disturbingly, usual evidentiary requirements to sufficiently prove sexual violence in conflict were lowered, arguably signaling the explicit intention for commissioning the report at its outset.
The report stated that “sexual violence was widespread and systematic” on October 7, and it identified “clear patterns” in the way Hamas carried it out. It concluded that Hamas had tactically deployed sexual violence as a “weapon of war.”
Significantly, NM point out that the report carries an “inflammatory tone” with clear political undertones highlighting its biased intentions to further Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. They refer to the report’s language around Hamas, which called them “terrorists” and a “violent horde that lacks any moral restraint”.
They further pointed out that this report has been integral in ensuring Israel could continue its illegal war on Palestinians, which has seen hundreds of thousands of Palestinians murdered or maimed. NM wrote:
The Israeli government has since made The Dinah Project’s report its main source for systematic sexual violence by Hamas, centring it in a multi-million-pound propaganda campaign. In a Knesset (Israeli parliament) debate, an official openly praised the report’s role in shoring up the country’s reputation during the genocide.
Last summer, journalists noted that the UK had financially contributed to The Dinah Project’s report. Novara Media FOI requested specific data, which the FCDO denied. Novara Media escalated the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which granted the information. The process of extracting the information took seven months in total.
“What is shocking is the government’s lack of transparency,” said Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding. “Why did it seek to hide its support for The Dinah Project?”
The Dinah Project
The project’s founders launched in 2023 as a women-led “research and legal initiative,” naming it after the first rape victim referenced in the Old Testament. They based it within the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women’s Status, part of the law faculty at Bar-Ilan University. This Israeli university is renowned as a right-wing, extremely religious institution. In 1995, Yigal Amir, who later assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, studied at that university.
NM added:
Today, the university describes itself as “a critical ally for the government of Israel in its quest to … maintain its defensive edge”.
Strengthening the conclusion that the report was a stitch-up for a Zionist political agenda is the knowledge of those involved. The organisation’s co-founder is Col. Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, the former Chief Military Prosecutor of the IDF. Critics argue that the military legal system has enforced a form of legal apartheid, using administrative detention and military courts to detain Palestinians, often without charge or trial. Let alone the widespread reports of sexual violence used systemically against Palestinians in Israeli detention centres and prisons.
NM informed:
Its advisory board includes former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Aharon Leshno-Yaar, and ex-president of Israel’s supreme court, Dorit Beinisch; other board members include prominent Israeli actress Gal Gadot, and Noa Tishby, former government envoy for combating antisemitism.
When requesting funding from the UK’s FCDO, they claimed that the project had “no formal connection or relationship” to the Israeli government. The Dinah Project further stated that its research would function in “parallel” to the Israeli government’s own investigation of crimes committed by Hamas. Ever transparently, the funding application refers to a primary beneficiary group which is conveniently redacted. Unredacted is a reference that it will benefit “Israeli society at large”.
The news outlet further highlighted the seemingly incestuous relationship between this allegedly ‘independent’ report and the Israeli government itself. They even underscore how it played a vital role in the Israeli state’s propaganda, sufficiently whipping up hate and fear to ensure the genocide continues on. They wrote:
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has been open about its close ties to The Dinah Project and the integral role its report played in hasbara (Hebrew for state propaganda). The Knesset’s foreign policy committee even convened a debate to mark the report’s launch. “This is an important and significant project that serves as a significant public diplomacy tool for us,” Gal Ilan, an official within Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate, said at the meeting, adding that “the campaign was disseminated by all the means we have as a state”. Another official, Jonathan Barel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, admitted that “even before the report was published, we established contact with its authors.”
Barel added: “At the minister [of foreign affairs, Gideon Sa’ar]’s instructions, we launched a powerful campaign to disseminate the report and heighten the exposure, both through paid advertising and through the ministry’s official channels, and in cooperation with civil society organisations.”
No sooner had the report been published than Israel began using it as propaganda. Within weeks, the Israeli minister for foreign affairs, Gideon Sa’ar, was citing from the report at length in a speech to the UN security council. The Israeli government went on to make The Dinah Project’s report central to its $45m (£33m) Google Ads campaign to salvage its reputation during the genocide; the campaign included attacks on the UN refugee agency Unrwa and denying famine in Gaza.
Allege systemic sexual violence to allow systemic mass murder
NM reminded that another report was provided by Pramila Patten in March 2024, who is the UN special representative for sexual violence in conflict. She found that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that “instances of sexual violence” were seen in “multiple locations”. However, in contrast to the findings of the Israeli-aligned Dinah Project, she did not find that these crimes were systematic. The UN representative also made clear that her findings would not legitimise further Israeli-inflicted massacres of the Palestinian people.
After all, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Nevertheless, the Dinah Project website has attempted to manipulate Patten’s findings claiming that they were “instrumental” in bringing her to Israel, before misrepresenting her report’s conclusion that it revealed the “systematic nature” of Hamas’ crimes of sexual violence.
A report by Amnesty International published in December 2025 confirmed that sexual violence was perpetrated by “Palestinian assailants” yet:
found no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups gave orders to their fighters to commit acts of sexual violence during the attacks.
UN Special Representative on violence against women and girls Reem Alsalem has criticised the report. She stated that no independent investigation has established that perpetrators committed sexual or gender-based violence against Israelis on or since 7 October as a systematic tool of war or as a tool of genocide. Despite this intervention, NM further reminded that Western media has been more than happy to “uncritically cover” the findings provided by the Dinah Project.
Despite its widely-criticised methodology, much of the UK media uncritically covered The Dinah Project’s work. In January 2024, the Guardian ran a story on the “systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas” on 7 October; The Dinah Project’s co-founder, Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, features heavily. Several UK outlets, including the BBC and the Times, covered The Dinah Project’s report last summer, though Sky News subsequently removed its article from its website.
We have regularly confronted the biased nature of western mainstream media, particularly the BBC. In October, our own Charlie Jay wrote:
The BBC is complicit in genocide, by its selective storytelling, by remaining silent, and by distorting the truth. The corporation is funded by the public in this country, and has a duty to serve the public interest – not the interests of the powerful.
If it is not fulfilling its mandate, it should be held accountable.
What about verified reports of systematic sexual violence by Israelis?
Contrary to what western media would like us to believe, there have been widespread reports and independent investigations into the way that the IDF use sexual violence against Palestinians. We wrote about LSE staff refusing to welcome the controversial and divisive Dinah Project in October, with Joe Glenton writing:
In March, the United Nations (UN) called out Israel’s “systematic” use of sexual violence against Palestinians.
The UN said:
“Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination and carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities.”
Navi Pillay, chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said:
“There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination.”
At this stage in the Israeli genocide against Palestinians the words “every accusation, a confession” are getting a little tired. But once again we find ourselves having to deploy them.
LSE staff have made their strength of feeling known. And, their expert analysis of the situation makes one thing clear. The claims of sexual violence against Israeli hostages are unsubstantiated, methodologically flawed, and, might we add, politically expedient. However, the sexual abuse and torture of Palestinian hostages has been recorded by independent and verifiable sources. And, it is plainly a central facet of the Zionist attacks on Palestine to use sexual violence as a weapon of war.
The FCDO apparently requested in an email to NM that it be clear that the department “condemns sexual violence wherever it occurs”. Yet, NM’s FOI request would tell a different story given the imbalance of interest in recognising Israeli-aligned reports whilst the government actively disregards the recorded sexual violence against Palestinians at the hands of their occupiers.
NM wrote:
In March 2025, the UN’s international commission of inquiry on Palestine and Israel published a report on Israel’s use of sexual, reproductive and gender-based violence during the Gaza genocide. The report noted that the IDF systematically destroyed IVF clinics, raped and tortured Palestinian prisoners and sexually humiliated Palestinian men and boys. The UK has not to date responded to it.
Gender Action for Peace and Security showed their dismay at the UK governments selective attention, stating:
The absence of public recognition from the UK of [the UN’s] findings is deeply concerning. When confronted with credible evidence of systematic abuse, silence risks entrenching a damaging double standard and undermines the UK’s credibility as a champion of … the rules-based international order.
Those in power in the UK can’t pretend they didn’t know. A comment was made in August by the UK’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, James Kariuki, quoted by NM:
We have seen reporting of sexual violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and we continue to call for all reports of abuses by all parties to be fully investigated.
Condemnation means naff all unless all crimes are condemned
Seemingly the investigations carried out by numerous independent bodies don’t suffice for the government to make a clear conclusion. Yet somehow, an IDF-linked report was more than sufficient to justify Israel’s ongoing atrocities. In fact, Novara Media informed that the UK government have yet to fund any investigations into similar crimes against Palestinians.
This is despite considerable efforts that were made to convince the government to prioritise this issue. For instance, the meeting that took place in October 2024 between Palestinian women’s rights groups and UK officials. As has come to be expected, nothing tangible followed.
Once again, the UK government shows blatant disregard for crimes committed against brown people. All the while, our government readily and unquestioningly financially supports white, genocidal, imperial interests. As numerous agencies and specialised individuals have underscored, their support comes despite Israel and its agents offering little credible evidence for their allegations.
Shameful silence from the UK government which compounds our complicity in the seemingly endless suffering on Palestinians.
Featured image via the Canary
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