Article by Rotem Segev, Deputy Head of Mission
“Please don’t! No, no, stop, stop, stop, stop!” The screams of the young woman being violated only ended when she was shot to death. And then silence.
The vast majority of the women and girls who were raped, gang-raped, sexually tortured, and mutilated in Israel on October 7th did not live to communicate what had happened to them. However, their naked corpses and testimony from witnesses, first responders, and relevant experts provide undeniable proof of Hamas’ systematic use of sexual violence.
Shockingly, the response to this sea of evidence has primarily been silence at best, outright denial or even justification at worst.
This silence. This denial. This justification. These are the things that murdered the women killed by Hamas a second time.
For too long, women’s organizations remained silent about Israeli women being targeted, while well-known activists, who rarely hesitate to denounce any harassment or bias, chose to ignore the atrocities of October 7th.
Last Monday, nine days before the June 19th commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, protestors carried a banner proclaiming “Long Live October 7th” and shouted “Resistance is justified where people are occupied” outside an exhibit in New York that memorializes the 364 partygoers slaughtered at the Nova music festival, including those who were executed after being gang-raped and tortured. Rape is not resistance.
Gender-based violence must never be ignored, minimalized or contextualized. Rape denial and victim blaming, in particular when based on nationality or religion, should never happen, yet Israel-haters are doing just that.
Condemning these heinous acts is not taking a side in the conflict, rather it is standing up for women everywhere. This is not about Israelis vs. Palestinians, it is about empathy vs. contempt, decency vs. evil.
Widespread publication of some of the evidence – such as that of the woman who recounted the attack described above and the others which she witnessed at the Nova festival in Sheryl Sandberg’s moving online documentary Screams Before Silence has not succeeded in breaking down the walls of denial.
Nor has the report by the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten, which specifically acknowledged the sexual crimes committed on October 7th. Among her key findings was the fact that the rapes and gang-rapes occurred in multiple locations during Hamas’ invasion, and that a pattern of rape, sexual torture, and sexual abuse was indicated.
The terrorists Hamas dispatched to Israel carried out acts of rape, sexual torture, necrophilia, and mutilation (including of men) that are too horrific to detail and that normal people are not capable of conceiving in their worst nightmares.
It is now abundantly clear that Hamas weaponized sexual violence, conducting a massive, premeditated, and systematic attack on the women of Israel.
Recognizing Hamas’ crimes is not only a matter of setting the record straight or of justice for those assaulted and murdered that day; it is essential to the 120 men and women hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip.
Special Representative Patten’s report acknowledged the rape and sexualized torture of some of the women who were kidnapped and held hostage, and warned that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that this violence may be ongoing.”
The fate of the young women and men, most of whom have been kept for the past eight months in dark tunnels, chained twenty-four hours a day and totally at the mercy of their male captors, can barely be imagined. Ominously, Hamas terrorists, perhaps inspired by their fellow Islamist extremists, have referred to kidnapped women as ‘sabaya,’ the term for a sex slave made famous when ISIS kidnapped Yazidi women and girls.
The consequences of Hamas’ sexual violence are not limited to Israelis. The use of mass rape as a weapon of war has been validated by this jihadi terrorist organization, presenting a clear and present danger to women across the globe.
This is not a theoretical threat. Past techniques that were invented or popularized by Palestinian terrorist organizations, including suicide bombings on civilian targets and vehicular strikes on crowds, have been adopted by other terror groups and lone-wolf terrorists.
This year, when the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict is commemorated, it is important to remember that conflict-related sexual violence is a war crime and that Hamas’ assaults targeting the women of Israel should be considered a crime against humanity given the scale, severity, premeditation, and systematic nature of the offences.
It is also vitally important to condemn the actions of Hamas on October 7th and since. Otherwise, the use of rape as a weapon of terrorism will be legitimized, placing women around the world in danger.
Until there is universal condemnation of the sexual violence directed at Israeli women, no woman is safe.
*Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Israel in Cyprus