Jewish leaders say the world has turned a blind eye to reports that Hamas has used rape as a weapon of war.
Content warning: This article contains descriptions of sexual assault and abuse.
There’s mounting evidence that on Oct. 7, Hamas didn’t just kill hundreds of Israelis, it also committed haunting acts of sexual violence. Yet, Israeli officials and prominent Jewish leaders are accusing women’s rights organizations of turning the other way in the face of these reports.
“Silence is complicity, and in the face of terror, we cannot be quiet,” Sheryl Sandberg said at a U.N. panel hosted this week by Israel. The Lean In founder was joined by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan, activists, and Israeli security forces, who described the scope of the alleged sexual abuse.
Hamas continues to deny that its fighters commit rape as a means of combat. However, Israeli police — after conducting witness interviews, reviewing footage, and examining the bodies of victims — have concluded otherwise. They claim to have overwhelming evidence that sexual abuse occurred on a large scale on Oct. 7 that’s been largely dismissed or downplayed by the international community. Israeli officials have criticized U.N. Women, for instance, for waiting nearly two months to issue a rebuke of Hamas. They’ve also knocked the U.N. at large for not investigating reports of sexual assault sooner. (A U.N. commission taking stock of war crimes on both sides said last week that it would focus on allegations of gendered violence committed by Hamas and pass on its findings to the International Criminal Court. So far, Israel has not cooperated, because officials believe the commission has an anti-Israeli bias.)
“Sadly, the very international bodies that are supposed to be defenders of all women showed that when it comes to Israelis, indifference is acceptable,” Erdan said at the U.N. panel. “It’s too little, too late.”
The lack of outrage has alarmed Sandberg and other notable Jewish women, who view it as an urgent feminist issue. Just last week, Slate ran a widely circulated op-ed that accused activists of staying quiet about the allegations, when they’ve marched for #MeToo and rallied after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
“It’s outrageous that some who claim to stand for justice are closing their eyes and their hearts to the victims of Hamas,” Hillary Clinton said in a recorded message streamed at the event.
Gillibrand was more direct in her criticism: “When I saw the list of women’s rights organizations that have said nothing, I nearly choked. Where is the solidarity for women in this country and in this world to stand up for our mothers, our sisters, and our daughters?”
The panel also featured Israeli first responders and police, who shared some disturbing details about the extent of what they’ve characterized as mass sexual violence. Yael Reichert, a high-ranking member of the Israeli police, read witness accounts in which survivors described seeing women and girls stripped and raped, their genitals mutilated. One person said she believes girls had their pelvises broken “due to repetitive rapes.” Another video testimony that was played described a woman who had her breast sliced off as she was gang raped.
One member of Zaka, an Israeli search and rescue organization, had to stop several times to compose himself as he described the body of a woman he found, “who had nails and other objects in her female organs.”
“These horrors are just a fragment of the shocking testimonies,” Reichert said.
The U.N. only codified rape as a war crime in 2008, and it wasn’t until the 1990s that international criminal tribunals prosecuted the act during the conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The U.N.’s focused now on investigating gender-based violence during the Tigray War in Ethiopia, where some 10,000 people were thought to be affected, and in Ukraine, where evidence has emerged that Russian forces routinely raped women.
“We have come so far in believing survivors of sexual assault in so many situations,” Sandberg said. “That’s why the silence on these war crimes is dangerous. It threatens to undo decades of progress — to undo an entire movement.”
