The World’s Feminists Need to Show Up for Israeli Victims
Solidarity for victims of sexual assault should trump other politics.
BY DAHLIA
LITHWICK, MIMI ROCAH, TAMARA
SEPPER, JENNIFER TAUB, JOYCE
WHITE VANCE, AND JULIE ZEBRAK
NOV 30, 202311:27 AM
Of all of the horrors coming out of the Israel-Hamas
conflict, among the most horrible are the barbaric murders, rapes, sexual assaults, and kidnappings of
women and young girls in Israel during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. And yet,
deepening this distressing event, there has been a disheartening silence about,
or worse, denial of these evils; reticence from the voices here at home in the
U.S. who have, in the recent past, embraced other women who needed their
support. Israeli and Jewish women find themselves isolated. For the past three
decades, women have stood up for other women. When our sisters’ bodies and
dignity were targeted and violated, women and allies of all ages and
backgrounds organized, supported, and spoke out. Except somehow, not this time.
Since Oct. 7, there has been overwhelming evidence that Israeli women and young girls
were not “just” slaughtered, but raped, assaulted, tortured, and kidnapped. This is not overstating things—from
our work as prosecutors, lawyers, and feminists, we understand what it takes to
build a solid criminal case for sexual assault. Here, there is voluminous evidence, more than what is typically
available. While many victims cannot speak for themselves—they are either dead
or being held hostage—survivor accounts and videos made by the perpetrators themselves speak
for them.
Early on, Hamas circulated a video with the searing image
of 19-year-old Naama Levy being dragged by her hair into
the back of a truck by a group of men. Her pants were bloody. Slowly, the
horror dawned upon us as we watched that she had been the victim of violent
sexual assault.
A survivor recounted sexual violence she witnessed while
hiding at the Nova rave. She said, “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped
girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives,
or the opposite, killed—and after they raped, they—they did that. They
laughed.”
Another survivor saw terrorists gang-raping a woman who was
alive until she was shot in the head by a man who was still raping her when he
fired. Before she was killed, the witness saw them cut her breast
off.
We heard from a grandmother who watched
helplessly as her daughter was raped and then murdered.
A combat paramedic found two young girls
executed in their bedroom, at least one of whom had been raped. Her pants were
down toward her knees. There was semen on her back. She was shot in the head.
Israeli officials are reporting evidence of widespread torture and
rape as they continue the painstaking work of trying to identify bodies, many
burned beyond recognition.
An Israeli nongovernmental commission led by Cochav Elkayam
Levy has embarked on a grassroots initiative to
assemble a comprehensive database of the sexual violence cases from Oct. 7,
while offering trauma care to survivors and witnesses. And Physicians for Human
Rights–Israel, a group dedicated to advocating for the health care rights of
patients with limited access to the Israeli health care system, including
migrants, refugees, and Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza,
recently issued a position paper that calls on the
International Criminal Court to investigate the sexual terrorism Israeli women
experienced on Oct. 7 as potential crimes against humanity.
While time will tell whether Oct. 7 will receive its due
international legal scrutiny, the muted response from women’s groups
is unacceptable given the abundance of evidence. If survivor accounts,
tortured bodies, and videos of attacks aren’t enough evidence, then no case
would ever be prosecuted in a court of law. Such evidence of depravity
typically galvanizes global action and demands for justice. Women’s groups
should rightfully be demanding prosecution. Beyond the courtroom, the evidence
of what happened to women and girls in Israel far surpasses what has sparked
women to come to the aid and support of other women in other situations.
Historically, women have been at the forefront of advocacy.
Here in the U.S., we demanded safety for victims of sexual assault in campus
“Take Back the Night” marches in the 1990s. We advocated for women in other
countries, creating hashtag and social media campaigns like #BringOurGirlsHome
in 2014 to demand the return of 276 Nigerian girls abducted by the jihadi
militant group Boko Haram. In 2017, we protested Donald Trump’s sexism and
misogyny by the millions at the Women’s March. The #MeToo movement saw us
sharing our stories to combat a culture rife with sexual harassment and
assault. We supported Christine Blasey Ford when she testified against Supreme
Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh at his confirmation hearing in 2018. We
marched when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
We strive to center women of color and Indigenous women, whose stories don’t
always receive the respect they deserve. Again and again, we have demanded that
women be believed, because we know that all too often, women’s stories are
unfairly questioned and ignored.
But the expected outrage hasn’t happened here in the U.S.
or abroad, outside of Jewish groups. Some international organizations
quickly issued statements about the heartbreaking suffering in Gaza, but are resolutely mute regarding
the atrocities against women in Israel on Oct. 7. Worse yet, we have
heard denials or sentiment that the victims deserved it. We would not tolerate victim-blaming
in other cases of violence against women. Compassion for Gazan women and
children is vital, but it should not negate compassion for victims on the
Israeli side of the border on Oct. 7. Sexual violence should be abhorrent to
all of us, no matter who it is perpetrated against or where they live.
The victims of the Oct. 7 attack stand excluded from the
world’s sisterhood. In the face of overwhelming real-time documentation,
murmurs of support are few and far between. We must ask ourselves,
from a place of empathy, for all who suffer: Does our outrage about rape and
abuse depend on the identity of the perpetrator and the victim? Is rape
acceptable, even justifiable, if the victims live in a nation whose policies
you disapprove of? Can we blame these victims, many but not all of whom are
Israeli, for what happened to them? If the answer to these questions is no, as
it should be, then we must all speak out about the violence, no matter who it
is perpetrated against or where they live. To express moral outrage and legal
horror at the offenses perpetrated on women in Israel is not tantamount to
approving the governing Netanyahu coalition, nor does it signal support for the
bombings in Gaza. It is simply to assert the long-standing feminist argument
that our bodies are not to be weaponized in global conflicts. Acknowledging
these atrocities does not diminish the suffering of Palestinian women in Gaza.
It is essential to reaffirming our shared humanity.