Hamas Denies Oct. 7 Sexual Crimes:  A Hadassah Member’s Response 

“She deserved to be raped.”

No one I know would ever agree with such a sentiment. Until now.

Until Israeli women were the ones raped.

On the University of California’s Santa Cruz campus, I have heard self-proclaimed social justice warriors chanting that any kind of resistance is justified. While blaming the Israeli victims, they excuse the Hamas rapists with the subtle bias of low expectations. Others deny that such sexual violence occurred at all, even though Israeli women — and at least one man — have bravely described being sexually assaulted.

Although sexual violence against women has existed throughout history, it is only recently that rape in wartime has evolved from a “byproduct” of war to a policy of mass, systemic violence against the most vulnerable. Think of Bosnia and Rwanda in the 90s or Japan’s use of sexual slavery during WWII. The weaponization of sexual violence is uniformly condemned — unless the victims are Jewish.

It is undisputed that on October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists brutally murdered 1,200 people in Israel (including Israeli Arabs and foreign nationals). And they kidnapped 250 others (including women, children, infants, men, the elderly and the disabled) from Israeli kibbutzim, towns and a music festival. After all, the terrorists even filmed their atrocities with their own GoPro cameras.

The heinous acts of murder, torture, rape, gender-based violence and abduction spurred the immediate formation of the Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women, Children and Families, headed by University of Pennsylvania-trained attorney Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy. The Commission collects evidence of atrocities committed against families and of the sexual assaults committed by Hamas during its slaughter.

During my current trip to Israel, I spoke with Einat Reich, chair of the Commission’s board.  “We have collected evidence of sexual violence during the Hamas attack,” says Reich, who is also the chairperson of the Hadassah Neurim Youth Aliyah Village. “It was completely there — and systemic.” Because of the brutality of the attack, many rape victims — and witnesses to the rapes — were murdered, forever silencing their testimony. But actions speak louder than words. Women were found, naked from the waist down, bloodied and with broken pelvises. As a former lawyer, I know that circumstantial evidence can be even more powerful than direct evidence.

With so much evidence of the weaponizing of rape on Oct. 7, why do progressive defenders of women’s rights refuse to see the obvious? Why the willful blindness?

Back home in progressive Santa Cruz, California, I attended an event where a prominent community member falsely proclaimed that Hamas’ sexual assaults were “thoroughly debunked.” I attended another event where a local feminist-studies affiliated professor brushed aside the evidence, stating “not many” rapes occurred and dismissed those that had, as more like a few bad apples rather than a tactical trend in waging war.

It seems that when it comes to Israeli victims, many self-proclaimed advocates of social justice suddenly align themselves with rape culture, which minimizes the severity of sexual violence and normalizes beliefs that defend such violence.

The strident denials and assertions that the sexual assault of Israel women was fabricated or exaggerated by Israeli women is too eerily similar to the warped conspiracy theories of Holocaust denial.

While the Civil Commission’s investigation is ongoing, Reich and Elkayam-Levy have been presenting the evidence they have gathered so far at meetings of the UN and around the world, seeking moral allies who oppose sexual crimes against women and children.

They have also recently published a groundbreaking report on Kinocide: The Weaponization of Families, which details horrific crimes that intended to inflict as much pain as possible within the family unit, leaving deep, generational trauma. “These crimes,” says Reich, “should be prosecuted as crimes against humanity.”

The first prosecution for crimes against humanity took place during the Nuremberg trials against the Nazis.  In the past, sexual crimes like the ones perpetrated by Hamas have occurred in other times and places, traumatizing victims. The Hamas perpetrators must be brought to account for their crimes. “Maybe this will be one of the outcomes of the Commission’s investigations,” says Reich.

I am proud that my volunteer organization, Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, has forcefully spoken out against the violence against women in the October 7 massacre through its #EndTheSilence campaign. Read Hadassah’s policy statement here.

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Anastasia is a member of the Hadassah Writers’ Circle, a dynamic and diverse writing group for leaders and members to express their thoughts and feelings about all the things Hadassah does to make the world a better place. It’s where they celebrate their personal Hadassah journeys and share their Jewish values, family traditions and interpretations of Jewish texts. Since 2019, the Hadassah Writers’ Circle has published nearly 500 columns in The Times of Israel Blogs and other Jewish media outlets. Interested? Please contact hwc@hadassah.org.