Joining the Quest for Justice
We’ve all had those “tunnel” moments, when something happens, or something is said, that shocks the system to such an extent that we feel as though we are moving in space, backwards and far away. The body remains in the same physical place, but it feels as though what was in plain sight is moving to the distance, hearing becomes harder. The underarms start to burn with a volcanic heat. It’s difficult to articulate a few words, forget the ability to generate a cohesive thought.
The last time I had this experience was in a staff meeting approximately five weeks following the October 7 attacks. In the weekly gathering of my distributed team via Google Meet, I made the ask of my Communications Director to work with me on a social media post about the rising denial of the sexual violence that took place in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Leading a women’s rights organization, I naively assumed that no matter our political differences, or even our personal connections to the sides of the conflict, we’d agree that rape as a weapon of war is unacceptable and we had an obligation to speak out, especially against efforts to deny that it took place. I didn’t expect what happened next.
Why revisit this incident now?
On July 8, 2025, The Dinah Project released the report, “A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond, Remembering the Atrocities of October 7th, 2023”. The mission of this report is to hold the perpetrators of sexual violence accountable for their acts on October 7, and to gain recognition and justice for the victims of that unfathomable day, and for all victims of conflict related sexual violence (CRSV).
With my written words, I’m rejoining this quest for justice.
From my patchy memory of what turned into a traumatic moment in late 2023, my former co-worker replied to my request with the accusation that soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces had been raping Palestinian women for 75 years, and that this is what we should be messaging out to our hundreds of thousands of followers, all over the world. That’s when I went into the tunnel.
Of course, this was only for a second or two. But, in the quantum leap of time within the depths of my human brain, images of all the beautiful men that I know – my husband, friends, husbands of friends, sons of friends, children I cared for when they were young, who serve and have served in the IDF – flashed through my mind. Men I trust, who I care about and respect; who struggle for what they’ve seen and how they’ve served in war time and peace time. Men with tender hearts and fierce exteriors, who love their families, their friends, and their country, who muscle toward a better future for themselves and their children, who show up for duty as did their fathers and their grandfathers, or maybe they are of the first generation in their families to do so. I thought of the years my husband spent serving and, knowing how I leaned left and always had suspicion, would share with me what he could about incidents when soldiers violated protocols and were reprimanded with due process. How important it was for him to be part of something that had integrity and honor, even if it meant admitting when something went wrong or was shameful.
I looked around the faces of the Google Meet, waiting and hoping that someone else would say something to defend or diffuse the situation. I knew I could not. But there was only deafening silence. Flustered and unable to regain composure, I made a defensive comment and left the virtual room. Disappointed in myself for so many reasons, hurt by my colleagues, and feeling defeated, I leaned back in my chair and cried.
Then I did what probably many of us have done since October 7. As false accusations of atrocities on the part of Israel are repeated endlessly, thrusting themselves through the act of repetition into being considered as “facts”, I started searching for evidence of what had just been flung at me and my people. Of course this wasn’t the first time I’d heard the libel that the IDF uses rape as a weapon of war, but I wasn’t yet able to recognize the power of hatred to poison otherwise good people’s minds. Or, that this sort of narrative warfare would be the day-to-day norm moving forward.
Clicking link after link after link in search of where this widespread message originated, I came to many dead urls, spoof sites, and circular claims that led to nothing. I went so deep into the rabbit hole, I even found a reference to a research paper that claimed the reason Israel hasn’t used sexual violence in the conflict with the Palestinians is because Israelis/Jews are so racist they wouldn’t “mix” with Palestinians.
My fact finding mission did nothing to assuage my distress. I began to realize that what happened in October 2023 galvanized parties whose sole mission is to delegitimize and destroy Israel and, along the way, to also scapegoat Jews for all that ails the world. In the repetitive patterns that history designs, decent people tend to remain silent.
In the din of their silence, the cacophony of the deniers begins its crescendo.
The Dinah Project and its authors seek to amplify the truth of sexual violence, not only on October 7 when Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon of a genocidal war they initiated against Israel, but also in conflicts throughout our global community. For the victims who have been silenced, for the victims whose truths have been denied, may we have the strength to join this pursuit of justice – and may our voices be so loud – that the perpetrators will be held accountable.
