Where's the solidarity with Jewish women? - opinion

• Published date: 08 March 2024
• Author: LAURA KAM
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Finally, yet months too late, a UN team investigating the sexual violence against women in Israel on October 7 found 'reasonable grounds' to believe that such violence did indeed occur. Reasonable grounds

While this wording leaves much to be desired, still, it is an important official confirmation. Yet one wonders if the UN report will do anything at all to change the narrative surrounding the gender violence that began almost five months ago.

Even before the report was issued this week by Pramila Patten, the UN's special representative on sexual violence in conflict, there was evidence and eyewitness accounts that women of all ages, including children, were raped and gang raped. Women and girls were violently and sadistically killed with their underwear torn off, faced down with their heads blown off.

Hamas terrorists admitted to necrophilia – to dirty and dishonor the victims. Barred by Islam to do so, they did it anyway. As the UN report states: "In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed, and at least two incidents relate to the rape of women's corpses."

And most frustrating and infuriating, while we in Israel have known for some time that women in captivity were being sexually abused and cried out to the heavens about it with little sympathy from the international women's community, the UN report states there is "clear and convincing information" that sexual violence is "ongoing."

While the ongoing lack of response from international women's groups regarding the rape and sexual violence perpetrated against women on October 7 and its aftermath may be attributed to a combination of complexities including, at least close to October 7, limited access to information, today, months after that blackest of black Sabbaths, with all the reports, news accounts, witnesses and victim testimony, it can only come down to one thing – antisemitism.

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been a subject of intense political polarization and women's groups have diverse memberships with varying perspectives on this issue, that alone can't explain the on-going silence about Jewish women being massacred and sexually assaulted in the most horrific ways.

Do women's organizations need to like a woman's government to support her...