Global women’s rights groups silent as Israeli women testify about rapes by Hamas

"As the United Nations promotes an awareness campaign ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25, chilling accounts from survivors and first responders who witnessed Hamas’s October 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis paint a horrifying picture of systemic sexual assaults perpetrated against women and girls of all ages.

One survivor of the Supernova music festival, where about 360 people were slaughtered, described how she witnessed Hamas terrorists rape an Israeli girl: ‘As I am hiding, I see in the corner of my eye that [a terrorist] is raping her,’ the witness recounted. ‘They bent her over and I realized they were raping her and simply passing her on to the next [terrorist].’ Yet many feminist and women’s rights organizations worldwide have remained conspicuously silent — and some are even questioning the veracity of the accusations. These denials of the sexual abuse perpetrated by Hamas have far-reaching consequences, including the deterrence of other sexual abuse victims from seeking help.

Among others, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (also known as UN-Women) released a statement on October 13 equating the Hamas brutalities with Israel’s self-defense. Likewise, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) neglected to explicitly condemn Hamas’s atrocities. And the international #MeToo movement completely failed to mention Hamas — or the Israeli victims.

On Wednesday, Israeli women’s rights experts met with UN-Women for the first time to advocate for official recognition of Hamas crimes against women and children on October 7. It marked the first meeting that the United Nations mission dedicated to upholding the rights of women and children has held with Israeli advocates since the Hamas onslaught.

Following the meeting with Israelis, the UN Security Council met in New York on ‘The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.’ There, UN-Women executive director Sima Bahous said she was ‘alarmed by disturbing reports of gender-based and sexual violence.’ In her speech, which focused on the plight of women in Gaza and in the Palestinian Authority, she also condemned Hamas’s crimes inside Israel and promised they would be investigated.

But Bahous’s slim acknowledgment of reports of sexual abuse is unfortunately the exception, not the rule. In one high-profile case of sexual abuse denial, on November 18 Samantha Pearson, the former director of the University of Alberta’s sexual violence center, was fired for endorsing an open letter that denied Hamas terrorists had committed rape. The letter criticized Canada’s New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh for repeating ‘the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence.’

Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, called the failure of groups to condemn Hamas’s abuses against women a betrayal.

‘The very essence of gender equality and women empowerment groups worldwide is to assist victims of such atrocities. A pregnant woman was cut open and her unborn baby was shot. How could anyone stay silent when faced with such horrific acts?’ said Sulitzeanu in a conversation with The Times of Israel..."