‘Stars’ ignore brutalisation of Israeli women

Demonstrators gather during a "#metoo unless you are a Jew" protest outside of United Nations headquarters in New York City on December 4, 2023.

It was clear sexual violence was being committed by Hamas on October 7 as soon as the first images emerged from that day.

Naama Levy was pictured being dragged by her hair from the boot of a car; the seat of her pants dripping in blood. An early video to emerge was that of Hamas militants spitting on Shani Louk in the back of a pick-up truck, her body twisted and lifeless.

Despite these images, however, and despite the testimony that would later emerge, many on the progressive left – including women speaking at this year’s International Women’s Day event at the Sydney Opera House – have denied sexual violence took place, and have dismissed the suffering of rape victims for no other reason than their nationality. The UN, which is not known to be sympathetic towards Israel, confirmed this week that Hamas used rape and sexual torture not only on October 7, but also against female hostages captured and taken back to Gaza.

After analysing 5000 photographic images and 50 hours of video footage, the UN’s Special Mission on Sexual Violence in Conflict report confirms rape and gang rape were widespread on October 7 at three sites: the Nova music festival and the area around it, Road 232 and the Kibbutz Re’im.

At the site of the festival, the report states, there were “at least two incidents of rape of corpses of women”, with the bodies of women found naked, tied and gagged. “In most of these incidents,” the report states “victims first subjected to rape were then killed.”

There is not much to celebrate this International Women’s Day. As I write this, 19 women are still being held by Hamas in Gaza. Of those, five women are presumed dead; 14 alive. The women believed to be alive include Liri Albag, 18, Daniella Gilboa, 19, Naama Levy, 19, Karina Ariev, 19, Agam Berger, 19, Romi Gonen, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Noa Argamani, 26, Emily Damari, 27, Arbel Yehud, 28, Doron Steinbrecher, 30, Shiri Bibas, 32, and Carmel Gat, 39.

These women are all aged between 18 and 40. It is not hard to comprehend why they are still being held, and what they are being held for.

This week, American writer and economist Noah Smith speculated on X that: “Hamas is refusing ceasefire offers and letting thousands of innocent Palestinians die just so they can keep raping their captured sex slaves.”

Yet Hamas has denied using rape as a weapon, saying it contravenes Islamic law. In response to the UN report, Hamas officials described it as “baseless and only aimed at demonising the Palestinian resistance”.

Demonstrators gather during a “#metoo unless you are a Jew” protest outside of United Nations headquarters in New York City.

But Hamas militants are not known for their gentleness towards women. And Islamist militias around the world are known to make up their own rules during attacks – in contravention of the Islamic law they claim to practice.

As The Weekend Australian reported, captured Hamas militants have confirmed they were instructed to kill innocent civilians, and confirmed they knew these acts are something the Koran does not permit.

Creative reinterpretation of Islamic law is part of the Islamist modus operandi. While Islam prohibits sex outside marriage, the Islamic State, for example, practised sexual slavery on a vast scale, cataloguing and trading thousands of Yazidi girls in online databases and at open-air markets. “The (ISIS/ISIL) slave trade is run in an efficient and pre-planned manner in order to ensure profits,” legal scholar David Sverdlov wrote in a 2017 paper. “When women are first captured, a fleet of prearranged buses takes them to halls, prisons and other holding areas. These holding areas are set up in advance with mattresses and other amenities for a certain number of women. Once ISIL brought the women, it uses a specific methodology of inventorying and labelling them. From the pen, the women are brought to a slave market to be sold retail or wholesale.”

A decade ago, Islamist militants of Boko Haram captured 276 girls from their school in Nigeria, with the few girls managing to escape reporting rape while in captivity. This mass kidnapping prompted celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway, Hillary Clinton and, most memorably, Michelle Obama to engage in public protests with signs emblazoned with #BringBackOurGirls. Today’s celebrities, however, are unlikely to hold up such signs for Israeli women.

In an essay published at The New Arab on January 30, Macquarie University fellow Randa Abdel-Fattah, who will be speaking at this year’s IWD at the Sydney Opera House, declared blithely that “Zionists cry rape, and the world is shocked”.

“Allegations of mass rape have come from the Israeli regime, not women,” Abdel-Fattah wrote, ignoring the fact that women cannot file police reports when they are dead, and that women held hostage may not be able to go online to tweet #MeToo.

While thoughtful people can disagree about many aspects of the Israel-Gaza war, any honest pro-Palestinian advocate does not deny the atrocities of October 7. This International Women’s Day, any honest feminist should be able to agree that one woman’s rapist can never be another woman’s freedom fighter.

Claire Lehmann is founding editor of online magazine Quillette.