Ending the Silence on Hamas’s Sexual Violence

E ven though the world witnessed Hamas’s brutal attack against Israeli civilians through videos and photos that terrorists broadcast on October 7, 2023, international organizations were quick to cast doubt on just how barbarically Hamas acted. As Israel wages its counterattack against Hamas, doubt festers: Is Israel justified in its retaliation? Does the murder of 1,200 Israelis legitimize Hamas’s obliteration?

To remind the world what Israel must fight against — on behalf of innocent Israelis and Palestinians — Israeli women have undertaken a grueling job in the past months. Forced to defend their country and bring justice to their dead loved ones, Israeli task forces have authored reports on Hamas’s sexual crimes to describe in greater detail the events of October 7. A recent report published by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI) is one of the most comprehensive compilations of evidence, witness testimony, and military intelligence, and it describes Hamas’s attacks as “sadistic.” The report was handed to the United Nations this week, with the hope that U.N. officials, who for months denied that Hamas had brutalized Israeli women, will finally stand up for Israeli women.

The ARCCI is an Israel-based organization that was established 33 years ago by Israeli rape-crisis centers to be advocates for victims of sexual violence. Although the organization doesn’t often handle international issues, after the October 7 attack on Israel, ARCCI started to receive information about sexual abuse perpetrated by Hamas. Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the ARCCI, told National Review that the organization received information on more than one dozen cases in the week after October 7. “I thought that we had to somehow document this, because it was all very gradual,” she said. “We decided to collect information to see what we could learn from it. Naming and categorizing are very important to understand phenomena.”

It was a phenomenon that Hamas’s victims couldn’t explain themselves — most of the victims had of course already been shot and killed by terrorists, and some were even killed while being raped. Much of the evidence that the ARCCI compiled came from witness testimonies, accounts from medical professionals who tended to bodies after the attack, or photos and videos that Hamas produced during its massacre. Rescued hostages have corroborated claims that Hamas sexually abuses women in captivity, as well. Hamas still holds many women captive in Gaza, where Sulitzeanu said women are likely still being abused. In December, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller speculated that Hamas was not releasing female hostages who have been sexually assaulted, to shield how Hamas abuses their captives.

“Now, Israel is like a woman,” Sulitzeanu said. “Usually it’s ‘he said, she said.’ She says she was raped, and he says he didn’t do anything. This is how it usually is in sexual violence. But now, many women in our country were abused, most of [the October 7 victims] were shot dead, some of them are alive, and we have to deal with the disbelief of everybody in the world.”

When the ARCCI compiled the report, the organization found that Hamas’s violence followed clear patterns. In many cases and in many locations, Hamas mutilated women’s genitals and shot women in the faces, to hamper future identification attempts. Terrorists also habitually put grenades, knives, and nails into women’s vaginas.

“All of this information was collected and categorized. The big picture we saw was, first of all, it was systematic — it happened not in one place, or two, where maybe you could say only some people were perverse and did what they did,” Sulitzeanu said. “But no, it happened all over. And second, the same stuff happened over and over. The big picture that we see is that [the attack] was intentional and directed — somebody gave them this kind of mission to [attack] purposefully.”

Sulitzeanu’s mother was a Polish Jew, who was 16 and in Auschwitz when World War II ended. Given her family history, Sulitzeanu never understood how antisemites could deny that the Holocaust happened. She didn’t expect the world to turn on Jews in such a way again, this time by promulgating rape denial. “Today, many people say the Holocaust did not happen. And I lived with a mother who had a number tattooed on her arm, a number tattooed from Auschwitz,” she said. “To see that [denial] happen again is really very hurtful. It’s the same thing. It’s the same thing.”

In February, Palestinian media and the U.N. alleged that members of the Israeli Defense Forces have sexually assaulted at least two female Palestinian detainees. Sulitzeanu said that, if that’s true, Israel will punish any officers who committed such war crimes. Having worked with victims of sexual violence for years, she added, she knows that good people can do horrible things: soldiers, bosses, and more. But in Israel, there is “no way there could be this kind of planned, sadistic sexual violence,” and the country would never direct its people to rape, mutilate, and harm innocent life in the same way Hamas did, she said. So far, the U.N. has released no evidence to prove the allegations of IDF sexual assaults; U.S. intelligence and various media outlets have been unable to independently verify the reports. Nevertheless, the U.N. has called such reports “credible” and was quick to condemn Israel’s reported “egregious human-rights violations.” Meanwhile, it took until December for the U.N. to condemn the crimes against Israeli women that Hamas terrorists themselves triumphantly live-streamed.

If the U.N. cares about “egregious” claims of sexual violence, as it says it does, why did it ignore evidence of Hamas’s savage rapes for months? In accusing the IDF of war crimes without publicly releasing evidence, it appears that the U.N. is now defaulting to the modern standard of feminism: Believe all women. But Israeli women are wondering: Where was that standard months ago? Why didn’t the world believe Israeli women — and what will it take to finally end the silence?