Editor’s Note: During UN Women’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, National Review is featuring 15 women’s organizations that have either supported Hamas’s violence against Israeli women or remained silent about it.
Women for Women International is a nonprofit humanitarian group that provides support to female war victims. After Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the organization is assessing the “gaps in the humanitarian response to determine if there are ways we can support women to overcome the trauma of this escalation of a decades long conflict.” Much of that support goes toward funding Palestinian groups in Gaza.
“We are horrified by the atrocities on women and their families in the Israel-Hamas war,” WWI said on October 10. “We are mourning all the lives lost. We grieve the brutal massacre of civilians in Israel and we fear for the safety of the hostages. Also, we grieve the impact of the bombings on civilians, including women and children trapped in Gaza.”
Human suffering — in Israel and Gaza — was caused by “this violent escalation of a decades long conflict,” WWI said. The organization has called for an immediate cease-fire and funds women’s organizations in the West Bank that help the “hundreds of Palestinians [who] have been forcibly displaced and dozens killed or arrested in raids.”
Women for Women International co-founder and board member Amhad Atallah was previously the editor in chief of Al Jazeera America. Qatari-owned Al Jazeera has legitimized Hamas since October 7.
“The Israeli government may hope that at some point Palestinians will turn on Hamas which remains largely untouched, but one thing is clear: Palestinians, Arabs at large, Muslims globally, and ‘the Rest’ will blame Netanyahu and Biden for the carnage,” Atallah posted on X on December 2. “And I should add, the majority of young people in the United States as well as people of conscience of all faiths. This solidarity is what we have right now.”
WWI is funded by many donors: American Institute for Research, America’s Charities, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Cartier Philanthropy, Charles Schwab & Co. Inc., Charlotte Tilbury Beauty, Dropbox Foundation, the European Union, Fidelity Charitable, Ford Foundation, George Washington University, German Foreign Office, the Jimmy Choo Foundation, NoVo Foundation, Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Swedish Postcode Foundation, Swarovski Foundation, the USAID, Vanguard, Whole Planet Foundation, Women on a Mission, and more.
The organization said it “unequivocally condemns the use of rape as a weapon of war,” on November 22 but did not mention in its statement the scores of Israeli women Hamas raped, mutilated, and murdered.
“In the last few months alone, there have been sickening accounts of women subjected to rape in Israel, Sudan and Ethiopia; of Palestinian women detained in the West Bank reporting sexual assaults and fears for women displaced in Gaza or the DRC, who are now at heightened risk of sexual exploitation and trafficking,” WWI said instead.