October 7, 2023, was a horrific day for Israel. A barrage of militant Hamas terrorists crossed into Israeli territory to carry out the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. Not only was there murder, kidnapping, and torture, but Hamas terrorists also used sexual violence against Israeli women. If this attack had happened in any other country, I imagine that advocates against sexual violence would not have equivocated and would have spoken up right away against such atrocities. However, since the October 7 attack took place in Israel, the "international community" took a different approach.
In its press release on October 13, 2023, UN Women did not acknowledge the sexual assault of Israeli women and mostly talked about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is peculiar since Israeli Defense Forces did not have a physical presence between 2005 and October 23, 2023 when the IDF launched its full-scale incursion in Gaza. It took UN Women nearly two months to issue sort of any condemnation. When it did, UN Women could not help but partake in false equivalence. To its credit, the United Nations did eventually get around to admitting in 2024 that there are reasonable grounds that sexual violence took place in multiple places by Hamas on October 7.
Neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch (HRW) were much better in terms of being able to unequivocally condemn Hamas. HRW could not sufficiently condemn Hamas for its barbarism shortly after the attack, and did not even address Hamas' sexual violence. It took HRW until June 2024, or nine months later, to come out with a report acknowledging the sexual violence during the October 7 attacks. In contrast, HRW has swiftly condemned the sexual violence in Congo, in the DRC, and Sudan .
On October 13, 2023, Amnesty International could not clearly criticize what Hamas did without condemning Israel in a manner that was tantamount to victim-blaming. Amnesty International unequivocally and quickly reported on the rapes committed by Tigray fighters in Ethiopia and the gang rapes of Rohingya women in Myanmar without equivocating. In contrast, Amnesty's December 2023 report on what happened on October 7 only confirmed one rape, which as we will see shortly, is an understatement of what happened.
This brings us to the Dinah Project, which is an Israeli group founded to advocate for the victims of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) during the October 7 attacks. Last week, the Dinah Project released a report entitled A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond. Not only does this report extensively document over 15 cases of CRSV committed by Hamas and provides a legal framework to hold Hamas accountable. It makes the argument that the acts of CRSV were not individual acts. Instead, the sexual violence was a deliberate, ideologically motivated, and systematic tactic central to Hamas' genocidal goals, something which I have brought up before.
This blatant one-sidedness is not new. In 1975, the United Nations passed a resolution falsely stating that Zionism is racism. Although the resolution was overturned in 1991, that animus remains to this day. It does not matter that there are actual human rights abuses taking place in the world. Israel is disproportionately vilified with such false accusations as apartheid, occupation, and settler colonialism. A few months ago, I had to refute Amnesty International's claim that Israel was committing genocide (see here, here, and here).
So why the tempered or delayed responses from human rights organizations? Why are there so many on the Left, the Far Left in particular, who ignore the mounting evidence of sexual violence against Israelis and are incapable of condemning the terrorist group Hamas? Why is Israel subject to such frequent, intense, and disproportionate condemnation while so many of these critics ignore real human rights abuses and oppression? Shortly after the October 7 attacks, I asked myself why the "progressive" Left would be on Hamas' side because it was perplexing to me (see here and here). After examination, I was able to get past why the "progressive" Left would not side with a minority group that has been persecuted for centuries.
With identity politics leading the way, the "progressive" Left can only see in terms of the oppressor and the oppressed in very black and white terms. For them, Israel is the oppressor. Acknowledging Hamas' usage as a weapon of war would have refuted the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy favored by many international actors. Moreover, the state of Israel is a repudiation of victimhood. Israel shows that a minority as oppressed as the Jews can overcome discrimination, stigma, and genocide to the point of creating a flourishing state. Leftist ideology loses credibility if minorities overcome adversity because it means we humans are not merely victims of circumstances.
In contrast, the Palestinian cause is the personification of victimhood, which is why the Far Left clings to it so dearly to the point where Hamas can do no wrong and Israeli victims' suffering does not release them of being supposed "oppressors." Pro-Palestinian individuals cannot view Hamas as anything but virtuous. To do otherwise would be admitting that their worldview is not only wrong, but morally depraved. Conversely, if the Far Left has excused the likes of Stalin and Mao Zedong killing millions, why would they have moral qualms with the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas?
Anti-capitalist sentiment could explain why the Far Left would defend Hamas rapists and not care about Israeli victims. Earlier this month, the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) released a report entitled Forever Occupation, Genocide, and Profit. This UNHRC report was incapable of acknowledging that Hamas started the current war, that they systematically carried out murder and sexual violence, or that there are still hostages. What did the report conclude? "The enduring ideological, political, and economic engine of racial capitalism has transformed the Israeli displacement-replacement economy occupation into an economy of genocide." Much like I argued in 2023, Jews and the state of Israel personify capitalism and all the evils that anti-capitalists see in capitalism.
Whether Israel is viewed as oppressor, capitalist, or rejector of victimhood that the Far Left loves all too much, this is how "human rights advocates" can reach such a level of moral distortion. What Israel represents to these people is so reprehensible that they can contort facts and their perception of current events to believe that rape is resistance. The #MeToo movement died shortly after the October 7, 2023, because of these double standards. Major human rights organizations have failed in their respective missions. It is this overall indifference towards the suffering of Israeli women that caused the Dinah Project to come into being.
We live in troubled times with anti-Semitism I previously thought was relegated to history books. Yet we are seeing and documenting horrid anti-Semitism in real time. We are seeing that sexual violence does not matter if the victim is Israeli or Jewish. We see that it has lamentably become acceptable to attack and murder Jews across the world in order to "globalize the intifada." As a survey from the Anti-Defamation League shows, it is how the United States has stooped low enough where 24 percent of Americans found that violence against Jews is "understandable."
Given the entrenched hatred for Israel and for Jews in multiple international organizations, I remain skeptical as to whether the victims of the October 7 attacks will receive the justice they deserve. Until the world can view Hamas as the Islamist, regressive, homophobic anti-Semites that they are, and until people can realize that it is the Palestinians who embody everything the anti-Zionists accuse Israel of, most people will continue to cling to the moral inversion in which it is "understandable" to attack Jews and where #MeToo does not apply to Jews or Israelis. Even so, I hope that the Dinah Project is a first step to pursue justice for those who suffered at the hands of Hamas terrorists and could also be used as a framework to legally punish anyone who commits sexual violence in conflict. There is no acceptable instance in which rape is resistance. As we move forward, let us not forget who stood up for victims of sexual violence and who stood on the side of genocidal rapists.
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