Women’s History Month: The Silence Around Israeli Women’s Trauma Is Deafening

By Inna Rozentsvit

As we commemorated Women’s History Month last month, a disturbing contradiction has emerged that demands our attention. While March each year is devoted to celebrating women’s achievements and advocating for their rights, March of this year was characterized by a deafening silence surrounding the sexual violence experienced by Israeli women during and after the Hamas attacks of October 7th, 2023.

The horrific events of that day included documented cases of sexual assault, rape, and mutilation of women’s bodies. Survivors and witnesses have come forward with harrowing accounts. First responders discovered women’s bodies with evidence of sexual violence at massacre sites. Yet these firsthand and eyewitness testimonies have not received the widespread acknowledgment nor have they stimulated the outrage that similar atrocities elsewhere have generated.

For the women who were taken hostage and later released, a second layer of trauma emerged. Many reported ongoing sexual abuses during their captivity. For example, Amit Soussana, who was held for 55 days, bravely shared her experience of sexual assault while in captivity. Other former hostages spoke of humiliation, invasive physical searches, and threats of sexual violence, all of which created an atmosphere of constant fear.

What has been particularly striking is the lack response from organizations and movements that typically champion women’s rights. The phrase “MeToo unless you’re a Jew” has emerged as a bitter commentary on this inconsistency. The reaction among many groups putatively committed to ending violence against women and girls (VAWG) has been threefold: to keep quiet, to actively disbelieve the victims, or to insinuate they somehow deserved their fate.

In a stunning display of this double standard, 140 American “prominent feminist scholars” suggested that standing in solidarity with Israeli women amounts to giving in to “colonial feminism.” In the UK, Sisters Uncut, an activist group known for its “Feministo” commitment to “taking direct action for domestic violence services,” organized demonstrations calling for Israel to put down its weapons but, at the same time, made no mention of the roughly 100 women abducted by Hamas or the sexual assaults that occurred on October 7th. When journalist Hadley Freeman questioned this omission, the group dismissed reports of Hamas’s sexual violence as “the Islamophobic and racist weaponization of sexual violence.” In a particularly disturbing rationalization, they concluded: “No people would ever accept being murdered, humiliated, dispossessed, racially targeted, oppressed, cleansed, exiled and colonized without resisting.”

Many feminist groups that had been vocal advocates for believing women’s accounts of sexual violence have thus remained conspicuously silent about the abuse of Israeli women, or worse, have actively worked to undermine and discredit the victims’ accounts. International women’s rights organizations that regularly condemn gender-based violence in conflict zones have issued very few statements about these specific attacks.

Major media outlets initially approached the accounts of sexual abuse and violence with skepticism, often demanding levels of evidence not required for other conflict-related sexual violence reports. Coverage frequently placed these crimes in a political context that seemed to imply a hierarchy of victims, where some women’s suffering merits immediate concern while others’ can be qualified or contextualized.

The silence has extended to international bodies as well. Despite evidence presented to the United Nations, the initial response there was hesitant and delayed. It took nearly two months after the attacks for the UN to officially acknowledge the sexual violence that occurred, a stark contrast to its typically swift condemnations of such crimes in other contexts.

This selective empathy creates a troubling precedent. When the response to sexual violence depends on the nationality or identity of the victims, it undermines the universal principle that all women deserve protection from gender-based violence. It suggests that some women’s bodies and traumatic experiences matter less than others, a notion fundamentally at odds with the spirit of Women’s History Month.

For survivors, this silence has compounded their trauma. Being disbelieved or having one’s experience minimized is a secondary wounding that survivors of sexual violence often face. When this painful dismissal occurs on an international scale, and from one’s presumed allies and supporters, the impact is magnified.

As we reflect on Women’s History Month, we should examine this uncomfortable gap in the world’s collective response. Supporting women means supporting all women, regardless of nationality, religion, or the political complexities surrounding their circumstances. It means applying consistent standards when responding to reports of sexual violence. It means acknowledging that gender-based violence is never acceptable, regardless of the perpetrator or the conflict context.

The women who suffered on October 7th and in the days that followed deserve the same recognition, care, and justice that we would demand for any victims of sexual violence. Their stories should not be silenced, questioned, or relegated to political debates. First and foremost, these stories, and the women who have related them, convey an experience of trauma that no person should endure.

Women’s History Month challenges us to confront these inconsistencies in our advocacy. True solidarity with women means refusing to be selective about which women’s pain we acknowledge. It means rejecting the notion that some women’s experiences can be discounted based on their ethnic, religious, or national identity. And it means ensuring that “believing women” is a universal commitment, not one contingent on political alignments.

The stories we have heard from the female victims of the October 7 atrocities matter. The trauma they have described is real. And their experiences deserve acknowledgment —not just during Women’s History Month, but always.