The silence of the international feminist community in speaking out against evidence of sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli women has been deafening.
It took the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women nearly eight weeks to condemn the appalling rape and sexual assault carried out by the terrorists on October 7. A full 57 days later, it issued a weak statement saying it was “alarmed” by the reports. Other women’s and human rights groups have consistently dismissed evidence and testimony.
It seems women must always be believed – except when they are Israeli, to whom the #MeToo maxim does not seem to apply.
But I believe them and you should too. On Wednesday, I attended a press conference in the House of Commons when we heard from Israelis who dealt with the bodies of victims.
Shari Mendes, an architect who was called up as a reservist by the Israeli military to help medics identify those brought to the Shura army base, said many women arrived with no clothing. “Our team commander saw several female soldiers who were shot in the vagina, the crotch or they were shot in the breast. This was gratuitous. This was a deliberate, systematic, genital mutilation.”
Simcha Greiniman, a volunteer for Zaka, an Israeli religious organisation that collects remains of the dead for burial, said one woman, half-naked from the waist down, was shot in the back of her head and found with a live grenade in her hand. Other victims had nails hammered into their private parts.
Equally disturbing, however, were the words of Ashley Waxman Bakshi whose 19-year-old cousin Agam Berger is still being held hostage in Gaza. “You can clearly understand our worry with every minute that passes when our women and girls are in the hands of these monsters, if they were able to do this in eight hours or 12 hours on October 7,” she said. “They have been there for 117 days. What if they are pregnant?”
The barbaric brutalisation of Israeli women by Hamas is nothing short of a crime against humanity and it is not just wrong, but morally repugnant, that so many of the death cult’s useful idiots continue to deny what has happened, even in the face of mounting evidence.
The silence of the international feminist community in speaking out against evidence of sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli women has been deafening.
It took the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women nearly eight weeks to condemn the appalling rape and sexual assault carried out by the terrorists on October 7. A full 57 days later, it issued a weak statement saying it was “alarmed” by the reports. Other women’s and human rights groups have consistently dismissed evidence and testimony.
It seems women must always be believed – except when they are Israeli, to whom the #MeToo maxim does not seem to apply.
But I believe them and you should too. On Wednesday, I attended a press conference in the House of Commons when we heard from Israelis who dealt with the bodies of victims.
Shari Mendes, an architect who was called up as a reservist by the Israeli military to help medics identify those brought to the Shura army base, said many women arrived with no clothing. “Our team commander saw several female soldiers who were shot in the vagina, the crotch or they were shot in the breast. This was gratuitous. This was a deliberate, systematic, genital mutilation.”
Simcha Greiniman, a volunteer for Zaka, an Israeli religious organisation that collects remains of the dead for burial, said one woman, half-naked from the waist down, was shot in the back of her head and found with a live grenade in her hand. Other victims had nails hammered into their private parts.
Equally disturbing, however, were the words of Ashley Waxman Bakshi whose 19-year-old cousin Agam Berger is still being held hostage in Gaza. “You can clearly understand our worry with every minute that passes when our women and girls are in the hands of these monsters, if they were able to do this in eight hours or 12 hours on October 7,” she said. “They have been there for 117 days. What if they are pregnant?”
The barbaric brutalisation of Israeli women by Hamas is nothing short of a crime against humanity and it is not just wrong, but morally repugnant, that so many of the death cult’s useful idiots continue to deny what has happened, even in the face of mounting evidence.