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Hamas’s crimes against women must not be erased

When Israeli women were abused and taken hostage, most ‘feminist’ NGOs fell silent.

Joanna Williams

Joanna Williams
Columnist

Topics Feminism World

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After 477 days held hostage in Gaza, Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag have finally been released. But before they could return to the safety of Israel, on Saturday, these four young women were subjected to one final act of humiliation. Flanked by masked, gun-toting Hamas fighters, they were paraded on stage and forced to stand in front of a banner displaying anti-Israel propaganda. They were made to smile and wave to the gathered crowd. Like Emily Damari, Romi Gonen and Doron Steinbrecher, the women released one week earlier, the newly released hostages were forced to thank their captors.

Incredibly, this sick stunt has been taken at face value by some anti-Israel activists, keen to suggest the hostages were ‘well fed and looked after’ by Hamas. A BBC reporter even suggested the hostages looked ‘healthy and relaxed’. This apparent credulity and naivety towards Hamas should come as no surprise. Ever since the 7 October pogrom, Israeli women who were beaten, raped, abused and taken hostage have had to fight just to have their experiences believed.

Ariev, Gilboa, Levy and Albag were young IDF soldiers, part of a military unit that monitored the Israel-Gaza border before the 7 October massacre. Liri was just a day and a half into her military service when the four were taken hostage. In bodycam footage, Naama can be seen being bundled into a jeep with bloodstains on the seat of her white trousers. The film shows the four as part of a group, being tied up and pleading for help, covered in cuts and bruises, surrounded by dozens of Hamas fighters armed with machine guns. Someone tells the man filming: ‘Here are the girls, women who can get pregnant. These are the Zionists.’

Reports of the horror female victims of Hamas were subjected to on 7 October have continued to mount up. Corpses have been found with bloody, stained underwear or no underwear at all. Yet the feminists and campaigning organisations that should have been drawing the world’s attention to the plight of these women fell largely silent. It seems that solidarity with victims of sexual assault, typified by the #MeToo movement’s directive that we should ‘Believe All Women’, did not extend to Israelis. Or as an Israeli feminist campaign has put it: #MeToo, unless you’re a Jew.

International non-governmental organisations, normally at the forefront of campaigning to end violence against women and girls, were slow to issue any kind of response. Human Rights Watch issued 51 press releases about Gaza in the eight weeks following 7 October, including accusations about ‘Israeli war crimes’. But when it finally addressed the 7 October rapes in December 2023, it merely called for an investigation, rather than addressing the already extensive evidence.

The United Nations finally got round to sending a special representative on sexual violence to Israel several months after the Hamas attack. Its report acknowledged that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence – including rape and gang-rape – occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October’.

Yet even this, it seems, was not enough to spur global networks of feminist campaigners into action. The names Naama Levy and Emily Damari have never been uttered by those feminists who, only a few years ago, were getting worked up about knee-touching, bad dates and rudeness on social media.

That the hostages released so far have been able to walk out of Gaza with their heads held high is testament to their incredible strength of character and phenomenal bravery. Reports suggest that Emily Damari asked her Hamas captors to free fellow hostage Keith Siegel in her place because she believed he was in worse shape than her. Her request was denied. On making it safely back out of Gaza, Damari ditched the Palestinian lanyard all the hostages had been forced to wear and draped herself in the Israeli flag. Her body may have been abused but her spirit remained undefeated. Damari, a living embodiment of resilience and fortitude, should be a celebrated feminist icon, a role model for an entire generation of girls. Instead, newly released hostages are still having to fight to have their plight acknowledged.

This weekend’s release of women soldiers raises questions about the hostages left behind, including Shiri Silberman Bibas, who was taken captive alongside her husband and two young sons, Ariel and Kfir. Sadly, these young boys and their mother may now be dead, although this has not yet been confirmed. If Bibas and other female hostages are released in the coming days it will be no thanks to global organisations that campaign for an end to violence against women and girls. Tragically, we must even ask who will believe the captives’ story when they are ready to talk about their experiences.

We should celebrate the release of Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag. But we must not forget how few professional feminists agitated for their release.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. She is a visiting fellow at Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Hungary.

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