The war in Gaza only has losers. On both sides. Thousands of Palestinian families who died, bombed cities, tens of thousands of displaced people. Israelis who sit day after day in their ‘safe rooms’ while rockets rain down on them, who lose sons at the front, who wait for hostages held in Gaza. And on both sides the fear, the helplessness, and the anger.
I have tried in this blog to stay away from the right-wrong discussions that destroy friendships and relationships. The war is terrible and must stop, we can agree on that. You can only hope that the special Article 99 that UN Secretary-General Guterres has issued will lead to an end of the violence. This article, warning that the crisis is a threat to world peace and security, was last used for Lebanon in 1989. But even if the Security Council adopts it, there are still many ifs and buts.
Overshadowed by the gruesome violence in Gaza, but unfortunately also partly the reason for it, are the rapes and sexual violence that Hamas used during its invasion of Israel on October 7. It is unbelievable that it took eight weeks for condemnations to appear worldwide. Perhaps because they felt like a justification for the Israeli violence while it is so disproportionate.
Wars
Sexual violence is certainly not unknown in wars. The Russians and the thousands of German women after World War II; Rwanda; Bosnia; and most certainly also in the civil war in Syria, although you don’t hear much about it. It is a difficult subject, especially in conservative societies. Women do not easily talk about it.
Even though Israel is a more open society, it is still a taboo there, as colleague Jan Franke explains on X/Twitter. For example, because marriage between the groups is almost non-existent. Inter-ethnic romantic relationships are controversial, he says. ‘A mass rape of Jewish women by ‘Arab’ men is essentially the Jewish Israeli national horror story.’
That it is important to pay attention to it is because of its gruesomeness, about which the BBC reports in detail. Because of the disbelief and the lack of attention, Israelis put together a video with a compilation of images that Hamas perpetrators made, of the bodies of raped women and testimonies of rescuers who found the hundreds of them. Many journalists complained about images they would never be able to get out of their heads again – something I often heard at the time when ISIS also excelled in producing those.
Just like what that group did in Iraq and Syria, this is about war crimes and crimes against humanity. As Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a legal expert at the Davis Institute for International Relations at Hebrew University, tells the BBC: ‘It really feels like Hamas learned how to weaponize women’s bodies from ISIS in Iraq, from cases in Bosnia. It brings me chills just to know the details that they knew about what to do to women: cut their organs, mutilate their genitals, rape.’
Testosterone
I have written about the backgrounds in my book Slaves Wives and Brides. The culture, where testosterone and masculinity prevail, certainly plays a role. Where a faith is proclaimed that favors men while women are there just for the family. Where sex is only allowed within marriage. Where the Viagra pill is in high demand, while the region is considered the largest consumer of porn in the world.
A region where honor is highly valued, so you are not allowed to do all those things from the porn movies with your wife. ISIS men had Yazidi women for that – as they were considered unbelievers, that was allowed. And although Jewish women, unlike the Yazidis, according to the Quran belong to the People of the Book, they are still the enemy. And that enemy on both sides of the conflict has been increasingly dehumanized in recent years. How this can lead to gruesome violence is known from Rwanda and Bosnia.
That the rapes finally got attention was not due to the Israeli army or government. That the issue was brought before the UN Women’s Council, which held a hearing about it, was due to a worldwide solidarity among women. They were devastated by what happened to Israeli women on October 7.
Yazidis
In Iraq, it was also women who called for attention to what happened to the Yazidi women kidnapped by the terrorist group ISIS. They encouraged escaped women to talk to the press about how they were ‘forced to marry’. It was such a taboo that they couldn’t name it rape, which kept the issue from getting attention. In Iraq, the shock over the beheadings and other violence by ISIS was initially so great that there was no attention to what happened to Yazidi women.
The issue was then taken up by the Kurdistan government, which was also a major driver in getting what ISIS did to the Yazidis recognized as genocide. Yet, no one has ever been punished for the mass rapes of Yazidi women. Because all ISIS perpetrators were simply convicted of terrorism in Iraq.
Under pressure from Yazidi activists, and especially survivor and Nobel laureate Nadia Murad, the UN in Iraq set up an investigation to collect evidence of the criminal acts by ISIS perpetrators. But before this could ever lead to prosecution, the Iraqi government recently decided that its mandate for this Unitad-project will end this year.
To the dismay of Yazidis, who thought there would finally be justice for all who lost years of their lives to ISIS, or had family members who were murdered. But attempts by the UN and Western diplomats to change Baghdad’s mind came to nothing. Iraqi politicians fear the consequences that the process could also have for Shiite militias who have misbehaved against ISIS perpetrators and their families.
Hamas Perpetrators
Will the Hamas perpetrators ever be prosecuted? In this case, there is a lot of evidence; for example, the videos they themselves made of their acts, but also the stories of the rescuers who were the first to be with the victims. But a lot of evidence has also been lost: victims were quickly buried, the stories mostly come secondhand, and victims who witnessed it and survived are in a bad psychological state.
And here too there is the other side: the war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. As a result, just like in Iraq, the chances are very slim that justice will ultimately be served for the victims. And without justice, the seeds for more violence are quickly sown again.
