Every day brings news about incidents of antisemitism in Canada and elsewhere or actions by the IDF in Gaza resulting in the deaths of more Palestinian civilians. I have begun writing about both of those, but another development has emerged that has dealt a blow to my soul: denial that Hamas terrorists raped women on October 7th. Like the Hamas brutality on October 7th itself, about which I wrote here, saying there is no room for “two sidesism” in condemning it, I see nothing complicated in expressing dismay at this denial.

In Canada, my own first exposure to this astounding development was the open letter signed by Sarah Jama, MPP for Hamilton Centre, who was ejected from the NDP caucus because of her antisemitic statements, and many organizations and other individuals. Among many other issues, the letter referred to “Jagmeet Singh[‘s] repeat[ing of] the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence”. (Singh was actually referring to the sexual violence committed by Hamas, not by “Palestinians”.) Jama herself on another occasion stated that the sexual violence was disproven and there was no evidence of “these rapes”.

This letter was signed by individuals and groups; among the latter was the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre (via its director, since fired). A sexual assault centre treated the claims of sexual violence against women by Hamas on October 7th as “unverified”. Since then, the President of the University of Alberta has released a strong, clear statement about the University’s commitment to the work of the sexual assault centre and, among other things, its “recogni[tion of] the historical and ongoing harms of antisemitism”.

Other women’s groups are ignoring or denying that Hamas raped women: “Why is the Cruel Sexual Violence of the Oct 7 Hamas attack being ignored?“, referring to Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari (formerly a member of the UN Committee on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) who “feels ‘“completely betrayed” by the international women’s rights organizations with whom she has worked for years, for their failure to condemn – or even recognize – the rape, kidnapping and other atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli citizens on October 7.” There have also been other complaints that the United Nations has ignored the rapes of women on October 7th:

Women’s rights groups and officials in Israel who have been working tirelessly for the past six weeks to document cases of rape and gender-based atrocities carried out by Hamas terrorists during their mass, brutal terror attack in Israel on Oct. 7, say the United Nations is ignoring them. 

They say they have also shared much of this evidence, some of it horrifyingly graphic and all of it extremely intimate, with the United Nations and groups that protect and empower women. 

The response: Silence. 

“We’ve sent letters and shared graphic documentation,” Sarah Weiss Maudi, a senior diplomat and legal adviser in Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Fox News Digital. “Their silence is so deafening that it’s sickening,” she said.

“United Nations slammed for silence over Hamas rapes, mutilation and murder of Israeli women, critics say”; https://www.foxnews.com/world/united-nations-slammed-silence-hamas-rapes-mutilation-murder-israeli-women-critics-say

This in the face of Hamas’s own videos, the descriptions of the military forensic pathologists and the Zaka volunteers who pick up the bodies and the testimony of at least one survivor of that dreadful day, a video I saw today of a young woman unclothed from the waist down being brought out of a building (perhaps a shelter), as well as interrogations of captured Hamas terrorists.

As explained by Sarah Morgan in “The Burden Women Bear: Israel-Hamas War Sheds Light on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Experienced by Irsraeli & Palestinian Women“, rape is a weapon of war and it is inflicted by armies on all sides on women of the “enemy”. This is not new.

Over my career as a feminist scholar, I have written and spoken in many areas of law, including sexual assault (and other forms of gendered violence). As have other women of my generation, I have seen the treatment of sexual assault evolve. I was 35 years old when the Criminal Code of Canada made rape by husbands of their wives illegal. I have seen how the courts gradually began to treat sexual assault seriously to the point at which higher courts condemn the use of myths by lower court judges as they acquit accused rapists, although we still see judges blaming women for being drunk or behaving otherwise in a way that excuses the accused. The understanding and the law of consent acknowledges that consent cannot be presumed. Sexual assault crisis centres are vital places of advice and support and legal advice is available through community legal clinics. Robyn Urback’s “Unfounded” series in The Globe and Mail resulted in changes in how police treated sexual assault allegations. Much more has changed for the better since I was a teenager beginning to find my feminist self (although, as we say, there is still work to do).

We have to acknowledge, too, that while “MeToo” was important in raising the profile of sexual assault, and in shifting the presumption in favour of women’s allegations, claims are occasionally not true in the same way allegations of other crimes may not be true (see Urback on this here). That is not the case here: these are not the claims of the women themselves, who are dead, but of those who recovered and examined their bodies. Their statements constitute the evidence, among other sources.

Given the advances in sexual assault, it is, then, particularly disturbing to see this regression in how women who have been raped are treated. How their suffering is ignored or repudiated. It is astounding, but indicative of where we are, that a director of a sexual assault centre (albeit it one dismissed for her action) could sign a letter, on behalf of the centre, that takes us back years. (I do not know whether other persons at the centre disavowed the director’s action.)

Such an odd thing to do, one might think. But really, not so odd perhaps. The women who were raped, whose experiences have been dismissed, are Jewish. So while there are certainly people, women and men, decrying the rapes by Hamas, along with the other brutality, it seems that all you have to do to set back the advances we have made around sexual assault is to be a woman who is raped — and Jewish.