It is a natural human reaction to look away. Or decide to not mention extremely horrific details when certain stories hit the news. But we all knew probably within minutes of tuning into events on that October 7th morning that rape was going to be a large part of what would emerge. No one needed to tell us that, it was a given. The video of Naama Levy left little to the imagination up to and including her slit Achilles’ heel. She might run away you know.
Yet the world was relatively quiet about the sexual violence until late last week. Word broke that Hamas was not releasing anymore female hostages as the likely reason was that these women might disclose that what we all had been fearing. It prompted a small media storm, in particular as some voices, and it is hard to believe they even exist, tried to deny all of this citing the absence of tangible evidence. This is the same crowd that a few years ago during the #MeToo hysteria would rush in to say that you should always believe a woman. If you apply this logic to this case they may have a point, as most of the women are either dead or taken hostage and it is hard to hear their voices. But the evidence is piling up and it is sadly overwhelming, here is one witness from the Supernova music festival that was attacked:
“I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or 10 of the fighters beating and raping her,” recalled Saadon, a foundry shift manager. “She was screaming, ‘Stop it already! I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’ “When they finished, they were laughing, and the last one shot her in the head,” he said.
There are two things to note here. First, in war it is a time tested tactic to punish and intimidate civilians with sexual violence. The Red Army’s march into Nazi Germany in 1945 is historically one of the better documented ones. The female prey was basically offered by the commanders as a reward for the sex starved Soviet military men. It also stood out given the different approach on the other side of the battle where the Allies behaved as they should. It is estimated some 200,000 German women died as a result and most of the living victims were silenced because all the rapes had taken place in what eventually became East Germany, a Soviet satellite state. In more recent times we have seen this ugly dynamic at work in the former Yugoslavia and as used by ISIS and its pursuit of the Kurdish-speaking Yezidi minority. The latter brought the concept of ‘sex slave’ back into the headlines a term also heard on some of the Hamas videos that are now circulating. Importantly in this case is that rape is not used only as a tool of intimidation or to reward fighters for their efforts, but as a starting point to commit genocide:
Catharine MacKinnon argues that the victims of genocidal rape are used as a substitute for the entire ethnic group, that rape is used as a tool, with the target being the destruction of the entire ethnic group.
The disconcerting thing is that over the weekend I noted many women on social media bringing up the ‘genocide’ claim when talking about Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Yet from the same group not so much as a peep when it came to one of the most gruesome mass rapes in modern history: the one that took place on October 7th in Israel. The outrage is selective and throwing your raped and murdered Israeli sisters under the bus is par for the course.
Secondly it is not just random people on social media that willfully ignore this horror, no, the UN itself kept quiet about it for most of the time. Until last week when it no longer could avoid the issue and put out an obligatory statement that lacked any conviction. Yet, the prevention of sexual violence is part of the UN’s mandate, in fact some were quick to find a 2019 tweet by UN Women highlighting the important fact that when a woman means ‘no’ it is indeed ‘no’. And UN Women went to great lengths here to ensure global inclusivity and used the word ‘no’ in a large number of different languages. Mysteriously, they somehow missed one language. Want to take a guess which? In Hebrew the word for ‘no’ is ֿ’לא’ pronounced as ‘lo’. Not on the list.
There are 137 hostages left in Gaza of which 20 are women, including Naama Levy. All of them are going through hell on a daily basis, but for the women in particular their ordeal is one that defies any description. It is beyond hell. Let’s not forget them and speak up for them as not many others are doing that.
Photo: people fleeing the Supernova festival near Re’im on October 7th. The site became the centre of mass rape and murder with 364 people killed.
Western leaders have a stark choice: either manage the decline of Western values and civilization or take whatever measures are necessary to defend it. Up till now, our very sclerotic Western leaders have chosen the path of least resistance, namely, manage the decline. I pray that after what the world has witnessed, our Western leaders will rise to the challenge. Or the future will be very bleak for everyone, not just the Jews. Our load mouthed campus fools will wish for what they had, but it will be too late. It starts with the Jews, but it never ends with the Jews.
Perfectly said Pieter, so disgusting.
Such behavior threatens to take our humanity down the rabbit hole to hell. Such pervasive examples of hypocritical racism and antisemitism. The entire UN colossus, Michelle Obama ("bring home our girls") JustSayNO groups, et all. Nothing but crickets. For over 2 months...
Contrast this to the GoPro videos brazenly posted by Hamas perpetrators of mass rape and murder all over the internet. Never in history has the criminal so overtly advertised their crimes of evil. Who is the intended audience for consumption of this evidence of evil crimes against humanity?
This reality, coupled with seeing keffiyeh-clad military-age men of Hamas/ISIS demonstrating (peacefully of course, haha?) on our streets in support of these acts of evil, is a serious wake-up call for Western civilization. (joined by their radical left partners and "academics" - perhaps should rename them all "regressives"?)
The victims of the Hamas murderers in Israel were of many faiths - Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu. Hamas/ISIS (and the civilian looters who followed from Gaza) didn't discriminate. They only raped, murdered, burned, pillaged and took hostages.
The privileges of the liberty that our ancestors fought and died for are clearly at risk today. We must speak out en masse or risk the inevitable.