A ‘Call to Action’ Against Hamas’s Use of Rape in War

The significance of the Dinah Project’s report on Hamas’s utilization of sexual violence as a weapon of war on is not just a meticulous description of the crimes themselves. That is plenty graphic and devastating, to be sure. Yet what the Dinah Project has done is sketch the parameters of a counterattack in Israel’s courts and conceivably those in America and other countries with independent judiciaries. The team of legal and gender experts who authored the report seeks to “set the record straight” on the terror group’s deliberate use of sexual violence as a means to dehumanize, degrade, and terrorize Israelis. Each one of the report’s 80 pages details horrors more unimaginable than the next. Together they make up the “most comprehensive assessment to date” of Hamas’s sexual violence during and after October 7. The assessment, our Novi Zhukovsky reports, confirms that Hamas raped victims on October 7, 2023, across at least six locations, including the Nova music festival, Route 232, Nahal Oz military base, and Kibbutzim Re’im, Nir Oz, and Kfar Aza. “Clear patterns emerged in how the sexual violence was perpetrated.” Several corpses — mostly of women — were found partially or fully naked with their hands tied, often to structures like trees or poles.The findings were drawn from eye- and ear-witnessess, first responders, healthcare workers, and morgue employees. First-hand survivor testimony was sparse. That’s because the vast majority of those who were sexually assaulted on October 7 were among the 1,166 who were murdered in the attack and thus “silenced forever.” The few victims who escaped death are, in most cases, “still too traumatized to speak.” Beyond the atrocities of October 7, the report sheds light on the ongoing sexual abuse of the hostages. Nearly all of the 15 returned hostages who spoke with the authors reported verbal or physical sexual harassment, including unwanted physical contact or forced nudity. Many of the prisoners also faced threats of forced marriage, which, according the authors, “would constitute rape under the guise of marriage.” The authors did not merely set out to document Hamas’s atrocities, however. The report is meant to serve as a public “call to action”: that is, they write, “to acknowledge the sexual violence that occurred on October 7 as crimes against humanity, to hold the perpetrators accountable, and to ensure that the tactical use of sexual violence by Hamas as a weapon of war receives the international condemnation and response it demands.” To that end, the report lays out a legal framework that addresses the unique challenges of prosecuting and investigating wartime sexual violence. The authors direct prosecutors to utilize eyewitness accounts, circumstantial evidence, and other forms of evidence in the absence of “direct victim testimony.” They also call for prosecutors to hold accountable even those who didn’t personally commit rape or sexual assault. Their recommendations, they note, are directed at “decision-makers at the state level and in international institutions and organizations; law-enforcement and legal professionals including the prosecutorial and the judiciary; and civil society actors.” The authors urge the Israeli government to prosecute terrorists for sexual crimes as crimes against humanity and ask the United Nations to add Hamas to its list of parties responsible for conflict-related sexual violence.As such, the project is meant “to be a voice for those who cannot or can no longer speak,” one of its co-authors says. It’s fitting, then, that the project’s namesake is Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob and Leah, who was the first rape victim in the Bible. An entire chapter is dedicated to her rape, though she remains silent throughout. Now history has given her the final word — “Dinah,” when translated from Hebrew, means “her justice.”

A ‘Call to Action’ Against Hamas’s Use of Rape in War

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