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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Bombing Gaza Isn’t Fighting
Sexual Violence</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Heidi Matthews
– Tanya Serisier - January 16, 2024<br>
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<p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-310852"
class="size-medium wp-image-310852"
src="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/As_of_26_10_-_7028_killed_in_Gaza_including_2913_children_-_A_million_made_homeless_53289094234-680x453.jpg"
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<p>As the human catastrophe in Gaza deepens, Israel and
its allies are mobilizing evidence of sexual violence
committed by members of Hamas and other Palestinian
militant groups on October 7 to justify continued
military action. When the Security Council failed to
pass a resolution demanding a ceasefire on December 8,
Israel government spokesperson <a
href="https://twitter.com/EylonALevy/status/1733239832288059428?lang=en-GB"
moz-do-not-send="true">Eylon Levy tweeted</a>:
“Thank you to the United States of America for vetoing
a UN Security Council resolution designed to keep
Hamas’ rapist regime in power.” In the wake of its
case at the International Criminal Court accusing
Israel of genocide <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FVsyq5CViA"
moz-do-not-send="true">Levy accused</a> South Africa
of complicity with a “rapist regime.”</p>
<p>Israeli politicians are attempting to equate ending
the war with support for rape, a position that appears
to be supported, at least implicitly, by many liberal
feminists in Israel and the West. Mobilizing hashtags
such as <a href="https://www.metoo-unlessurajew.com/"
moz-do-not-send="true">#MeTooUnlessUrAJew</a> and <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1089725989107190"
moz-do-not-send="true">#BelieveIsraeliWomen</a>,
Israel and liberal feminists have accused the
international community, and particularly the United
Nations, of silence in the face of sexual violence.
This accusation was formalized on December 4, when
Israel’s mission to the United Nations teamed up with
the World Zionist Organization, Sheryl Sandberg, and
others to host <a
href="https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1u/k1u8mfvmcm"
moz-do-not-send="true">an event titled “Hear Our
Voices”.</a> The campaign has continued, using the
hashtag <a
href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0joVWIOon0/"
moz-do-not-send="true">#UnitedAgainstRape</a>, to
declare that “all humans everywhere” should “agree on
one thing,” namely, that “rape is never ok.”</p>
<p>Our understanding of the extent of the violence,
sexual and otherwise, committed on October 7 remains
partial and incomplete. While there have been <a
href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1655054"
moz-do-not-send="true">important questions raised</a>
about the evidence presented by Israeli advocates, and
particularly by journalists from the <em><a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">New York Times</a></em>,
that is not a discussion we directly engage in here.
Instead, we intervene in the logic that equates
believing Israeli women and opposing sexual violence
with justifying and supporting Israel’s
disproportionate war in Gaza and increasing violence
in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This logic does
nothing to reduce sexual violence or to provide
justice and accountability to victims of that
violence. Instead, it mobilizes sex exceptionalism and
selective outrage to further colonial and racist
political systems designed to dispossess and destroy
the Palestinian people.</p>
<p><strong>‘Believe women’: Ventriloquising Victims</strong></p>
<p>The #MeTooUnlessUrAJew campaign claims that UN Women
is ‘actively and knowingly working to create a false
and insidious narrative’ and ignoring the voices of
Israeli and Jewish women due to antisemitic bias.
However, <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2023/12/24/feminism-sexual-violence-hamas-israel/"
moz-do-not-send="true">it is not the case</a> that
the United Nations and UN Women ignored the violence
of October 7. UN Women first issued a <a
href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/statement/2023/10/un-women-statement-on-the-situation-in-israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territory"
moz-do-not-send="true">statement</a> on October 13
condemning attacks on Israeli civilians and noting its
alarm at the ‘devastating impact on civilians
including women and girls’. United Nations bodies
collectively have continued to issue numerous
statements warning all parties to adhere to
international law and particularly to avoid violence
against civilians, including sexual violence.</p>
<p>More significantly, while campaigners decry the
alleged failure of the United Nations to respond to
the violence, Israel is refusing to cooperate with
United Nations bodies established to do this. While
the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court <a
href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-prosecutor-karim-khan-kc-concludes-first-visit-israel-and-state-palestine-icc-prosecutor"
moz-do-not-send="true">has met with the families of
Israeli hostages</a> held by Hamas, Israel has
declined to cooperate with the Court’s <a
href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/palestine"
moz-do-not-send="true">ongoing investigation</a>
into alleged international crimes committed by both
Israel and Hamas since 13 June 2014, including
allegations of sexual violence. It has also refused to
cooperate with the <a
href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-israel/index"
moz-do-not-send="true">Independent International
Commission of Inquiry</a> mandated to investigate
all alleged violations of international humanitarian
law and abuses of international human rights law in
the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel ‘leading
up to and since 13 April 2021’. While these
investigations pre-date the events of October 7, they
provide an internationally accepted path for the
investigation of events on and after that date.</p>
<p>The charge that the United Nations is failing to
listen to Israeli women elides the fact that, to date,
no women have testified publicly about experiencing
sexual violence. As Israeli advocates have correctly
insisted, this doesn’t mean sexual violence did not
occur. Many of the victims of violence on October 7
are dead and will never be able to tell their stories
in their own voices, and others may not speak publicly
for years, if ever. However, we do not honor the
voices of those who may have experienced sexual
violence by ventriloquizing them or claiming to speak
on their behalf. This is especially true in a context
where independent investigations are being
intentionally frustrated, and where it is not at all
obvious that victims of violence on Oct 7 desire a war
of vengeance. As Israeli hostages being held in Gaza
continue to die from violence there, <a
href="https://www.cbsnews.com/video/families-of-israeli-hostages-and-humanitarian-groups-call-for-cease-fire/"
moz-do-not-send="true">many of their families are
calling for a ceasefire</a>.</p>
<p>Historically, women have not only been silenced or
disbelieved about sexual violence. They have also been
spoken for and instrumentalized, particularly in
conflict situations. For example, in 2011, claims that
Viagra had been distributed to Mohammar Gaddafi’s
soldiers to encourage mass rape were widely
circulated, including by the then-United States
Ambassador to the United Nations and ICC Prosecutor,
despite an acknowledged lack of victim testimony
verifying the claims. These rumours provided <a
href="https://www.uclalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/securepdfs/2021/05/Fallah-Tzouvala-67-6.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">essential context</a> within
which Security Council support for military
intervention was generated. They were subsequently <a
href="https://www.salon.com/2016/09/16/u-k-parliament-report-details-how-natos-2011-war-in-libya-was-based-on-lies/"
moz-do-not-send="true">debunked</a>, with an <a
href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session19/A.HRC.19.68.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">International Commission of
Inquiry</a> finding claims of an overall policy of
sexual violence against civilians unsubstantiated, but
only after the war was complete.</p>
<p>‘Believe Women’ does not, and cannot, mean ‘Believe
the IDF’, the Israeli police or security force, or
even those who claim to be feminist advocates. As
Judith Levine has suggested, the actual victims of
violence on October 7 ‘<a
href="https://theintercept.com/2023/12/24/feminism-sexual-violence-hamas-israel/"
moz-do-not-send="true">are disappearing into
propaganda, becoming talking points to legitimize
the pain of other women, children, and men in the
killing field on the other side of the fence</a>.’
The dangers of propaganda are particularly pressing in
a conflict that has already seen eyewitness testimony
of atrocities, such as the beheading of over forty
babies, being withdrawn only after being widely
circulated and <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2023/12/14/israel-biden-beheaded-babies-false/"
moz-do-not-send="true">even repeated by United
States President Joe Biden</a>.</p>
<p>In contrast to calls for swift condemnation and
authoritative statements of what happened, proper
investigations that allow victims time and space to
speak with adequate material support and protections
take time and are almost impossible in conditions of
active conflict. In the former Yugoslavia, for
instance, the investigation conducted by a Commission
of Experts <a
href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2204144"
moz-do-not-send="true">took years and could only
begin once peace was established</a>. By refusing to
cease hostilities and allow an independent
investigation conducted in accordance with
international standards of fairness, Israel is
prioritising shielding itself from accountability for
its own actions in Gaza. As a result, Israel is
deferring and potentially denying its opportunity for
justice and accountability as well as the opportunity
for victims’ voices to be heard on the international
stage.</p>
<p><strong>‘Rape is Rape’: Colonial Logics of Outrage</strong></p>
<p>In contrast to the work of investigation, <a
href="https://time.com/6342428/israel-hamas-sheryl-sandberg-oct-7/"
moz-do-not-send="true">advocates such as Hillary
Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg</a> infer that there are
only two alternatives: denial or outrage. The modern
history of Western responses to rape in conflict
suggests otherwise. Denials and indifference have
co-existed with selective outrage and moral panic,
where allegations of rape have been used to justify
military aggression. During World War II, Nazi
propaganda stoked fear of rape by Soviet forces
through racist rhetoric that portrayed Soviet soldiers
as ‘<a
href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137283399_15"
moz-do-not-send="true">barbaric hordes of Asiatics
and their officers Jewish-Bolshevik rapists</a>.’</p>
<p>In colonial contexts, sexual violence is a frequent
trope in ‘atrocity stories’ which justify the
consolidation of colonial power by mobilizing
oppositions between civilized Europeans and barbaric
racialized others. For example, British media covering
the 1857 anti-colonial rebellion in India repeatedly
reported false, exaggerated, and sensationalized
accounts of sexual violence against English women.
These stories were used to justify widespread
retributive violence against the Indian population
generally. As Jenny Sharpe has explained, ‘<a
href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/allegories-of-empire"
moz-do-not-send="true">[w]hen articulated through
images of violence against women, a resistance to
British rule does not look like the struggle for
emancipation but rather an uncivilized eruption that
must be contained</a>.’</p>
<p>Similar narratives have appeared in Western
representations of conflict in Africa. As in India,
these representations frequently rely on spectacular
narratives of extreme violence including sexual
mutilation. Critical feminist scholars have critiqued
this process, for example, in relation to dominant
representations of the conflict in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, as overly reliant on tropes of
‘<a
href="https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1594"
moz-do-not-send="true">barbarity, sexual mutilation
and cannibalism</a>.’</p>
<p>Israeli officials have repeatedly cast themselves <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v64TVMo2vKw"
moz-do-not-send="true">as defending Western
civilisation from barbaric Palestinians</a>, <a
href="https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">as documented in South
Africa’s genocide case</a>. Addressing the Knesset,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the war as
“a struggle between the children of light and the
children of darkness, between humanity and the law of
the jungle.” As in the above examples, these
depictions are buttressed through the repetition of
spectacular stories, such as the unsubstantiated
account of one eyewitness that a militant cut off a
woman’s breast while raping her, and other militants
played with it. Were this allegation to be proved to
the criminal standard, it would undoubtedly constitute
a war crime. But as United Nations experts <a
href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/01/un-experts-demand-accountability-victims-sexual-torture-and-unlawful"
moz-do-not-send="true">have recently pointed out</a>,
more investigation is needed to determine whether the
contextual requirements for crimes against humanity
were present on October 7. Rather than functioning as
clear evidence of systemic violence, these stories
both work within and reinforce the trope of
civilization versus barbarism.</p>
<p>This civilizational discourse proceeds from a long
history of Orientalist Western imaginings of Arab men
as sexually perverted and rapacious, and contemporary
tropes of <a
href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/dangerous-brown-men-9781842778791/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Arabs and Muslims as sexually
violent ‘terrorists’ preoccupied with white or
Western women</a>. <a
href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2015.1103877"
moz-do-not-send="true">Yohai Hakak describes</a> how
these stereotypes fuel an ongoing moral panic within
Israel about sexual contact between Palestinian,
especially Muslim, men and Jewish women. The far-right
anti-miscegenation group, Lehava, has organized highly
publicized semi-military rescue operations designed to
extract Jewish women living in occupied Palestinian
territory, and has successfully lobbied the National
Service Administration to institute a policy
forbidding Jewish women from volunteering during
hospital night shifts, lest they develop relationships
with Arab doctors.</p>
<p>The latest step in this campaign came in July 2023,
following a high-profile case in which a Jewish
Israeli woman was raped by a Palestinian man. In
response, the Knesset passed a new law creating a
special category of sexual violence: sexual assault
and sexual harassment committed with ‘nationalistic
motivations’. These crimes are now considered ‘<a
href="https://jewishcurrents.org/israels-anti-miscegenation-law"
moz-do-not-send="true">sexual terrorism</a>’,
prosecutable under the 2016 terrorism law, making the
maximum sentence life imprisonment. These racially
targeted laws were introduced despite vocal opposition
from the <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-03-19/ty-article-opinion/.premium/im-the-jewish-woman-sexually-attacked-by-an-arab-dont-use-me-to-feed-your-racism/00000186-f9e3-df62-adfe-fbf333960000"
moz-do-not-send="true">survivor herself</a> and from
feminist groups who declared that the Parliament was
in effect stating that Israeli survivors of rape by
Jewish Israeli men were less deserving of justice and
sympathy. As Dana Frank <a
href="https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/the-edge/2023-12-06/ty-article/.highlight/0000018c-3ee0-d826-ab9e-bfffb7260000"
moz-do-not-send="true">has argued in <em>Haaretz</em></a>,
the current mobilization of sexual violence
allegations in Israel co-opts feminist language to
advance the Israeli state’s militarist and racist
agendas.</p>
<p><strong>‘Just One Thing’: Sex Exceptionalism and
Israeli Exceptionalism</strong></p>
<p><a
href="https://www.instagram.com/sherylsandberg/reel/C0jk3I_O_bB/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Sheryl Sandberg</a> has
declared in relation to this conflict: ‘No matter what
you believe should happen in the Middle East, what
marches you’re attending, or what flag you’re flying,
there’s one thing we can all agree on: rape should
never be used as an act of war’. In making these
statements, she is mobilizing an increasingly
common-sense position: that concerns about sexual
violence in war should trump concerns about the wider
politics or justice of conflict.</p>
<p>This is a militarized version of sex exceptionalism –
‘<a
href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA496344217&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=15334686&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Ed6d2e3b8&aty=open-web-entry"
moz-do-not-send="true">the idea that sex and
sexualities are inherently different from all other
human activities and topics of study’</a>. It is why
we treat sexual offences as different and worse than
other crimes, justifying intensely punitive responses.
In the context of war, sexual violence allegations are
used to bolster public support for hostility. Karen
Engle notes that since the 1990s, ‘<a
href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=30534"
moz-do-not-send="true">rape has come to be one of
the most commonly invoked reasons for use of force</a>’.</p>
<p>Sex exceptionalism facilitates Israeli
exceptionalism, justifying Israel’s right to violently
avenge attacks on Israeli women and girls without
being limited by international law. Each reiteration
that sexual violence by Hamas was ‘<a
href="https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-oct-7-murder-sexual-violence-torture-45aab439"
moz-do-not-send="true">unprecedented in its cruelty</a>’
encourages the world to accept the scenes of
devastation in Gaza. Sex exceptionalism insists that
we agree on ‘just one thing’ while we agree to
disagree on collective punishment, starvation, and the
annihilation of the inhabitants of Gaza, the West
Bank, and East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Ironically, far from working to reduce sexual
violence, this logic supports the production of more
violence which disproportionately affects women and
girls. As Janet Halley has warned, <a
href="https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/1683183/Halley.pdf"
moz-do-not-send="true">‘the intensive and specific
prohibition of rape can weaponise it… its special
legality could power up another rape-driven,
rape-repeating war</a>.” The fact that Israel’s
siege on Gaza increases the already-heightened
vulnerability of Palestinian women and girls to sexual
violence was a key feature of the UN Women reports
that Israeli advocates found so objectionable.</p>
<p>The focus on spectacular sexual violence also
backgrounds the widespread sexual violence committed
by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the everyday
functioning of the occupation. Rather than occurring
in battle, this violence takes place in “<a
href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/conflict-and-society/9/1/arcs090105.xml"
moz-do-not-send="true">less visible spaces, such as
prisons, courtrooms, and investigation rooms”</a> making
it easier to ignore and erase. <a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ending-censorship-idf-admits-officer-jailed-in-2017-raped-a-palestinian-woman/"
moz-do-not-send="true">The case</a> of an IDF Civil
Administration officer convicted of repeatedly
exploiting his position of power to rape and coerce
sexual acts from Palestinians, made public in 2021, is
only one example among many.</p>
<p>Even when these stories reach mainstream media, they
almost never become the subject of international
outrage. On December 4, Josh Paul, a US State
Department employee who resigned over US arms sales to
Israel spoke to CNN’s <a
href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2023/12/04/amanpour-state-epartment-official-resignation-josh-paul.cnn"
moz-do-not-send="true">Christiane Amanpour</a>. He
revealed that the State Department had received
credible evidence from a Palestinian charity of the
rape of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy in Israeli
detention. According to Paul, when the State
Department reported the allegation to Israel, the IDF
declared the charity a terrorist organization, raided
its offices, and seized its computers. Even in an
environment of intense media attention on
Israel/Palestine and the question of sexual violence,
Paul’s account has not generated condemnation, or even
much attention.</p>
<p>The failure to condemn or even register sexual
violence against Palestinians persists despite
extensive evidence, <a
href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/conflict-and-society/9/1/arcs090105.xml"
moz-do-not-send="true">including numerous
first-person testimonies of sexual violence in
Israeli detention</a>. <a
href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/flash-report-on-the-human-rights-situation-in-the-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem-7-october-20-november-2023-un-human-rights-office-ohchr/"
moz-do-not-send="true">The Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reports
that</a> between October 7 and December 27, 2023 the
Internal Security Force carried out mass arrests
involving sexual and gender-based violence such as
genital beatings, forced nudity captured on video,
sexual slurs, and threats of rape. <a
href="https://www.972mag.com/israel-torture-camp-gaza-detainees/"
moz-do-not-send="true">Reports such as this are now
accompanied</a> by an extensive photo and video
archive circulated by Israeli forces of Palestinian
men and boys tied up, blindfolded, and semi-naked. In
some cases, the IDF has confirmed that the majority of
these men are civilians.</p>
<p>As Israel stands formally accused of genocide at the
International Court of Justice, we cannot allow select
and spectacular allegations of wartime rape to be the
‘only thing’ we all agree on. Any feminism worth its
name must refuse to accept the bombing of civilians,
forcible transfer and denial of food, water and
medicine to be justified as avenging sexual violence.
Even more, we must seek to prevent further violence,
sexual and otherwise, and this must mean reckoning
with the everyday violence of occupation that preceded
October 7.</p>
</div>
<p> <em>Heidi Matthews is an Assistant Professor at
Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto.
She researches and teaches in the areas of
international law, criminal law, and law and
sexuality. She is currently leading an
interdisciplinary research project studying colonial
genocide. </em>
<em>Tanya Serisier is a Reader in Feminist Theory at the
School of Social Sciences, Birkbeck College,
University of London. She writes and publishes on the
cultural politics of sexuality and sexual violence.
She is the author of <a
href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-98669-2"
moz-do-not-send="true">Speaking Out: Feminism, Rape
and Narrative Politics</a>.</em> </p>
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