How we talk about sexual violence
The war over Israeli women’s bodies has become a battle of whether or not specifics matter.
On Oct. 7, men sent by Hamas and other terrorist organizations infiltrated southern Israel and committed atrocious crimes against humanity. They killed, they kidnapped, and they committed acts of sexual violence.
This much — despite the massive surge in heinous disinformation campaigns on social media trying to “prove” otherwise — is well-documented.
But how many women were raped? What, exactly, happened to each one of them? Is there verifiable proof? And do any of these specifics even matter?
The present war over women’s bodies has become a matter of whether or not they do.
The argument against specifics goes something like this: The burden of proof should not be on the victims of sexual violence. ‘Believe all women’ must apply to Israeli women, too.
The question of numbers is “sick,” Dr. Sarai Aharoni, a gender studies professor who now leads a documentation team for the Civil Commission on Oct. 7 war crimes against women and children, told Haaretz. ‘We’re trying to find out the truth. To bear witness. From my familiarity with the materials, I can tell you that many things happened. Many, very difficult things.”
Aharoni and other experts are documenting the specifics, in painstaking detail. But they don’t think that you should need to hear about them in order to be convinced and horrified.
The ultimate goal sexual violence in war is often to traumatize the targeted community, the argument continues, as much as it is to defile the individual.
No matter how many women were violated on Oct. 7, the terrorists can say mission accomplished. They have succeeded in humiliating, horrifying and degrading an entire community ‘just’ by filling our minds with images of terrorized Israeli women and girls, regardless of how many of them had to actually suffer this fate. The specifics are not relevant.
“Questions are asked like: Is there or isn’t there semen? Was there or wasn’t there a rape kit? Those same female jurists with international reputations who are conducting this discussion apparently do not have a basic understanding of international law,” Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy of the same Civil Commission told Haaretz.
“International law does not talk the language of the individual case. My call to them is to look beyond those denial mechanisms. You are facing a bunch of respected women and telling them that shocking crimes were committed here. Am I the one who needs to provide the evidence for the terrorists’ deeds? What kind of travesty is it that they are imposing the burden of proof on me?”
I have tremendous respect for the commission’s sacred work. And frustration at the UN’s lethargic response is a separate matter. But something about this posture, when taken toward those who are asking for more detail in good faith, doesn’t sit right with me.
I understand the frustration and trauma of being asked, again and again, to provide precise evidence and documentation of what happened to women on Oct. 7. I, too, am furious that the world demands more and more proof of Jewish suffering, only to pick it apart, even when it is self-evident. And I, too, am horrified that the very organizations that would never demand detailed proof before condemning other atrocities — including major women’s organizations — are demanding it now, some refusing to acknowledge or even excusing violence against Israeli women and girls.
But if each and every person truly is a world, as Jewish tradition teaches, then of course it matters what happened to each and every one of them.
The other argument, that of us journalists, goes something like this: Of course it matters exactly what happened. There is ample and extensive evidence of sexual violence. And sharing the truth of exactly what happened, accurately and precisely, must be held sacrosanct.
But it is certainly painful — and can feel futile — to do so.
The Israeli government has now been holding closed screenings of the unedited atrocities — mostly footage filmed by terrorists themselves — for nearly two months (scenes depicting sexual violence have been removed at the victims’ families’ request). And yet horrific conspiracies and denialism abound on social media.
There is a recent Haaretz piece that one might accurately describe as pilpulistic. It opens with what everyone reporting on this accurately will tell you: There is absolutely no dispute among serious people that murder, torture, and sexual violence were committed on Oct. 7, that people were beaten and burned alive in a sadistic and methodical way.
But it also makes a compelling case that not every sensational story of violence breathlessly reported in the press and widely circulated on social media likely occurred.
This article has already been used as a “gotcha!” by those in denial of our pain. But I cannot fault the Haaretz reporters, fastidiously and doggedly rooting out the truth. And I certainly do not blame the Zaka volunteers who have testified, those who “entered an inferno, in order to preserve the dignity of those who died as martyrs, while under live fire,” as the organization characterized the work to Haaretz reporters, for sharing their best understanding of what they and other first responders had seen.
Many of the bodies, one should note, were also so mangled and abused that the precise truth of what happened may be impossible to know. As they told Haaretz, “Zaka volunteers dealt with horrors that we thought couldn’t exist in reality. The volunteers collected remains of human beings who were slaughtered, bound, burned, and were raped in ways that the soul is not able to grasp, under the pressing threat of missile barrages and shooting a few meters away.”
But we are still responsible for the stories that we amplify, and the consequences of them.
I understand why so many of us feel we must recount the massacres’ horrors in exacting detail, again and again. This obsessive recitation — the spoken word poems that rival Lamentations in their graphic descriptions of agony. The breathless sharing of footage from moments so violent and bloody and sadistic that seasoned war reporters could barely choke back tears. The painstaking accounting of exactly which prisoners were released in exchange for our innocents. The plastering of photos of our stolen babies and children and parents, as if that will bring more of them back.
A related way we cope is breathless nationalism. The positioning of tanks and flags in front of killing fields too fresh for tombstones. The 21st century war anthems. The duffle bags flown in from the Diaspora stuffed with things nobody asked for. The black tie galas where cries of Am Yisroel Chai are barely louder than the very real divisions much closer to home. The rush to rally in Washington for …what, exactly, no one seemed to know.
A third way is intellectualization. What systematic failures led to Black Shabbat? What does winning the war actually look like? What happens to Israel, and to Gaza, after this?
These are questions that one can make reasonable attempts to answer. They are the very questions the entire security establishment, the entire Middle East conflict complex, has built their careers on.
But there are questions that cannot be answered in this way, questions that concern how we carry ourselves forward with our heads held high and dignity intact. And living these questions feels far more urgent.
What happens to a society in which women are ignored, disbelieved, and restricted from the halls of power is self-evident. But what happens to each individual woman when their pain is not believed? What will continuing to fight a bloody and existential “just war” do to the soul of a nation?
I wonder what would happen if we let ourselves actually feel and learn from these tragedies instead of immediately trying to find the answers to them.
This is, of course, a luxury a nation at war cannot afford. But on an individual level, cultivating empathy and connection are urgent and essential tasks.
What values and rituals, personal practices, connections and communities still yet to be built will get us through whatever comes next? And how do we see, support, and feel for one other as we muddle our own ways through it?
What I’m Reading
What Israel knew: More catastrophic intelligence failures leading up to Oct. 7 are coming to light, as detailed in a blockbuster investigation by the New York Times, among other places. If you thought most Israelis were sick of Netanyahu on Oct. 6, you should hear them now.
Our girls: Keren Eubach, a journalist for Israel’s public broadcast channel Kan, has been fastidiously documenting what happened to women and girls, particularly intelligence officers, on Oct. 7. She writes in Hebrew, but on X, there’s a translate button. It is worth following her work.
Talk data to me: An interesting YouGov poll of American attitudes toward the war reminds us that Twitter is not real life. For all we hear about young people, or liberals, somehow turning on Israel en masse... that's not what the data seem to indicate.
Jews as heroes, not victims: My friend David Hazony wrote about the difference in the ways that Israeli and American Jews are speaking of this war for the New York Post. “In Israel, about a quarter of the news stories were not about victimhood, but heroism,” he writes. “American Jews, for a very long time and for complex reasons, have largely avoided heroism as a Jewish value,” he adds.
“While Israel may destroy Hamas in Gaza, the forces of antisemitism that have been unleashed around the world will not go away — and Jewish communities will be increasingly targeted. They will need immense spiritual resources for what may become a generational battle for their own security and legitimacy. They will need the comfort, strength and exemplars that only a robust education in heroism can provide.”
Where I’ll Be
I’m moderating a discussion for Jewish Women International’s ‘Women to Watch’ gala in Washington, D.C. this afternoon. Tomorrow, I finally return to NYC — at least for a minute.
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