By now, one has either heard of the extensive sexual violence committed against women in Israel by Hamas, or one has chosen to live under the most apathetic rock. In the seemingly never ending saga of shedding light on this dark day, another piece of the collection of depravity has just been released: “Silenced No More,” the nearly 300 page report on sexual violence by the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children. It is an unbelievably tragic yet admirable effort displaying the best of what people can achieve with empathy and dedication. However, it is also yet another insidious spotlight on the absolute worst to which others can sink when choosing pure evil.
Yet for me, it is less about what is actually inside of this report…it is about the continued necessity of it. Its still very necessary existence is by default necessarily troubling. To anyone with a pulse, it should beg the question: why did this have to be released? Why is this still so relevant and crucial to talk about?
The obviously depressing and depressingly obvious answer is that though this horror took place over two and a half years ago, the pain still exists nearly as fresh because it has been largely silenced by the world.
Such unimaginable brutality addressed in the report but largely unaddressed by most serves as a perfect microcosm for the core of October 7th itself: while the extent of the unthinkably vicious savagery has been more than the human, especially female, mind can come to terms with, the following unfathomable global denial and ignorance of these painful realities continue to rival the original atrocities. And so this gigantic wound upon Israeli women has since scarred over but never fully been allowed to heal.
This sadism against women is easily arguable as both the worst of what was committed that day and the worst that one human can do against another…not only due to the nature of the pain the women endured, but because it reveals the undeniable nature of the criminals inflicting it. That they chose this deliberately, as the crime of sexual violence is always absolutely unnecessary in any situation. That they wanted to cause the most pain possible, because if destruction and death were the only goals, it would have been so much simpler to only shoot their victims and burn their homes.
These men made the premeditated decision to commit the most gruesome acts not only because they specifically wanted it to be personal and to inflict the maximum amount of physical and emotional pain…but because they fully thrived off of it. They demonstrated the fullest depth of inhumanity possible both that day and anywhere.
However, perhaps even worse than the intention of pain inflicted in the moment was their intention to bestow a future pain beyond only that day. Mass sexual violence is historically used to psychologically defile and humiliate a population…not only the dead, but the survivors and community as well, and any sexual violence is intended as a double weapon to assault both in the moment and every moment going forward. In this particular case, they not only counted on the painful lack of justice regained due to the reality that they also slaughtered most of their victims. They also very clearly banked on the current global political temperature and everlasting biases to ensure an ultimate humiliation of never being taken seriously. There is no doubt that this strategy’s endgame was the foreseen lasting trauma via antisemitic justification of or overwhelming apathy toward such crimes against our women.
Therefore, the very worst of what was done that day led to the very worst of the ensuing aftermath.
As Sheryl Sandberg asked years ago at the United Nations, are we going to believe the Hamas spokesmen who claim that such violence is forbidden in Islam, and therefore it could not have possibly happened? Or are we going to believe the women whose bodies tell us how they spent the last minutes of their lives?
In something out of an alternate universe, what we have unfortunately witnessed is that “believe all women,” something always enough for other victimized women, expired that day into a resounding disbelief for these Jewish ones in favor of their monstrous abusers…or just simple disbelief that they mattered at all.
Each time another piece of violent evidence is released, I consider whether this might be the one that makes more of a difference, if this might be the thing that lends a moral voice to the willingly mute…though it’s certainly realized that if one hasn’t already spoken out by this point, with such a buffet of monstrosities more than accessible to view, there is little that would bring one to do so now. This is why the release of this report was dismaying for yet another reason: it was not only exactly what we already knew or reasonably suspected, but it was also what everyone else would have already realized and understood this entire time, yet continually chose to stay silent.
And with an overwhelming amount of viscerally overwhelming evidence, demonstrating thirteen categories of recurring violence through ten thousand visuals and 430 interviews and testimonies, there is no argument as to whether more than enough proof exists for any denier to believe. But in reality, proof was never genuinely what was in question…human worth was.
As we’ve gravely learned, there are two sobering truths that have plainly surfaced during this time. Many people’s public support is contingent upon the political temperature of the victim, and many women’s supposed “feminism” is grossly outshadowed by their stronger antisemitism. So the undeniable, age-old reality has been amplified and remains: while crimes and violence against women are typically ignored anyway unless politically useful, crimes against Jewish women sink to the bottom of the barrel, for the very reason that even after millennia, at very best much of the world unconsciously continues to view Jews as not fully human, and at worst, many consciously deny our humanity outright.
The very fact that another entire report had to be created completely demonstrates the double burden that Jews face with crimes against their own…not simply having to shoulder the burden of the original pain, but the burden of having to seek justice alone by redundantly justifying that what happened should and must matter. The fact that it had to be meticulously curated over years shows the timeless double standard of a forever unequal burden of proof. In essence, it is a never ending search for accountability, in a world which refuses to offer any, and which sadly has willingly upheld Hamas’ culminating goal to keep October 7th not just as a past date in history, but forever alive to retraumatize.
It is utterly shameful that the world has tasked such a small community with the ridiculous onus of having to constantly stress that what these women went through matters. For forcing the release of horrors that should never have had to have been, purely in the hopes of getting someone else out there to finally believe that these daughters, sisters, or wives are worthy of the same concern as their own. And for continuing to place more value on these women’s rapists and executioners than the women themselves.
Jews are tired of this never-ending battle on our truth and worth. We are and will always be grossly outnumbered by those who seek to deny the very suffering they enable. But while it feels like a hellish nightmare to keep dealing with this unending state of desired ignorance, it was a conscious nightmare for those women living through that literal hell who only have our community on earth to keep pushing on their behalf.
So until the day when the rest of the world chooses to rightfully care, we all must keep fighting for these women who have been silenced, both by those who stole their lives and those who later deemed their lives unworthy of any voice. As they are no longer able to speak for themselves, it is our collective duty to keep speaking for them and our responsibility to do what they no longer can: to keep compiling unimaginable evidence for an uninterested world, to keep recording and reporting the indescribable to any who will listen, and to keep uplifting the truth about the depths of that day.
These women deserved so much better than this compounding travesty of barbaric terrorism and insufferable indifference. All of Israel deserves better. And, honestly, the whole world should want to deserve better as well. Because in the end, silencing this violence doesn’t simply silence these particular victims. It silences any possible chance for our humanity to survive in the future.
A proud member of the Pittsburgh Jewish community, Sarah Kendis is a musician, instructor, and writer residing in Squirrel Hill.