Identity politics and the rape of Israeli women

Warning: The following includes charges of sexual violence.

Nineteen-year-old Naama Levy’s name should have been a rallying cry of feminist rage. A globally trending hashtag for all who advocate for peace. A symbol of international indignation against sexual violence.

And it would have been. If she weren’t a Jew.

Naama was abducted during Hamas’ savage attacks against Israelis on Oct. 7. You likely saw her from the day’s harrowing footage. Face beaten. Sweatpants bloodied. Body shoved into the back of a Jeep.

The stories of sexual crimes that day are haunting. Women and girls of all ages were raped. Some were found with broken pelvises and legs from the trauma. Others bound up, stripped, and shot. Beaten with bloodied underwear. Gang-raped and beheaded. One woman’s body was punctured with nails. Another begged them to just kill her. 

In February, Israel’s Association of Rape Crisis Centers reported Hamas’ sexual violence was a “clear operational strategy involving systematic, targeted sexual abuse.” A paramedic testified to multiple cases of gunshots aimed at sexual humiliation. A volunteer who helped prepare victims’ bodies for burial reported seeing corpses frozen with anguished faces and clenched fingers.: “There seems no doubt what happened to them.”

No doubt, indeed.

The proof of sexual violence on Oct. 7 and the months following is indisputable. And the nightmare continues for the women still captive. Freed hostages describe young girls being dressed as dolls and treated as puppets. Medical officials speculate the remaining women have been impregnated.

International women’s and human rights groups can have no room for doubt that these unspeakable horrors occurred, or that Israeli women were targeted as victims of sexual crime.

But they’ve found plenty of room for indifference.

An Israeli-led session at the United Nations noted the silence of advocacy organizations following the Oct. 7 attack. Organizations including Human Rights Watch, the World Health Organization, Amnesty International, the Women’s March, and up until Dec. 5, Planned Parenthood.

It took UN Women 55 days to release a statement condemning the sexual crimes against Israeli women and girls, yet they repeatedly advocated for the safety of Palestinian women and girls. They also found time to discuss “feminist climate justice.”

The relative apathy toward Hamas’ sexual crimes is among the most rank displays of anti-Semitism in living memory. Politically progressive communities—especially those in higher education—have “contextualized” the rape of Israeli women, qualifying if not justifying it as a reactionary fallout of political oppression.

One Columbia University student described that she and other Jewish students were shocked when the rape of Jewish women was, at best, overlooked and, at worst, surreptitiously celebrated: “The acceptance of victim-blaming these rape victims is exclusive to the women harmed on October 7.” In a believe-all-women world, it’s #MeTooUnlessYoureAJew.

And here we see the consequences of our intersectional ethos on display, where demographic categories of perceived power determine one’s guilt or innocence, where sexual crimes are adjudicated by the victim’s place in the “hierarchy of oppression.”

Identity politics has dehumanized women en masse.

If Israeli women are “white, capitalist colonizers,” they don’t have to be fully human. They certainly don’t have to possess unconditional dignity and worth. Whether an atrocity is condemnable is no longer based on absolutes, but intersectional identities of its perpetrators. Even more, whether facts are true no longer depends on the degree to which they correspond with reality, but whether they align with prescribed political narratives. 

And this belief—the claim that all our culture’s ills and cures are reduced to power—is deeply embedded in a generation’s worth of education, pop culture, and social media. It’s why 50 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds believe Hamas was justified in its brutalities. It’s why a sitting congresswoman and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal, quickly pivoted to public perception of Palestine when asked about Hamas using rape as a weapon of war. It’s why left-wing university professors praised and celebrated Oct. 7 as “heroic” and an “achievement.” And it’s why (at least in part) the Biden administration is courting the goodwill, if not forgiveness, of its party’s progressive, pro-Palestinian wing, a voting block that, in a razor-thin presidential election, it can’t afford to lose.

Months after Oct. 7, Naama Levy remains in captivity. Her mother, Ayelet Levy, describes the unspeakable anguish of knowing what her daughter has endured: “We have all heard from courageous survivors about the horrors they experienced as hostages and the misery these young, vulnerable girls continue to endure. … I know that many people across the globe shared in my terror watching the video of what happened to Naama. That terror must not be forgotten. It is still happening.”

She wants the world to remember her little girl. Because in our brave new world of “cultural resistance” and “social justice,” young women like Naama are far too easily forgotten, the collateral damage of decentered power.