The report\u2019s only reference to Hamas\u2019s crimes is an aside written in a dry and gender-neutral manner: \u201c\u2026the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in an estimated 1,400 dead, 4,629 wounded and some 200 people taken hostage\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Such silence is not new. Throughout history, the wartime rape of women has been considered inevitable, necessary\u2014like crimes such as looting\u2014for maintaining the morale of the combatants.\u00a0\u00a0The conquest of women through rape was, for generations, a standard of victory, proof of the soldier\u2019s masculinity, part of his success and a tangible reward for his service. Later the prevailing approach was that there would undoubtedly be some cases of rape, but that these were unavoidable.\u00a0 International law was mute, and in times of conflict, for many years, women were excluded from the protection of the law.<\/p>\n
It was only in the second half of the 20th century that international criminal law recognized rape as a crime\u2014but only as a crime against women\u2019s \u201chonor.\u201d\u00a0 In 1949, with the signing of the Geneva Conventions, the international community explicitly addressed the concept of \u201crape\u201d for the first time in the context of protecting civilians during war. Article 27 of the Convention states that \u201cWomen shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault.\u201d This article reflects the concept that rape, during armed conflict, is a crime not primarily against the woman but against the honor of the family and the nation. The body of the raped woman is a symbolic battlefield, ground trampled in the march of the victorious battalions.<\/p>\n
However, associating the act of rape with injury to honor obscured the brutality of the bodily harm it caused. It led to a discussion focused on society, not the victimized women. In addition, although this article requires the conquering army to protect women from rape, the language of the Convention does not explicitly characterize acts of rape or sexual violence as crimes. This is because protection of the victim is not defined as protection against the physical harm that may be caused, or the emotional damage, or the injury to their \u201cdignity\u201d as a human being, but only as protection against the violation of their \u201chonor,\u201d an abstract criterion that is difficult to prove.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the 1990s, a new era began with the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunals\u00a0in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the inclusion of sex crimes in international\u00a0criminal law. In the constitution of the international tribunal in Yugoslavia, rape was added to the list of crimes against humanity, and in its rulings the tribunal recognized rape as torture. The Rwanda tribunal\u2019s constitution, too, defines rape as a \u201ccrime against humanity.\u201d That constitution also expanded the authority of the court and explicitly included the crime of rape as one of a list of violations that are also considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions. In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the Akayesu ruling established for the first time that sexual violence can constitute a crime against humanity and a tool of genocide by a government official.<\/p>\n
The 1998 Rome Statute, under which the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established, represented another landmark. Although the United States, Israel and a few other countries have not ratified this treaty, the Rome Statute codifies all the criminal offenses recognized by international law and is supported by a respectable majority of the world\u2019s countries. Significantly, the Rome Statute determined that sexual crimes are subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC and established a clear procedure to ensure that the crimes and their victims are dealt with appropriately. Thus, only 25 years ago, sex offenses were anchored as crimes in international law.<\/p>\n
And yet, with regard to these intentional and planned sex crimes, carried out to terrorize and to use women\u2019s bodies to humiliate the Israeli people, the international feminist community has chosen to remain silent. UN Women, an organization that strives for gender equality and seeks to be a reliable partner for lawyers and decision-makers, and to lead the effort to achieve gender equality, has ignored and continues to actively and consciously ignore the horrific sexual crimes committed by Hamas and excludes these crimes from the moral and legal discourse. It\u2019s silence once again, and this time not at the hands of men, but of feminist women. Worse than silence, some actually deny what happened to Israeli women at the hands of Hamas terrorists.<\/p>\n
As an international society, we must not remain complicit in this silence. The distortion must be exposed, and the silence must be broken. We must reveal the scale of the sexual crimes committed by Hamas, support the victims and bring the criminals to justice.<\/p>\n