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Opinion

Feminist activists must stand with Israel

I am proud to join other campaigners to demand that the world fully condemns Hamas

January 25, 2024 14:09
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Friends hug at a memorial to the Super Nova festival massacre victims on October 7. (Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
2 min read

The Prime Minister’s speech at this week’s Conservative Friends of Israel lunch was a statement of the government’s and the UK’s support for Israel. But as he spoke about the horrific attacks on October 7, one word stood out to me. In condemning the attacks by Hamas, he spoke not just of the murder of innocent Israelis but also of the mass rapes.

There has been a deafening global silence since October 7 around the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas, something which as an activist who has worked in the violence against women and girls sector for years has horrified me.

That horror which was deepened when I visited the “Voices from the Tunnels” exhibition in east London, put together by 7/10 Human Chain. This powerful imagining of the tunnels is based around testimonies from survivors and hostages released by Hamas. But as shocking as the conditions many of the hostages were — are, for most — being held in may be, what really broke me was the stories of rape and how these women, some merely girls, were kept.

Some of the stories — such as two women held in a cage and then assaulted when they were taken to the toilet — were new to me. But at the same time they are not new, because they echo the stories told by women who survived ISIS, stories we know of because they were covered by international media and because they were spoken about at women’s rights rallies.