In Re’im, a Gaza border community and the site of the Supernova music festival, the words “if only trees could speak” are carved into the trunk of a thin tree.
On October 7, 2023, partygoers hid among the trees of the Re’im forest during Hamas’s brutal onslaught. Women were not shielded from the brutal violence of that day. Women were brutally murdered, bound, tortured, raped, and kidnapped in the most horrific of ways.
It is true, if the trees of the Gaza border area could speak, they would tell us stories we couldn’t bear to believe. But trees do not have to silently hold stories of Hamas’s violence against women. Many Israeli women have bravely stepped forward to share their stories of abuse at the hands of Hamas terrorists. Released hostages have recounted sexual harassment, psychological and physical abuse, and starvation while captive in Gaza.
Hamas's violence against women
First responders during Hamas’s October 7 attack witnessed and documented horrific acts of violence against women on that day. Yet, despite overwhelming evidence of Hamas’s violence against women in Israel, many around the world have remained silent.
UN Women released a statement responding to Hamas’s violence against Israeli women on October 7, 2023, a full 55 days after the attack. The plight of Israeli women has been largely ignored by many women’s rights activists and humanitarians. The lack of social action has prompted the viral social media hashtag #MeTooUnlessYoureaJew. As women who condemn Hamas’s treatment of women shout “Rape Is Not Resistance,” masked protesters hold signs reading “Resistance by Any Means Necessary.”
As disturbing details of Hamas violence against women continue to surface, Israeli women have begged the world to champion their condemnation of rape as a weapon of war. But in many cases there has been far more silence than support for Israeli women since October 7, 2023.
This past Saturday, March 8, was International Women’s Day. It’s a day that often celebrates the accomplishments of women and urges support for women’s rights around the world.
On International Women’s Day last year, and many other days, my thoughts turned toward women abused by Hamas. I have thought of the memory of Israeli women murdered by Hamas in their homes and women fighting for the international community to acknowledge the pain that Hamas inflicted on them. I have thought of young girls in Gaza being radicalized; young girls brought to watch coffins holding the remains of murdered Israeli children paraded on a stage in Khan Yunis and pose with Hamas’s machine guns in the streets.
I have visited the Gaza border region multiple times, and each time proves to be a profound experience – although, since the October 7 massacre, even more sobering.
On a visit to the border just a few months before the war began, I remember an Israeli woman speaking of her hopes for peace. She shared that she hopes mothers on both sides of the border wall would one day be able to raise their children in peace. To raise their children without war or fear of Hamas’s violence. As I have grown to learn more about the region and hear the stories of Israelis and Palestinians, the hope of this Israeli woman is something I have not forgotten.
AS HAMAS’S hatred and corruption is more apparent than ever, the need to speak up for women subjected to its violence is more important than ever.
Recently, Hamas returned the body of Shiri Bibas, the mother of the two beautiful redheaded boys, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, who were brutally murdered in Hamas captivity. Only that the first body given to Israel was not that of Shiri Bibas but of an unidentified Gazan woman, causing further uncertainty and psychological terror surrounding the status of Shiri.
Hamas murdered Shiri and her children in captivity, then used the body of a Gazan woman to perpetuate its psychological warfare. Even in death the remains of this woman were used as a puppet of cruelty.
Many women who have experienced the worst of Hamas’s cruelty have spoken up, but the world has silenced their voices. Many women will also never be able to speak of what they endured because Hamas brutally ended their lives.
On the heels of International Women’s Day, let us listen to the voices of women who have endured Hamas’s violence and dare to share their story: Women like Karina Ariev, who recently returned from Hamas captivity; women like Moran Stella Yanai, who survived over 50 days in Hamas captivity and has shared her story, despite attack and pushback, on the most anti-Israel of US campuses.
Nevertheless, let us also be a voice for the women Hamas took too soon: For Shiri Bibas, a devoted wife and mother, who was brutally murdered in captivity; for Eden Yerushalmi, who was murdered in a tunnel in Rafah and returned to Israel weighing only 36 kg. (79 lb.); for Gaya Khalifa and all the women at the Supernova music festival who just wanted to dance.
For them and hundreds more women, we will be their voice, we will remember, and we will remind the world.
The writer works at Passages, a Christian organization dedicated to taking Christian students to Israel and mobilizing young people to support the Jewish state on campuses and in communities across the US and to stand up against antisemitism.