‘It’s important for us that the world knows who Ori was. Ori was a child of land and words. She so loved this land; she wandered around it so much. She would set out to walk, to breathe, to sit, to work in this land.
“Usually, Ori would travel with paper on hand because she was also a girl of words. Since she was a little girl, she would write poetry. Words that expressed who she was in the world, words that were so deeply felt and exact.”
These were the words of Noa Ansbacher about her 19-year-old daughter, Ori, who was raped and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem in 2019. Although the horrific terror act took place six years ago, it is still fresh in the minds of many Israelis. Ori’s Palestinian rapist and murderer, originally sentenced to life imprisonment plus 20 years, was slated to be freed in the ceasefire deal with Hamas.
An often-overlooked factor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the political violence Palestinian men perpetrate against Israeli women, especially sexual violence.
Reuven Berko, a former adviser on Arab affairs to the Jerusalem District police, wrote, “In pre-state Israel, Palestinian Arabs would rape Jewish women, including minors, in the name of ‘national liberation’ and the legacy of Islam… Christian residents of Bethlehem and Beit Jala fled for their lives because their daughters were being raped by Muslims from Hebron and Bedouin of the Taamra tribe.”
Sexual violence against women faces outrage around the world. When sexual violence is committed, UN hearings are held, protests are staged, and critical media coverage blankets airwaves and social media. The “me too” movement shifted public awareness from ignoring sexual violence to being hyperactive over the issue.
Although more attention is paid to sexual violence than ever, campaigns stress believing women, and prosecuting rapists is heavily emphasized, Jewish and Israeli women have been excluded. The frequent sexual violence committed by Palestinian men against Jewish women is hardly ever mentioned outside of hushed Jewish circles.
Palestinians and Palestinian advocates prefer to characterize the Simchat Torah massacre of October 7 as "acts of resistance against Israeli occupation and oppression."
When confronted with evidence of sexual violence committed by the Palestinian terrorists on October 7 and challenged by questions of how rape can be justified by claims of “resistance,” Palestinian apologists deny the rapes occurred and claim that Jewish women, especially hostages, are lying and were never raped. The Middle East Monitor characterized Israeli claims of rape with skepticism, “Israel’s unsubstantiated claims of mass rape by Palestinian resistance fighters have dominated global headlines.”
Denial of Palestinian violence against Israeli women
INSTEAD OF the “#metoo” hashtag applied to women around the world to inspire believing women claiming to have been victims of a sexual assault, it seems #dontbelieveIsraeliwomen would be a more accurate hashtag before and after October 7.
The campaign that minimizes or outright denies the sexual violence Palestinian terrorists inflicted on Israeli women on October 7 is rarely explicit. Their campaign hides behind slogans like “Free Palestine,” “Intifada,” and “Ceasefire Now.”
In an opinion column titled “Should We Always Believe Women?” Nancy LeTourneau wrote, “‘Believe women’ became such an important mantra [because] nothing about the culture changes unless women not only speak up but are believed when they do so. What we must do when women come forward with allegations of sexual abuse is to listen to them and treat them with respect. That means following up with a rigorous investigation of their claims that doesn’t prejudge the outcome.”
It is curious and infuriating that the “Believe Women” campaign, like its sister campaign, the #metoo movement, never extended to Jewish women.
Israeli human rights advocate and politician Natan Sharansky defined antisemitism with the “three Ds”: delegitimization, demonization, and double standards, each of which indicates antisemitism. There is no explanation for the double standard of the world believing all women who cry “rape” except Israeli women, other than a double standard that applies to Jewish women.
Former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg organized a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence by Palestinians on October 7 at the United Nations headquarters. In an interview following the presentation, Sandberg discussed this very issue.
“The international community’s shameful silence on the mass rape and murder of Israeli women by Hamas terrorists on October 7 speaks to an issue pertaining to the whole world. The current silence on the October 7 atrocities threatens to undo the hard-won progress of the feminist movement over the past decades,” Sandberg said.
“The world has to decide who to believe. Do we believe that Hamas spokesperson who said that rape is forbidden, therefore it couldn’t possibly have happened on October 7, or do we believe the women whose bodies tell us how they spent the last minutes of their lives?”
The image of strong IDF female soldiers, with rifles slung over their shoulders, is Israel’s answer to Palestinian sexual violence against Israeli women. But the world’s tolerance of Palestinian sexual violence undermines Israel’s efforts at providing safety to these women and contradicts the world’s efforts at combating sexual violence against women.
Today, Jewish women in Israel are not safe. Israeli women cannot consider themselves safe when the world sees no problem with the fact that Ori Ansbacher’s Palestinian rapist and murderer was slated to be freed in the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. With a rapist and deviant walking around free, no woman is safe.
In Judea and Samaria – and many other areas of Israel – Israeli women are forced to carry guns to ensure they aren’t raped, kidnapped, or killed by Palestinian terrorists. No woman, including Jewish women, should feel the need to arm themselves to be safe. The world must object to Palestinian sexual violence against Israeli women.
The writer is a certified interfaith hospice chaplain in Jerusalem and the mayor of Mitzpe Yeriho, where she lives with her husband and six children.