Violence against women as a tool for Antisemitism

Sexual violence was a key component of Hamas' tactics on October 7. Now, a Jewish girl was attacked in France because she was Jewish.

Note: This piece deals with a discussion of sexual violence and sexual violence against minors.

Last Saturday, a 12-year old girl reported to the Courbevoie police department having been gang-raped by her former boyfriend and another boy, aged 12, while a third boy, aged 13, looked on. The gang-rape, as described by the public prosecutor for the Nanterre region, a suburb of Paris was an Antisemitic attack. The attack was alleged to have emanated out of her ex-boyfriend’s desire to get revenge on the girl for having omitted disclosing to him that she was Jewish. During the attack, she was asked questions about her Jewish identity and her attackers made Antisemitic remarks while they took turns raping her.  

Before continuing, I urge you to think about yourself at 12 years old. Think about the crushes you had in middle school, the false mature that carried you through life in that grey area between being a child and a teenager. I urge you to think about this because I firmly believe that part of thinking about this attack includes thinking about how impressionable we are in those tween years. In particular, it is necessary to consider how impactful the narrative perpetrated by October 7, and particularly the failure by many to condemn and at times the outright justification of, the sexual violence that occurred, has the power to plant the seed of this being the way to attack the Jewish people.

To his credit, President Emanuel Macron has spoken out about the attack and the need to address the aggressive rise of Antisemitism in France since October 7. Other French politicians have also spoken out and protestors gathered in front of the Paris City Hall. This is by no means a circumstance of something terrible happening and everyone turning a blind eye. This is the reaction to what Hamas terrorists did to women that should have taken place in the months following October 7, and the one that remains largely outstanding, at least on the part of major women’s organizations and advocates. 

Sexual violence has, horrifyingly, been one of the major themes we have needed to grapple with since October 7. This includes the use of sexual violence as part of the atrocities committed against, particularly, women at the Nova Music Festival, and contending with those who justify the mass raping of women as a form of Palestinian resistance or refuse to acknowledge the reality that this occurred. 

It is difficult not to view this attack in Paris as the extension of the sexual violence on October 7, and particularly the way those events have been treated publicly. 

As a younger Millennial, I still consider myself to be very much a part of the Me Too generation of women who said enough is enough; that we are done with the casual sexism we often experience in our workplaces and social communities, and the violent turn this can at times take. As a part of this generation, the experiences of women on October 7 and of the hostages who have been released and rescued from Gaza often form the center point in my mind for just how terrible what happened was. 

The experiences of these women should, by all reasonable measures, be the least controversial part of this war to take a stance on. Can we really not all agree that rape is not resistance? That there is no circumstance under which it is justifiable to sexually assault women for the sake of your cause? 

The answer that has been demonstrated time and again over the last eight months is that apparently this is not something we can agree on, or at least not when it involves Israeli or Jewish women. This is why in the era of #believeallwomen it took the United Nations until March 11 (five months, for those counting) to issue an official press release stating that there were reasonable grounds to believe that women had been sexually assaulted on October 7, but nevertheless caveated this with the sub-title that their mandate is “not ‘war without rape’ but ‘world without war’”, as though we are to accept that one is simply a natural consequence of another. Even in that press release, were the voices of ambassadors questioning the copious evidence of what occurred and raising the unsubstantiated hypothesis that reciprocal sexual violence was visited upon the women of Gaza. 

The narrative this creates is not only that Jewish women do not need to be believed when they tell their stories of being the victims of sexual assault, even in the face of massive amounts of evidence, but that this is a legitimate way of acting out opposition to Israel. This narrative has been reinforced by the failure of women of power - from political leaders to celebrities, and women’s organizations such as UN Women and the Women’s March to condemn not even the larger attacks by Hamas against the Israeli people on October 7, but the specific acts of sexual violence against women.