Giving voice to those brutally silenced by Hamas

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, JDCA hosted experts Dahlia Lithwick, Mimi Rocah, and Jennifer Rubin in a critically important conversation about Hamas’s campaign of sexual violence on October 7. Specifically, we looked at how denial of this violence not only hurts the victims and survivors in Israel, but women around the world.

As Jennifer Rubin said, “if women victims have to somehow meet some qualification to count, then women everywhere are in danger.”

WATCH JENNIFER RUBIN

The evidence of Hamas’s targeted and weaponized use of sexual violence on October 7 is irrefutable. Yet, nearly a hundred days later, we have seen widespread denial and equivocation from the international community and many international women’s organizations, who failed in their responsibility to identify these mass atrocities.

Some have falsely claimed a lack of evidence, putting the burden on victims themselves. It is immoral to demand that survivors of sexual violence testify publicly, and we know that far too many cannot testify because they were murdered.

“The notion that any one of those people has a burden and a duty to come forward and testify now in the midst of trauma is the antithesis of all the work we have been [doing] for decades to protect survivors of sexual assault… It is putting us centuries backwards,” said Dahlia Lithwick.

WATCH DAHLIA LITHWICK

Mimi Rocah called on us all to “lift up the stories of what happened… We have to try to bring people in…lift it up on social media, in conversations with friends, telling these women’s stories who cannot tell it themselves is so important.”

WATCH MIMI ROCAH

Urge Congress to Condemn the Use of Sexual Violence by Hamas

Thank you for your partnership and support.

Halie Soifer
CEO, Jewish Democratic Council of America