The Occupation of Khaybar
In February 2024, a few months after The New York Times published an investigation into the sexual violence that was perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, Rama Duwaji, the wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, liked an Instagram post. That post claimed the New York Times investigation was a fabrication of a mass rape” hoax and that Hamas had done no such thing. There is a lot of evidence online however that the times conclusion was correct. There is witness testimony, there is survivor testimony, there is first responder testimony, there are UN reports, there is video evidence taken by Gopro cameras worn by Hamas, and there are confessions by Hamas members during interrogation. The graphic video evidence from Gopro cameras has not been released publicly to protect the privacy of the victims and their families Instead it has been shown to specific audiences, including foreign government officials, media, and medical teams tasked with victim identification. Why did Rama deny a truth that has so much supporting evidence? She's not the only October 7 denier. Why the denial? Where are the feminists who say we should believe the women? That question was asked by Michael Cohen in an article in the Atlantic. He wrote:
Since allegations of sexual violence first appeared in the fall, a contingent of anti-Israel activists have sought to disprove them. “Believe women” and “Silence is violence” have been rallying cries of progressive feminist organizations for decades. But the same empathy and support have not been shown for Israeli victims....
For Shelly Tal Meron, a member of the Israeli Knesset for the opposition Yesh Atid party, the indifference of once-former feminist allies to the sexual violence on October 7 has been acutely painful. “I sent letters to UN Women, as well as #MeToo and human-rights organizations,” she told me. The response was “complete silence. I was astonished...
Instead of believing women, these activists have chosen to take the word of a terrorist organization that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians and that has constantly denied that any sexual assaults occurred on October 7.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a historian at the New School gave her theory for why feminists didn't speak out against the rape of Israeli women. She wrote:
“There is a very powerful and understandable resistance on the left, to centering ‘white feminism’ or white womanhood in understanding the experiences of women and the purpose of feminism, domestically and internationally.” By this logic, white feminism is inherently “problematic”—and because many on the left see Israelis as white, she says, they “see any defense of Israeli women as some sort of capitulation to ‘white feminism.’”
Another reason may be that many feminists identify with the Palestinians and against Israel. They know that admitting the truth would hurt the cause they identify with. Michael Cohen wrote that there is:
a disquieting sense that pro-Palestine activists believe they must defend Hamas. Accusations of systematic rape and sadistic sexual violence not only tarnish the terrorist group, but also undermine the notion that October 7 was legitimate “armed resistance” against Israeli occupation...
Michael Cohen also wrote that
News outlets that reported on the violence of October 7 were fiercely attacked. For example, in late December, The New York Times published an investigation that thoroughly detailed the evidence of mass, systematic sexual violence. The story drew an immediate response from Hamas, in language echoing that used by Western activists. “We categorically deny such allegations,” Basem Naim, a Hamas leader, said in a statement, “and consider it as part of the Israeli attempt to demonize and dehumanize the Palestinian people and resistance, and to justify the Israeli army war crimes and crimes of genocide against the Palestinian people.”
Michael Cohen wrote:
Six months into the war in Gaza, many pro-Palestine activists in the United States are so fully invested in the cause of Palestinian liberation, for which Hamas claims to be fighting—and so steeped in their hatred of Israel—that they are casting aside the progressive ideals that they regularly invoke when castigating Israel. In doing so, they are exposing themselves as hypocrites whose ideology is not forged in a set of universal values but rather is situational and dependent on ethnicity or skin color.
Jonathan Freedland, a columnist for The Guardian, suggested to me that left-wing rape denialism is, in effect, a refusal to believe that Hamas could stoop so low as to engage in sexual violence. On the surface, this sounds bizarre. Hamas massacred more than 1,100 Israelis, the majority of whom were civilians, and has a long history of massacring Jewish civilians, including children. How could any crime be considered worse than murder? But Freedland says that there are leftists who are prepared to countenance “armed resistance” but cannot do the same for sexual violence. “You can see why it would be essential for them to say that Hamas was ‘only’ guilty of killing and not guilty of rape.” Freedland noted that Hamas itself has consistently denied that its fighters committed sexual crimes, perhaps in an effort to retain its standing among devout Muslims. “Hamas would be nervous of being seen not as warriors for Palestine but as a bunch of rapists who bring shame on Islam,” he said. Indeed, as Sulitzeanu pointed out to me, some Israeli Arabs who have stood in solidarity with the victims of October 7 have also refused to accept that their Palestinian brethren could commit such heinous, un-Islamic crimes.
From the point of view of many on the left, violence against Israeli civilians is OK since they see it as resistance against oppression, but they can't see rape that way and it makes their heroes (Hamas) look bad.
If there are Muslims who truly believe that the rapes of October 7 didn't happen, and that Muslims would not do such a terrible thing and that it was just biased reporting of the New York Times in favor of Israel they should turn to the Koran, a book they believe in which documents mass rape of Jewish women.
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One indirect way is to read the Koran. Another way is to listen to more of the chants at anti-Israel demonstrations.
Islamic doctrine explicitly justifies the subjugation of non-Muslim women. The Quran repeatedly refers to captive non-Muslim women as “what your right hands possess” (ma malakat aymanukum), permitting sexual relations with them as property (see Quran 4:24, 23:5-6, 33:50, 70:29-30). https://rairfoundation.com/germany-2026-12-year-old-german-girl-forced/
Additional Links:
Hamas used sexual violence as part of 'genocidal strategy', Israeli experts say
UN recognizes heavy Oct. 7th rape evidence