By Esti DeAngelis, Managing Editor
On July 8, 2025, Israeli legal and human rights scholars gathered at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem to present First Lady Michal Herzog with an 80-page report of the research they had conducted regarding sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7 and against hostages. The experts are members of an organization called the Dinah Project, which has made it its mission to “bring recognition and justice to the victims of CRSV [conflict-related sexual violence] on October 7th and in the future.” They painstakingly reviewed direct and secondhand testimonies as well as forensic, visual and audio evidence, categorizing all information based on its reliability and weight. The breadth of their research is wide, and their concern for truth, accuracy and accountability is equally significant.
But the Dinah Project’s report does something more than just outline the evidence, it does something no other report concerning sexual violence on October 7 has done: It is the first report to offer a comprehensive legal framework regarding how CRSV can be more easily prosecuted. It uses October 7 as a “case study” in order to advance the efforts of more easily recognizing and prosecuting CRSV not just in Israel, but everywhere.
It notes that most victims of sexual violence on October 7 were murdered, and forensic evidence could not be carefully collected and documented because of the wide scale of the attack and search and rescue efforts at the time. Because of this, the Dinah Project advocates for the use of other sources of evidence in national or international prosecutions of CRSV, and for collective responsibility for such acts among all participants in a genocidal act, even those who themselves may not have committed acts of sexual violence. To put it simply: if you participate in a rampage during which your friends commit rape, you shouldn’t get a free pass from accountability. Moreover, perpetrators of sexual violence who murder their victims can’t be let off the hook for lack of evidence.
The evidence, recommendations and conclusions of the Dinah Project’s groundbreaking report have the potential to help victims of CRSV and their communities all around the world. The group’s experts are largely progressive feminists who would be the first to call out injustice anywhere.
This is why it is so ironic that the progressives of the West have disregarded the report, along with any and all claims of sexual violence on October 7 or against those held in captivity. By doing so, they set all women back, while the experts of the Dinah Project attempt to create a framework by which CRSV is treated seriously and justice is more consistently pursued around the world.
Western progressives argue that because no person has come forward to say they were sexually abused (which is itself an untrue claim, particularly in regard to captivity), all eyewitness accounts must be falsehoods and all videos and forensic evidence are not sufficiently graphic. They say claims of sexual abuse on October 7 are part of a mass propaganda campaign to justify a genocide in Gaza. They believe that making these assertions makes them righteous.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and it is progressives’ inability to accept that sexual violence occurred on October 7 or in captivity that most wholly exposes their ideological rot.
Rape has been used as a weapon of war, i.e. not something that just happens during war but a tool by which to subjugate the enemy, in conflicts around the world since the beginning of time. For much of history it was accepted as the “inevitable if unfortunate collateral damage” of conflict. It was only in the 1990s, in the wake of mass rape in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, that these norms began to change. In 1998, the Rome Statute was the first tool of international law to declare rape a war crime and a crime against humanity. Rape was only recognized as a weapon of war in 2008.
It is obvious that the international community has a long way to go in confronting CRSV as it persists in conflicts across the world, from the DRC to Sudan to Ukraine. The Dinah Project seeks to be a part of this effort. More than this, it gives Israel’s detractors the opportunity to join the fight. It gives them the opportunity to say, “Regardless of everything else I feel about this war, sexual violence is pervasive in conflict and is always wrong, even if I believe Israel is the aggressor.” The Dinah Project’s report is a litmus test for rationality and morality. But far too many have failed, revealing themselves to be not ethical humanitarians concerned about a genocide in Gaza, but shills for Hamas who have decided that accounts of sexual violence in conflict are only to be believed in certain circumstances.
This exposes the extent of their moral bereftness. In a world whose past and present are plagued by wartime sexual violence, to deny that it occurred on October 7 is not just to deny that October 7 was a terror attack; it is to argue that it was less violent than most conflicts throughout the history of the world. It is not just to deny that Hamas is a terror organization; it is to argue that Hamas is better than most armies throughout the history of the world. Not equally violent. Not equally atrocity-prone. Less violent. Less atrocity-prone. Better.
Once you think this way, you have created conditions around who is capable of experiencing injustice. You not only discriminate against Jewish and Israeli victims, but form a worldview in which those you have categorized as oppressors cannot be oppressed. It is impossible for such people to imagine any Israeli as a victim. This double standard is deadly. It lets Hamas and other groups off the hook to rape and kidnap and murder again and again and again.
The Dinah Project understands what is at stake here. It understands that if the world gets this one wrong, we risk backsliding — not only halting progress on this issue but undoing the progress that has already been made. Lives are on the line, but those who despise Israel have allowed this hatred to blind them so much that they cannot see that by declaring some groups incapable of sexual violence and others incapable of being sexually violated, they can’t possibly care about pursuing justice for victims. They can’t possibly care about victims at all, though they march on the streets out of supposed care for the oppressed.
I sincerely hope that Hamas is completely destroyed by Israel and that not one terrorist is left to rape or murder another man, woman or child ever again. But if G-d forbid this kind of horrific violence were to visit any city in the West, were it to victimize even Israel’s most hateful detractors, Israel would be the first to stand up for them. And that tells us everything we need to know.
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