A crowd of several hundred women gathered near the United Nations on Monday, holding Israeli flags and placards reading “Rapists are not freedom fighters.”
A number of women wore bodysuits with red patches on the groin and breasts and tape over their mouths as protesters chanted: “Me too, unless you’re Jewish” and “Rape has no context.”
Rabbi Joanna Samuels, executive director of the Marlene Meyerson Jewish Community Center Manhattan, thanked the group for meeting “outside an institution that has lost its moral compass” and then addressed the UN leadership: “By failing Israeli women “You have all failed women.”
They gathered outside the U.N. complex in New York, hours before a presentation there that was described as addressing Hamas’s “war crimes of sexual violence” during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The event was addressed to diplomats, sent to women’s rights activists and others. The presentation was organized by the Israeli delegation to the United Nations and several Jewish groups, not the United Nations itself.
Organizers claim that women’s rights organizations and the UN, which otherwise condemn the use of rape as a weapon of war, have inadequately criticized Hamas and its allies for perpetrating widespread sexual violence during the attack.
Many of the activists say that what they see as rape patterns has not been given enough credence. Organizers said presentations at Monday’s event would provide evidence of the atrocities.
Hamas officials argued that such violence was committed by other armed groups that followed it into Israel that day. But witness accounts and documentary evidence, including videos posted by Hamas militants themselves, refute many of these claims.
“Since the tragic massacre of the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel, we have heard and experienced countless testimonies and experiences with women and girls,” the description of the event reads. “Yet no special session has been initiated within the United Nations to address these war crimes, and many women’s organizations remain silent.”
A video recording of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was presented at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan in New York on Monday. Photo credit: Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Speakers at the presentation included Sheryl Sandberg, former meta manager and founder of women’s organization Lean In, who also helped organize the event; Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations; and human rights activist Mandana Dayani. A video message from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also played.
The demonstrators’ resentment was particularly directed at UN Women, an organization within the United Nations that, according to its website, “is intended to provide programs, policies and standards that uphold women’s human rights and ensure that every woman and girl achieves her best. “Potential.”
UN Women has repeatedly called for the protection of women and girls in Gaza and condemned Israeli attacks there that have killed more than 15,500 people, according to Gaza health authorities. On October 20, nearly two weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel, which authorities there said killed about 1,200 civilians, including many women and children, UN Women reported promoted his discovery that nearly 500,000 Palestinian girls and women had been driven from their homes and reiterated its call for a ceasefire.
The group did not publish social media posts on the topic of sexual violence during Hamas attacks until November 24th, and then posted on “Needs & Safety of those affected.” Last Friday evening, the organization published a lengthy statement to this effect on Instagram, where Much of the digital advocacy is focused on Israeli and Jewish women.
Many of the women involved in the protests against the UN were not satisfied with this statement. “It’s too little, too late for us,” said Danielle Ofek, founder of the activism organization #MeToo Unless UR A Jew. “They have legitimized sexual violence as a weapon of war, and that is not okay.”
Ms. Ofek’s group has put up billboards in Times Square with pictures of the faces of Israeli women, including some who were kidnapped and taken to Gaza on Oct. 7, with the words: “UN, your silence is unbelievable, unforgivable, unjustified.”
On Monday, near the United Nations, a protester, B. Getter, held up a placard that rephrased a long-standing question to women who said they had been raped: “What were you wearing?” into a new one Version: “What passport did you have with you?”
“We showed up for so many different women and so many different countries when their human rights were violated,” said Mx. Getter said, “And no one stands up for us.”