Author: AUFTAU

Head of the Lowy International Student Life Team talks about the work of her team on campus.

In an interview for the Lowy International Bulletin, Efrat Ambar, the head of the Student Life Team at The Lowy International School, talks about the adjustments to the student life calendar, challenges presented by the current war, and the overarching goals of her team.

—How would you say your role has shifted since October 7?

The day the war started was the same day that international students were scheduled to arrive at TAU, October 8. No one knew what was going on and we had to react very quickly.

We had a semester’s worth of scheduled activities and that all changed in a moment.

  We’re still in reaction mode today, and we’re really focusing on ensuring wellbeing and safety. I’m more in touch personally with students than I usually am because I want to make sure they know who to call and come to if they need help. At the same time, we’re holding activities on campus as much as we can to provide that sense of belonging and community for our students.

—Student life on campus must be quite unique these days, given the war. Can you describe your experience with the current cohort of international TAU students?

We have a very diverse student body, but at the same time many of them have a special motive for choosing to stay on campus here with us. We have a number of Jewish students here who really feel a special connection with Israel right now; we have students from the Disaster Management program who say there’s no better time to be here to study; and we have a student from Denmark who said she would still rather be in Tel Aviv than in the snow. Also, there are a number of students who simply decided that coming and staying was the best choice for them. We’re really happy they’re all here with us; they are a very special group. This year’s cohort on campus also tends to be enthusiastic about joining events.  

We’re holding gatherings in the dorms and on campus, events with special guests, yoga classes, movie nights, Shabbat dinners, picnics and tours — options that allow us to continue to be safe — and we almost always have a great turnout.

Even when we hold something like a trivia night, 25 students will come out. We really do have a great group of engaged students.

—What would you say has been the highlight of your job these past couple of months?

I was asked to create a WhatsApp group for lone soldiers who are studying in TAU’s international programs, and I decided to call each of them personally. I remember one student, in particular – he was just so positive and charming, and he made me laugh so much. He also said he was heading into Gaza the very next day. I can’t tell you how kind and happy he was, how he made my day.  

—Do you have a holiday wish?

My wish is to see all the students back at TAU, and for all the soldiers to come back, and for all the hostages to come back, too. I’m not sure it’s possible to wish for anything else these days.

We really can’t wait to have all our students back with us; we’ve planned a lot for them, and we miss them here.

New academic course for international students.

Tel Aviv University is offering the first academic course on the Israel-Hamas war that began on Oct. 7th, 2023. Targeting international students, the course was launched as early as the first semester of the current academic year. TAU officials explain that to offset the distorted, simplistic picture of the war currently presented on many campuses worldwide, the course aims to present an accurate, fact-based, and complex perspective on the conflict.

Thousands of students from all parts of the world study at TAU Lowy International School, from North and South America, Europe, India, China, Australia, Africa, and elsewhere. Now, for the coming academic year, TAU has initiated a new academic course led by top experts, on the Oct. 7th war. The course will review the background to the war, as well as its immediate implications for both Israel and the world at large, in different areas including conflict management, Middle East studies, economics, international law, security studies, national resilience, trauma studies, and more. In this way TAU aims to raise the international students’ awareness of the war’s causes and impact, in the hope that they will portray a more complex and accurate picture of it in their own countries.

Prof. Milette Shamir, TAU’s VP International: “The horrendous statements heard on many campuses around the world, especially in North America and Western Europe, are often a byproduct of blatant ignorance coupled with the consumption of information from dubious sources on social media. As a counter measure, we offer students from all over the world an opportunity to learn about the war through exposure to well-founded facts, responsible research, and a complex ways of thinking. This is the appropriate response of academia to the venom propagated on campuses and in the social networks.”

Dr. Nimrod Rosler, Head of the International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation: “The horrors we experienced on Oct. 7th and afterwards underline the need for a deep understanding of the dynamics of violent conflicts. Such an understanding can be obtained from the academic knowledge and experience of the prominent lecturers who will teach in the course, providing   participants with tools for dealing constructively with the war now and with its consequences in the future. Positive ways for coping with the horrors are the key to resilience and hope for a better future.”

The new academic course follows another initiative of the Lowy International School: a taskforce initiated by international students to assist Israel’s national effort to tell the war’s true and tragic story to the world. Participating students conduct dialogues on the social networks with people in other places in the world, providing them with materials and information that present Israel’s narrative from the perspective of international students in Israel.

Prof. Ronen Avraham, Head of the Lowy School’s Parasol Foundation International LL.M. Program: “This task force is a moving initiative of students, and I am proud that TAU provides it with logistical backing. We have already reached 1.3 million people and have thousands of followers worldwide. The events of Oct. 7th will enter the history books, not only of Israel and the Palestinians, but also of the entire world. We will not give up our efforts to spread the truth, for the benefit of both our contemporaries and future generations.”

The course aims to present an accurate, fact-based, and complex perspective on the conflict.

Tel Aviv University is offering the first academic course on the Israel-Hamas war that began on October 7, 2023. Targeting international students, the course was launched as early as the first semester of the current academic year to provide a nuanced and accurate perspective on the conflict, countering the distorted and simplistic portrayals often seen these days on many campuses worldwide.   Thousands of students from around the world study at TAU Lowy International School, representing North and South America, Europe, India, China, Australia, Africa, and elsewhere.  

By introducing the newly-designed course, TAU aims to raise the awareness of international students regarding the causes and impact of the war, in the hope that they will present a more nuanced and accurate picture in their respective countries.

  The interdisciplinary course, taught in English, delves into the background to the war and its immediate implications for Israel and the global community, covering various areas such as conflict management, Middle East studies, economics, international law, security studies, national resilience, trauma studies, and more.  

“The horrendous statements heard on many campuses around the world, especially in North America and Western Europe, are often a byproduct of blatant ignorance coupled with the consumption of information from dubious sources on social media,”—Prof. Milette Shamir, TAU’s VP International.

  Prof. Shamir adds: “As a countermeasure, we offer students from all over the world an opportunity to learn about the war through exposure to well-founded facts, responsible research, and complex ways of thinking. This is the appropriate response of academia to the venom propagated on campuses and in the social networks.”   Dr. Nimrod Rosler, Head of the International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation comments further: “The horrors we experienced on October 7 and afterwards underline the need for a deep understanding of the dynamics of violent conflicts.”  

“Such an understanding can be obtained from the academic knowledge and experience of the prominent lecturers who will teach in the course, providing participants with tools for dealing constructively with the war now and with its consequences in the future,”—Dr. Nimrod Rosler

  “Positive ways for coping with the horrors are the key to resilience and hope for a better future,” concludes Dr. Rosler.   The for-credit course consists of ten sessions, divided into two sections. The first focuses on the history of the conflict and the socio-political developments on each side leading up to the war. The second part explores the broader concept of war as applied to the current conflict.  

Narrating Truth Amidst Conflict

  The new academic course follows another initiative of the Lowy International School: a task force initiated by international students to assist Israel’s national effort to tell the war’s true and tragic story to the world. Participating students conduct dialogues on social networks with people in other places in the world, providing them with materials and information that present Israel’s narrative from the perspective of international students in Israel.   Members of the task force also conduct interviews with TAU professors on the university’s Global Connection podcast, providing an in-depth look at various aspects of the current conflict. Recent guests include TAU historian Prof. Havi Dreifuss, discussing the surge in antisemitism worldwide, and Dr. Carmel Vaisman, who shared insights on the role of social media in the present war, offering her perspective on the importance of digital platforms for the future of humanity.   The podcast guest host Ben Bright, an international master’s student at TAU, with Dr. Carmel Vaisman, a digital culture researcher and associate lecturer at TAU’s Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas   As Prof. Ronen Avraham, Head of the Lowy School’s Parasol Foundation International LL.M. Program, explains: “This task force is a moving initiative of students, and I am proud that TAU provides it with logistical backing. We have already reached 1.3 million people and have thousands of followers worldwide.”  

“The events of Oct. 7th will enter the history books, not only of Israel and the Palestinians, but also of the entire world. We will not give up our efforts to spread the truth, for the benefit of both our contemporaries and future generations,”—Prof. Ronen Avraham

Public Statement by Presidents of Israel Research Universities Regarding Statements by American University Presidents in Congressional Hearings.

Since the horrifying atrocity of October 7th, there has been a distressing surge in anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment on numerous campuses across the United States, including some of its most esteemed universities. Instead of offering empathy and support to Israeli and Jewish students in the wake of the brutal massacre of Jewish communities in their homeland, campuses have witnessed protests advocating for the annihilation of the State of Israel (“from the river to the sea”) and endorsing terrorist activities against Israeli citizens (“intifada”). There has been a disturbing display of hatred towards Jews and Israelis, causing fear among this community on American campuses. This resurgence of hostility evokes memories of dark chapters in Jewish history.

Under these distressing circumstances, there is an urgent need for firm leadership on American campuses—leadership that unequivocally declares, “This far, no further.” Regrettably, such resolute leadership appears to be lacking at present. While some individual academic leaders have vocally opposed anti-Semitism and actively worked against it, many others have remained silent.

In a disconcerting recent hearing held in the U.S. Congress, presidents from three prominent universities (Harvard, MIT, and Pennsylvania) were questioned about their stance on severe instances of anti-Semitism on their campuses. Although these leaders acknowledged the existence of anti-Semitic expressions, they maintained that curbing a significant portion of these expressions is challenging due to their protection under the banner of free speech.

During a critical moment in the congressional hearing, the university presidents were asked whether a call for the genocide of the Jewish people aligns with their institutions’ codes of conduct. Astonishingly, they struggled to provide a straightforward “no” and instead offered vague responses, suggesting that the response depends on the context. This hesitation raises concerning questions about the interpretation of free speech.

Following the hearing, the president of Harvard University released a brief statement emphasizing the institution’s prohibition of anti-Semitic expressions, a sentiment echoed by the president of the University of Pennsylvania.

The positions taken by the university presidents during the congressional hearing, suggesting that anti-Semitic expressions and calls for genocide may fall under the umbrella of free speech, defy the principles of the U.S. Constitution. A nation that permits a call for genocide in the guise of freedom of speech does a disservice to its values. Freedom of speech, while a fundamental right, must yield in the face of incitement, hatred, and calls for violence, especially a call for genocide. This principle holds true not only in the United States but also in all democratic countries globally.

The university presidents’ failure to provide a firm stance in dealing with instances of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment on many campuses in the United States is alarming. Apologies and expressions of regret are not enough; what is required are clear and decisive actions. In their testimony before Congress, the university presidents mentioned measures taken or planned to protect the security and well-being of Jews and Israelis on campuses.

It is now their responsibility to ensure the effectiveness and sufficiency of these measures. The burden lies on their shoulders to demonstrate that the universities they lead not only excel in academics but also uphold universal humanistic values and defend the rights of minorities. It is imperative that everyone understands that advocating for the destruction of a people is strictly prohibited at Harvard, MIT, Pennsylvania, and everywhere else in the world.

Prof. Arie Zaban, President of Bar-Ilan University; Chairperson of Association of University Heads, Israel – VERA

Prof. Daniel Chamovitz, President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Prof. Alon Chen, President of the Weizmann Institute of Science

Prof. Asher Cohen, President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Prof. Leo Corry, President of the Open University

Prof. Ehud Grossman, President of Ariel University

Prof. Ariel Porat, President of Tel-Aviv University

Prof. Ron Robin, President of the University of Haifa

Prof. Uri Sivan, President of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

An in-depth survey of Arab Israelis reveals.

1,000 University members are helping all affected by the Iron Swords War through a multitude of exceptional initiatives.

When war broke out on October 7th, 6,000 Tel Aviv University students were drafted to reserve duty. With the school year postponed, students left back home wanted to do their part for the country however they could. To this end, 12 driven TAU students and faculty took it upon themselves to create a large number of different volunteering programs and recruited over 1,000 University members to help soldiers, survivors, children, and more.   Initiatives include helping patients at hospitals, making food for soldiers on the front lines, and bringing buses of people down to the border of Gaza to harvest fields and keep factories running at kibbutzim that were evacuated. Agriculture and industry are essential to the economies of these kibbutzim and the country, but their proximities to the fighting make them vulnerable; TAU volunteers continue to show bravery by signing up in droves.   A TAU student volunteers at a factory in southern Israel.   Read below in detail about some of the unique ways TAU is using its resources for the good of the country.   Sapir College Initiative    Sapir College in the south of Israel, like most of the communities in the area, was evacuated and its students scattered around the country. Its administration needed to check up on each of its 8,000 students, but had nowhere central to work from and not nearly enough people for the job. To lend a hand, TAU hosted Sapir’s administration on campus and 60 people volunteered to help call each and every student.   Childcare and Education Initiative     TAU’s Youth University Science Team traveled to evacuation centers to do educational science experiments with evacuated kids. (Photo: TAU)   Hundreds of thousands have been evacuated from the north and south of Israel due to the attacks and heavy rocket fire. This means children are away from school and their usual routines, making childcare particularly difficult. 64 TAU volunteers have come to help take care of children and make them feel at ease, including students from the Constantiner School of Education who are teaching for free at makeshift schools where the families are staying.  

“A lot of the kids are scared or confused. They ask a lot of questions about when they can go home and tell me all about what they experienced.”

  Says Orr Hannes, a second-year Hebrew Language BA student who is getting her teaching license through a special TAU program, “a lot of the kids are scared or confused. They ask a lot of questions about when they can go home and tell me all about what they experienced. I’m teaching kids from Ashkelon where they had tons of rockets, so they’re jumpy every time there’s a siren.” She says she is really glad she got the chance to volunteer doing something she’s passionate about and that gives her professional experience. She also says the atmosphere isn’t all bad: “the children still act like children, and most of the time they are happy to see me and talk to me.”   “Fables in a Suitcase” Theatre Initiative    TAU Theatre students perform for children evacuated from their homes after October 7th. (Photo: Belle Bochlin)   Another important way Tel Aviv University students helped ease children’s minds was through interactive theatre. The TAU Katz Faculty of the Arts and the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music joined forces to create plays of four fairy tales in only two days. Arts, theatre, and music students built and painted portable set pieces, made costumes, wrote scripts, directed the shows, played music, and coordinated performances. They performed the series entitled “Fables in a Suitcase” for survivors in hotels all over the country.  

“This project helped me see how important theatre really is.”

  Says Belle Bochlin, a third-year Community Theatre student who helped produce the plays, “it’s kind of therapeutic. We were able to give the children a bit of escapism from the war, as well as an outlet for some of their strong emotions. They cried, they laughed, they yelled at the actors; some of them were happy to see us, while others wanted the chance to express their anger.” Students worked very hard, coordinating and performing at multiple hotels a day with different groups of children.   Bochlin says the project helped her feel confident that her chosen career is a meaningful one. “I was really scared and confused because of the war, but this project helped me see how important theatre really is. Seeing how much we were able to help these children made me feel a little better, and it’s all thanks to TAU.”   Legal Clinic Initiative    At the outset of the war, much of the country shut down and left many people out of work and without some of the services they rely on. To help them stay on their feet, members of the TAU Buchmann Faculty of Law initiated a network of over 150 volunteer law students, lawyers and interns both within the TAU bubble and around the country. They set up an online form and immediately started getting requests for help with things like accessing National Insurance funds, navigating the fallout of injury, and dealing with rental contracts and housing. So far they have worked on almost 300 cases.   A legal volunteer works with a resident of Ofakim on a legal issue.   In the war-ravaged town of Ofakim, volunteers went door-to-door helping out and eventually set up a center in a shelter where residents could come ask for help even as rockets rained down. For example, tells volunteer and TAU Legal Clinic for Holocaust Survivors instructor Yael Havassy-Aharoni, “there was one woman, an Ethiopian mother who lost her oldest son in the attacks. Her younger son has Down Syndrome, and the oldest had been the one helping her and taking care of him. It wasn’t easy to care for him on her own, especially as he was in distress missing his brother. However, when special education classes came back in session, the town wasn’t providing transportation so she still couldn’t send him to school. We brought the problem to the mayor’s office and after a few days they got the buses back up and running.”   On a larger scale, the volunteers identified common issues and have been going regularly to the Knesset to try to promote policies that will mitigate these problems.   TAU Dental School Initiatives    The Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine contributed to both the war and the community in a large number of ways.   MEDICAL SUPPLIES: As a medical school, the Dental School were well-equipped to respond to the shortage of medicine and medical tools needed for the huge influx of soldiers. “At the beginning, a lot of our students were drafted. They started calling the school and saying they were missing a lot, not only dental instruments but all supplies,” says School Head Prof. Rachel Sarig. “So we started collecting what they needed and sending them to the front lines.   Soldiers from the IDF’s Search and Rescue Unit were grateful to receive medicine from TAU’s dental student volunteers.   COMMUNITY OUTREACH: With so many people unable to visit their regular dentists, as well as many with oral injuries from the attacks, the School opened a free dental clinic providing first aid treatment, and eventually general treatments, to whoever needed it. They treat many people every day.   Hoping to widen their impact, dental students also traveled to various evacuated communities giving presentations to remind people not to neglect their teeth. “Dental concerns aren’t usually on people’s minds,” says Prof. Sarig, “but they are an essential for overall health.” Additionally, the School worked with fundraising organizations as well as major dental companies Oral B and Colgate to fund their clinic and to donate 12,000 toothbrushes and toothpaste to evacuees.  

“Our students were on the front lines of volunteering in all aspects. About 20% of our students were drafted, but those who were left at home also wanted to contribute everything they could.” 

  AI DENTAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE: In a slightly different vein, Prof. Sarig and her colleagues are working on a new AI program that may help identify those lost on the day of the attack. Many bodies, sadly, have yet to be identified; this software will act like facial recognition for teeth, scanning a database of dental records against forensic X-rays.   “Our students were on the front lines of volunteering in all aspects. About 20% of our students were drafted, but those who were left at home also wanted to contribute everything they could.”  

Tel Aviv University Haredi researcher sees “a real change”.

Minutes after Shabbat ended on what Israelis now call “Black Saturday”—the 7th of October, 2023—Dr. Nechumi Yaffe, researcher and senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University’s Department of Public Policy, began organizing what became the “Unity War Room”—one of the largest efforts of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox population for volunteering in the country’s toughest times. Yaffe was the right woman for the job. Coming from a Hasidic family and being a trailblazing ultra-Orthodox researcher in Israeli academia, she has an established network of connections within Haredi communities throughout the country. She was able to mobilize these contacts to quickly establish a massive organized group of volunteers. About 14,000 volunteers joined the initiative within the first few days of the war. This kind of engagement was remarkable given the attitude of isolation and non-involvement the ultra-Orthodox population usually adopts toward any State-affiliated outreach.

“I believe what moved them was a feeling of responsibility of being part of the Jewish people—we’re at war, we’re in crisis, we need to help,” Yaffe explains.

It was an opportunity to engage hearts and change minds among Haredim about being an integral part of Israeli society, she says. “It is as though the ultra-Orthodox suddenly woke up to the notion of citizenship and solidarity,” Yaffe recently commented to the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.  

Haredi youth running the Unity War Room command center (photo: Nechumi Yaffe)

Essential Help

Unity War Room’s goals center on three projects. The first is finding people to cook meals and procure whatever is needed by the thousands of evacuees and soldiers called up to serve on the front lines. In the first weeks of the war, the initiative’s volunteers cooked over 100,000 meals and raised close to 9 million shekels to purchase and deliver the necessary supplies. The second arm of the effort is providing support to families during funerals and mourning periods (shivas) and also on happy occasions when a family may have no resources to organize a celebration. The volunteers make sure families have everything they need. So far, over 4,000 volunteers attended funerals and accompanied mourners. The third part of the initiative is finding people to help on farms and other workplaces that have been left short-staffed. Unity War Room enlisted the help of various seminaries and yeshivas to participate, and they joined in with over 6540 people who have volunteered thus far.

Historic Change

To put the network on track toward operating efficiently, Yaffe and her team (which included her daughters and friends), organized improvised trainings for some of the ultra-Orthodox youth to learn how to manage basic Excel sheets and computer work. “Now we have people in charge for every region of the country, and I don’t need to be personally involved anymore,” Yaffe proudly notes. Throughout the process, Yaffe, who researches the Ultra-Orthodox population, is observing, measuring, and recording.

“I can’t stop, I’m addicted to data,” she jokes. Then adds solemnly, “We’re seeing a real change here.”

Yaffe has run 11 surveys since the start of the war, and she says the data show a marked shift in attitudes among the Haredi volunteers towards nationalism and solidarity. “The sharp increase may be temporary, but I’m sure that things will not be the same in the ultra-Orthodox segment of the population after the war is over,” she concludes.

Tel Aviv University’s students, staff and faculty work the fields near the Gazan border.

In the last seven weeks about 800 TAU students, faculty and staff have traveled to farms near the Israeli-Gaza border to provide much-needed assistance in agricultural work. Farmers in border communities found themselves among the groups most affected by war ever since it began on October 7th. “Ever since the University started organizing volunteering activities, we saw that some of the most urgent calls came from local farmers who were left without workers and were struggling for help,” explains Meirav Levy, the head of Tel Aviv University’s Community Outreach at the Equity and Diversity Commission. The initial connection between TAU volunteer coordinators and farmers on the ground was made through Prof. Yftah Gepner of TAU’s School of Public Health. Gepner, who lives down south near the small town of Ein haBesor, was involved in the horrific events there on October 7th and saved his injured brother from the terrorists. “Prof. Gepner connected us with the farmers, and since then our coordinators have been in direct contact with them, determining their needs in real-time and directing efforts accordingly,” Levy explains. Three times a week a bus with about 40 TAU volunteers arrives at the farm that needs it most to salvage the harvest or help sow a new one. Many volunteers return again and again, getting to know the farmers better and forming personal bonds.

“I’d rather be here, helping out, than sitting far away in front of my computer and reading the news,” says Ari Spielman, a student in the International MA in Environmental Studies Program at TAU’s Lowy International School.

Spielman arrived in Israel from New York the day after the war broke out and decided to stay. Since then he has been active in many volunteering initiatives, even forming a non-profit to collect money abroad for purchasing essential supplies for the evacuees. It’s his third time helping on a farm.

The Tel Aviv University group of volunteers, including international students, research students, faculty and staff

Many other international and Israeli students volunteer on the farms, as well as Israeli doctoral and post-doc students, faculty and staff.

“I recommend to anyone who can – go out into the fields and help out our farmers. They are in dire need of capable hands. I spent a day picking beautiful tomatoes, and for us volunteers, the feeling is great and very rewarding, but of course, this is a very temporary solution. If something is not done to systematically help out Israeli agriculture, our food security could be at risk in the next crisis,” says Adi Walzer, Head of Content at TAU’s Marketing Division.

Levy of TAU’s Community Outreach believes that the assistance to farms in the periphery not only addresses an immediate need but also fosters strong connections with the agricultural community for the long term.

Tamar Herzig, Vice Dean for Research of the Entin Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University explains:

“The cruel sexual violence inflicted on Jewish girls and women in the course of Hamas’ attack on Southern Israel was filmed by body cameras and uploaded to social media by the perpetrators and their collaborators on October 7. In these videos, the terrorists are heard discussing plans to rape specific girls. They are also seen parading the rape victims that they kidnapped to Gaza, with their clothes ripped off and blood gushing from between their legs. Raped victims who were rescued from the massacre and brought to the Israeli acute response center testified to the assaults that they underwent. Over the next few weeks, forensic evidence collected from bodies of murdered Israeli girls indicated that they, too, had been brutally raped; in some cases, in such a violent manner that their legs and pelvis bones were broken. Survivors of the massacre testified to having witnessed the group raping and cutting off of the breasts of a young Israeli woman. Rescue team members attested to the mutilation of the genitals of murdered Israeli girls who were found stripped naked and covered with blood and semen in their own bedrooms.

All this accumulated evidence, however, did not convince the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), or any other UN body, for that matter, to condemn the horrendous sexual violence meted on Israeli civilians, from girls to elderly women, on October 7.

The statement that the CEDAW finally issued almost two weeks later referred only vaguely to the “gendered dimensions of [the] conflict” between Israelis and Palestinians in general. This statement refrained from explicitly recognizing the mass raping of female Israelis that took place during the massacre of October 7 and—more importantly—from providing the raped Israelis who are still held as hostages in Gaza the urgent medical treatment they require and from protecting them from further sexual assault. The deafening silence of global feminist organizations that were expected to spearhead the acknowledgment of gender-based violence in its most severe manifestations was followed by a denial campaign. This was led by activists such as Samantha Pearson, director of the University of Alberta’s sexual violence center, who disputed the rapes executed by members of Hamas in Israel.

There is, of course, nothing new in discrediting claims of sexual abuse per se. What is astonishing is the willingness of feminist activists and organizations to abandon what came to be regarded as the sacrosanct motto of the #MeToo era: “I believe you.” How can we explain the fact that those very same women, who would insist on recognizing the sexual harassment of a woman based solely on her claim that she was molested, even in the absence of corroborative evidence, refuse to accept the abundant evidence—including, but certainly not limited to, testimonies of female survivors of the massacre—attesting to the horrific assault on Israeli girls and women?

This is all the more puzzling in light of the important advances in the efforts to redress rape as a prosecutable war crime, over the past thirty years.

The History of Wartime Rape

Wartime rape has a long history; we may trace its early manifestation in the myth of the founding of Ancient Rome, by means of the serial raping of women of the neighboring tribe, known as the Rape of the Sabine Women, in the eighth century BCE. Yet it was only in the wake of the war in Bosnia (in 1992-1994) that the rape of enemy women during armed conflicts became a prosecutable crime and, when perpetuated systematically, also recognized as a crime against humanity. This, as feminist legal historian Catharine MacKinnon reminds us, amounted to the recognition that when a woman is raped, the humanity of a human being is severely violated. But while it is commonly used as an effective strategy of war, research has shown that rape in armed conflicts is not inevitable and that its frequency and severity vary considerably. In her powerful 2020 book Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: War through the Lives of Women, Christina Lamb reminds us that rape remains the world’s most neglected war crime. When people think about war and when journalists discuss ethnic or national conflicts, what they refer to as ‘casualties’ is those who were killed, not those who were ‘just’ brutally raped. As a form of violence that is targeted primarily at women, wartime rape is easily forgotten and its significance is belittled. In a recent study, I have shown how the brutal group raping of Jewish women from North Africa, who were captured by Italian corsairs in 1610, was intentionally erased from the archival record shortly after it occurred. Then, as now, the intersection of sexual violence, gender, and ethnicity ignited erasure. Interestingly, Lamb notes the almost complete avoidance of rape in the course of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 1948 until 2019. And indeed, before October 7, 2023, the occurrence of rape in this prolonged conflict was so rare, that one anthropological study even focused on the possible causes of its almost complete avoidance. According to American political scientist Elisabeth Jean Wood, it is unlikely that the rarity of known rapes perpetuated by both parties in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict—before the systematic raping of October 7—reflects underreporting, given the intensity of international scrutiny on their behavior. As Wood observes, close monitoring by human rights organizations does not seem to deter both sides in other practices, such as the killing of Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers and of Israeli civilians by Palestinian groups and individuals.

The sexual violence that took place on October 7, then, constitutes a dramatic watershed in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, one that should have called for a massive mobilization of feminist outrage. Instead, it has met with silence and discrediting. Denying its occurrence not only adds to the suffering inflicted on its female victims but also undermines the most significant achievements of global feminism in the last half century, thereby endangering girls and women across the world.”

Tamar Herzig is the Konrad Adenauer Professor of Comparative European History and Vice Dean for Research of the Entin Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University. She is a 2019 laureate of the Kadar Family Award for Outstanding Research.