They raped. They have done to Israeli women what men in wars have done to women all over the world – except for the Israeli army – throughout history. In boundless violence, in hatred, a war crime that is a crime against humanity.
And the world knows all this because the New York Times devoted almost two months to the subject in a comprehensive, in-depth and paralyzing investigation, which led to the publication of a soul-crushing journalistic document.
This is the most important journalistic investigation done so far about that cursed Shabbat. The team he worked on interviewed dozens of people, cross-checked testimonies, watched videos and managed to present a broad picture of the extent of sexual violence directed at women that day.
Until now we have heard parts of things, general statements, women's organizations have demonstrated in front of the UN, but nothing has been specific. Then came the New York Times with a family photo of Gal Abdosh, the woman in the black dress from the video in question whose body was brutally desecrated, and the raped woman has a face and a name and a family that is ready to be exposed.
Because rape is, still, a shame. Being murdered by bastards is a tragedy, but being raped by them is humiliating, both for the raped woman and for her family. A woman will tell of starvation, ridicule and beatings, but she will find it difficult to admit that a terrorist raped her. From biblical times when a single woman is raped and the rapist has to marry her because she is considered defective, and her price in the matchmaking market drops, to the men who embark, in the case of Dina who was raped, on a quest for revenge on the grounds of family honor, rape carries with it a sense of guilt and shame on the part of the victims and their families.
This is why Israeli journalists refrained from asking survivors and abductees who returned from captivity questions about their sexual abuse. As a conservative and masculine society, we cannot bear the humiliation that Palestinian terrorists have not only inflicted on our territory and fields as theirs, but also with the dignity of our women.
When someone tells us that we gave her one bottle of water a day, it fits into the pattern of difficulties we are able to handle. But sexual abuse is something else, someone a Palestinian raped is already unclean, something of him will forever remain inside her. Starve our daughters, but don't you dare defile them.
And the survivors and the liberated? Among their people they live. They know perfectly well what it means if they speak publicly about sexual abuse they have experienced. As long as they talk about evil in the form of food your guard gets and you don't, you're poor and the fact that you survived makes you a heroine. But what happens if you look up at the camera and say you've been raped? Is there a chance that some people will look at you differently?
Until now we have heard parts of things, general statements, women's organizations have demonstrated in front of the UN, but nothing has been specific. Then came the New York Times with a family photo of Gal Abdosh, the woman in the black dress from the video in question whose body was brutally desecrated, and the raped woman has a face and a name and a family that is ready to be exposed
So no Israeli media outlet or journalist could do what The New York Times did: There are things that only those who are not emotionally involved can do. Foreignness allows freedom of action for those who ask and much more freedom for those who answer to answer. They're from there, from afar, they're not judging and I won't see them tomorrow at the grocery store and feel the need to look down.
The questions of the stranger will never be asked, nor will the answers given ever be given to anyone who is part of the tribe. Indoors, we feel safest – until it comes to sexual abuse.
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