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At the Democratic National Convention, groups who cheered on Oct. 7 coordinated another protest against the party that wants to protect LGBTQ and abortion rights. These groups have made it clear that they align with a terrorist organization, while the Iranian Ayatollah commends them. These protesters say they are in favor of peace and liberation. However, if they really stood for these ideas, for human rights and women's rights, they would take a clear stand against rape as an act of war.
Despite calls for peace, the conversation surrounding Israel and Palestine continues to be dominated by extremists who celebrate the events of Oct. 7, who declare rape a form of political resistance, who justify bloodshed and refuse to condemn sexual violence against Israeli women, all while supposedly advocating for justice.
Walking with my 14-year-old daughter and her schoolmate through the Nova Exhibition in New York, a memorial to the victims of the brutal terrorist attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, I expected to see the remnants of murder and rape. I expected it to be painful, I expected to be disturbed.
I did not expect to arrive home and see that after we left, protesters had descended on the Wall Street exhibit, disrupting an event with family members of the hostages. I watched in disbelief as the mob set off flares and chanted "Israel, go to hell." Two miles away at Union Square—where my daughter traveled to after we parted ways—demonstrators carried a banner that read "Long Live October 7th".
Unfortunately, the Nova protest is one of many instances that has justified hate and extremism. In the days following Oct. 7, before Israel had finished identifying all of the victims, demonstrations erupted across New York City demonizing a traumatized Israel. Many of the protests that disrupted college campuses this spring excused violence and promoted antisemitism in support of their cause.
The protests in and of themselves are not the issue. Protesting is a constitutional right and an invaluable tool for political action. The issue is that denying, downplaying, and justifying rape and murder is inconsistent with protesting on behalf of human rights. Protests should not justify extremism. They should not excuse rape, they should not mislabel a terrorist attack as "a historic win for the Palestinian resistance."
It doesn't matter what any individual's views are on politics, religion or war, rape and the brutalization of girls, women and people is never justified. That is why I joined a group of women's rights advocates to denounce the sexual violence in Israel and to call on António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations to demand a full investigation of systemic rape during the Oct. 7 attacks and for the perpetrators to be held accountable for war crimes.
This lack of accountability isn't an issue unique to Oct. 7. Since then, widespread sexual atrocities have been committed against populations of women caught in conflict in Haiti, Sudan and Ukraine. Women's equality and women's right to live free of sexual terror deserves greater world attention.
Rape as a weapon of war is a global health and humanitarian crisis unfolding in many parts of the world, and misogyny is the accelerant that is fueling the rising crisis of extremism. Since January, heavily armed gangs have been terrorizing women in Haiti, using collective rape as a tool to attain power. In Sudan, women are being driven to suicide due to high levels of rape as a civil war rages on. As Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, women under siege are struggling with their trauma from sexual assault at the hands of Russian soldiers. In Afghanistan, yet another generation of females is being denied the most basic right to education. Girls as young as 13 have been detained, brutalized or killed by the repressive Iranian regime's "morality police" for throwing off their hijabs in public in daring and dangerous acts of protests in the name of freedom and resistance from gender oppression.
Women's equality and the right to live free of sexual terror is an extraordinary human rights cause in need of passion, protest and civic engagement. If your cause ignores women's fundamental human rights, it's time to reflect. Embracing this cause would radically direct needed energy and attention to the world's many conflicts that need to end.
As protests at the Democratic National Convention wrapped up, and as students begin returning to campus this fall, activists must stop justifying or ignoring the atrocious actions of terrorist groups like Hamas and other armed militants and take up the cause of gender-based violence and oppression that is ruining lives and societies across the globe.
Sonia Ossorio is the executive director of National Organization for Women New York City and Women's Justice NOW and an I Believe Israeli Women delegate..
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
