On June 18, a day before the United Nations marked its annual International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, 54 American and international organizations sent a strongly worded letter to António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, urging him “once again, to publicly condemn Hamas for their weaponization of sexual violence against Israeli women and girls on October 7 and beyond.

“There is abundant evidence of Hamas’s brutal rape, mutilation, gender-based violence and murder of Israeli women and girls on October 7 and of the women and girls Hamas kidnapped and has continued to hold hostage for more than eight months,” read the letter, which was initiated by Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, and co-led by Jewish Women International, the National Council of Jewish Women, the newly formed I Believe Israeli Women movement and the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council.

The letter was also a response to two parallel reports from the United Nations-backed Commission of Inquiry (COI) that came out June 12. Those reports accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, alleging that Israel also committed crimes against humanity and that both Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli military engaged in sexual and gender-based violence during the early months of the Israel-Hamas war.

The COI reports, coming from a body “with a long and clear track record of bias and antisemitism,” the letter stated, “ignored the overwhelming evidence and failed to hold Hamas responsible for its crimes against humanity, including the clear and systematic weaponization of sexual violence on October 7 and beyond.”

Maintaining pressure on the United Nations is part of a multipronged strategy as Jewish women’s organizations, rights activists, legal experts, government officials and others around the globe, especially in the United States and Israel, work to bring attention to—and accountability for—the sexual violence and torture perpetrated by Hamas on and since October 7.

“It may seem frustrating to continue to call on the United Nations to do more, especially when we see such clear antisemitism and bias from them. But really, we can’t let the narrative of denial win,” said Elizabeth Cullen, Hadassah’s director of government relations, who has been devoting considerable time to the issue. She has been initiating meetings with the Biden administration; forging alliances with Jewish and non-Jewish partners; lobbying on Capitol Hill; and promoting the efforts of Hadassah’s global End the Silence campaign.

That Hadassah initiative, launched in February, has included staged events around the world and a petition signed by 150,000 individuals calling on Guterres to create an independent, impartial investigation into Hamas’s use of rape as a weapon of war and to pursue vigorous prosecution to hold Hamas accountable.

Though they sometimes vary in focus and approach, sometimes working in tandem and sometimes alone, the organizations and entities involved in addressing Hamas’s weaponization of sexual assault share common goals. These include amplifying the voices of the victims and the survivors as well as combatting the denialism, disinformation and, in some cases, justification of the atrocities.

Indeed, “rape is resistance” memes have circulated on social media since October. And at a June demonstration in front of the New York City Nova Music Festival exhibit commemorating the more than 360 people who were murdered and, in some documented instances, raped at the festival on October 7, a group of masked pro-Hamas protesters called the exhibit  “propaganda.”

The women’s groups and other activists are also seeking broader international condemnation of Hamas’s brutalities, ways to hold Hamas accountable through legal, social and financial consequences and a recommitment to end sexual violence as a weapon of war globally.

One of the key players in these efforts in Israel is the Dinah Project, which soon after October 7 began collecting and verifying evidence and eyewitness testimonies of the acts of rape, gang rape and other sexual violence that occurred. The goal of the group—named for Dinah, the biblical daughter of Jacob and Leah who was raped, as well as the word for “her justice” in Hebrew—is to raise awareness in Israel and internationally and help determine how Hamas can be held legally accountable for its actions.

Like those signing on to the Hadassah-led letter, the Dinah Project also criticized the conclusions and double standard applied to Israel in much of the COI reports.

But they also found “some very important and positive bottom-line findings” that went further than any prior United Nations reports in implicating Hamas, according to Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a Bar-Ilan University-based legal scholar and expert in international women’s rights, who was a co-founder and one of the five women who comprise the volunteer-driven Dinah Project.

Pramila Patten, the United Nations secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, had found in her fact-finding mission to Israel in late January to mid-February “clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment has been committed against hostages.” Her team also found “reasonable grounds” to believe that sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred during the October 7 attack.

But that report, which was received positively by advocates on this issue, stopped short of attributing specific crimes to Hamas, saying that further investigation was needed.

In its own separate reports, the COI used Hamas’s own denial of any sexual wrongdoing to conclude the opposite—that in fact, it was responsible, said Halperin-Kaddari. The legal scholar is also the founding director at the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women’s Status at Bar-Ilan University, which receives funding from the Hadassah Foundation.

It is significant, she added, that the COI specifically noted that “women were subjected to gender-based violence during the course of their execution or abductions” and that “the attack was premeditated and planned…and it was coordinated by Hamas.”

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In addition to pressuring the United Nations, advocates have also been working with the Biden administration’s Gender Policy Council, which has focused on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence over the past several years. On June 17, the administration convened a gathering on the subject, hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris. And in the United States Congress, the House of Representatives has already passed a resolution on the issue and another one is pending in the Senate.

Eyewitnesses to the atrocities committed on and after October 7 as well as legal advocates are traveling all over the world, from Europe to Asia, speaking to government officials, on university campuses and at other institutions, seeking to raise awareness of Hamas’s systematic abuses and elicit official condemnations of Hamas as well as support for legal and financial sanctions against the terror group.

During a recent trip to Seoul, South Korea, for instance, Ayelet Razin Bet-Or, a co-founder of the Dinah Project, urged the country to use its influence as a member of the United Nations Security Council and as a major funder of UN Women to raise the issue of Hamas’s perpetration of sexual violence.

Razin Bet-Or, the former director of the Authority for the Advancement of the Status of Women in Israel’s Ministry of Social Equality who also once worked at the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, said that among the strongest first-hand testimonies was that of Amit Soussana, a hostage released by Hamas in November who was the first person to speak publicly about the sexual abuse she experienced.

Soussana has recounted that in addition to committing an explicit sexual act, her guard would go into the shower with her. And he would touch her whenever he felt like it. “He would just come, lift up her shirt and touch her,” Razin Bet-Or said, asserting that this behavior, also reported by other released hostages, has not gotten enough attention. Their captors would “take off their clothes as if they were dolls,” she said.

The Dinah Project also has collected eyewitness testimony regarding rapes and gang rapes at the Nova festival. “Many of the Nova victims of sexual assault were murdered during or after the acts, so we have few survivors,” which accounts for why so few people are able to give firsthand accounts of the crimes, Razin Bet-Or said.

Even months later, she said, she is continuing to hear from victims who coming forward with details of what happened to them. It is not unusual for rape survivors to wait months or even years to come forward, professionals who work with rape victims say. 

Activists also are working to educate the wider public through missions to Israel, events, media and, of course, on social media.

Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, in concert with Hadassah, NCJW and other organizations, initiated the activism on this issue in early December, bringing Israeli eyewitnesses, first responders and others to testify at the United Nations about the atrocities they had witnessed.

The keynote speaker at that session was Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Meta. Since then, Sandberg has continued her advocacy, serving as the presenter and public face of the recently released documentary, Screams Before Silence, which includes compelling survivor and eyewitness testimony.

“In this moment, people are denying something that should be so obvious,” Sandberg said in a recent telephone interview, during which she described her work on behalf of Hamas’s victims of sexual abuse as the most important she’s ever done.

No matter what your politics, she said, you “have to believe that sexual assault is never O.K. and can’t be denied.” Doing so “is dangerous not just for Jews and Israel but for democracy, for humanity and for the world.”

Sandberg also spoke at the White House gathering in June, during which part of Screams Before Silence was screened and the director, Anat Stalinsky, was also present.

Soussana, the released hostage, also appeared at the White House event. She told those gathered that she couldn’t ever have imagined when she was being tortured and held captive in Gaza for 55 days that seven months later she would be at the White House.

Vice President Harris, who met with Sandberg and Soussana before the event, condemned Hamas for its “horrific acts of sexual violence”; said that condemnation needs to be accompanied by accountability and consequences; and announced a new initiative to improve documentation of such crimes around the world. 

Among the attendees at the White House was Anila Ali, president of the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council, who has been outspoken on this issue from the start. Women in the Muslim world must deal with many kinds of violence, including honor killings and female genital mutilation, so “how could we as women not speak up?” Ali said from her office in Washington, D.C.

Sitting in their homes on Shabbat, women “were butchered by these monsters,” said the Pakistani-born Ali, who led a small group to Israel to bear witness to the atrocities last November. “In the name of Islam, they stole our religion and they desecrated the name of God.”

“This is personal for us,” added Ali, who has partnered with Hadassah in advocating on this issue and will be in conversation with Hadassah National President Carol Ann Schwartz at a screening of Screams Before Silence organized by Hadassah in Manhattan on July 11. “We decided that as Muslim women, we were going to stand up for the Jewish women,” Ali said. 

In Israel, meanwhile, Knesset Member Shelly Tal Meron convened a forum in May entitled Global Women’s Coalition Against Gender-Based Violence as a Weapon of War. The event, co-sponsored by ELNET, a group that promotes ties between Israel and Europe, included Jewish and non-Jewish governmental officials and nongovernmental activists from around the world, including a Syrian Lebanese activist as well as hostage family members.

“The world needs to wake up and the world needs to condemn Hamas” for this method of terror, Tal Meron said in a brief interview before the session, adding that it’s not just about Hamas but also other areas around the world like Ukraine, Iraq and African nations where conflict-related sexual violence has occurred. “The liberal, democratic countries around the world must stand united against this new method of terror and say, ‘No more.’”

Marcy Gringlas, the co-founder and president of Seed the Dream Foundation, was the only American representative to speak at the Knesset session.

“It is unthinkable that in 2024, dangerous disinformation campaigns are working to invalidate and deny the humanity of Israeli women, men and children, and Jewish people everywhere,” she said. “The world is tolerating crimes that would not be tolerated if any other group had been targeted. This is the definition of antisemitism at its core.”

Incensed at the denial and double standard that demands more evidence of the crimes when so much already exists, Gringlas and her team at Seed the Dream, a family foundation that supports many projects in Israel, launched I Believe Israeli Women in partnership with Jewish Women International, which is led by CEO Meredith Jacobs.

Working with the Dinah Project’s Razin Bet-Or on the ground, they brought a group of 25 American women to Israel in May from all different fields to show solidarity with Israeli women, to bear witness and to begin developing a strategy.

The goal of the I Believe Israeli Women movement, according to its leaders, is “to unite people in solidarity with Israelis and fight against denialism and disinformation through whatever platform they have, personal and/or professional. They seek to help amplify the stories and the evidence surrounding sexual violence that already exists and lend professional assistance and support where possible to keep focus and attention on the atrocities of October 7 and to hold the perpetrators accountable.”

Since their return to the United States, members of the I Believe Israeli Women delegation have delved into the issue as the organization seeks to expand its reach.

Among those motivated by what she learned in Israel is Jennifer Long, CEO and co-founder of AEquitas, a Washington-based nonprofit that provides expertise related to the prosecution of gender-based violence and human trafficking. 

Amid the proliferation online and on college campuses of the notion that the attacks on October 7 were justifiable resistance, Long, a former prosecutor and one of the few non-Jewish participants on the mission, said she is deeply troubled that when it comes to Israel, “there can be an inherently unworthy victim or an inherently justifiable rape.”

Long has provided legal expertise in cases of sexual violence throughout the world, but, she said, “very few had this level of torture and violence.”

“This is first and foremost about the victims of October 7,” Long said, but the denialism and justification are particularly chilling “because of its potential impact on humans around the world, particularly for women and girls, because they are the ones primarily targeted.”

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Lisa Hostein is the executive editor of Hadassah Magazine.