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Use of sex-based violence against Palestinian women and girls
Posted March 16, 2025 by Iota_Aurigae in WomensLiberation

The UN's office for human rights recently released a report on Israel's use of sexual and sex-based violence against Palestinian women and girls, both in Gaza and other areas. You can find a PDF here.

The report covers things such as:

  • The IDF's targeting of unarmed women and girls in Gaza, including the murder of a pregnant woman by a sniper;
  • Attacks on facilities which provide sexual and reproductive healthcare services, such as attacks on maternity wards in hospitals;
  • An increase in stillbirths, miscarriages, and death in childbirth due to lack of reproductive healthcare;
  • Starvation being used as a weapon, and how women are vulnerable to it, particularly pregnant and breastfeeding women;
  • IDF soldiers raiding Palestinian homes and rifling through the underwear and lingerie of the women who lived there (there are videos of this all over the internet and it's disgusting how they think this shit is funny);
  • An intentional attack on a women's rights center which specifically worked with victims of sex-based violence, and which IDF soldiers later defaced with misogynistic and racist graffiti;
  • Sexual abuse of women during strip searches and in captivity (some in the West Bank, too, not just Gaza);

As well as many other examples. I highly encourage you to read through the PDF. I specifically mentioned things which pertain to misogyny, but there's a lot of other horrifying shit in there as well.

A couple of weeks ago, Israel permanently outlawed prostitution. Good! At the same time, though, I pointed out that Israeli society's prevalent dismissal of or even encouragement of rape against Palestinians means that if a Palestinian woman or girl is sex trafficked, I don't imagine that the police will care. The closest equivalent that comes to mind is the prevalence of murdered and missing indigenous women in the Americas, and how 40% of sex trafficking victims are indigenous women who are undoubtedly the "missing" of MMIW.

The details outlined in the UN report, specifically around sexual abuse, are why I believe this.

You should be concerned about this even if you're staunchly pro-Israel, because if even one woman in the world is subject to misogyny, it means that patriarchy is still alive. None of us are free until all of us are free.

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