Rumors of widespread rape and sexual violence against Israeli settler women circulated on social media on Oct. 7, 2023, just hours after news of Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood began to filter across the globe. 

Along with the debunked allegation that dozens of babies were decapitated, the alleged mass targeting of Israeli women by Hamas fighters spread like wildfire across X, Facebook, and WhatsApp. In December, the New York Times published a now-infamous exposé, “‘Screams Without Words,’” which claimed that rape was used as a weapon of war by Hamas. During an escalating genocide in Gaza and a time when Palestinian resistance was gaining widespread support for its fight against a 75-year-long occupation, the New York Times essentially legitimized the unrestricted murder of thousands of Palestinians.

The article, which provided no direct evidence or sourcing to support its claims, was co-reported by a freelancer who once worked for Israeli intelligence and had no previous journalism experience. The story was later called into question by the United Nations (UN) and debunked by publications focused on investigative journalism, including The Intercept and Al-Jazeera. “While there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in the Nova music festival site, Route 232, and kibbutz Re’im, reported incidents of rape could not be verified in other locations,” the UN report read. “Concurrently, the team determined that at least two allegations of sexual violence in kibbutz Be’eri—widely reported in the media—were unfounded.”

Despite internal and external concerns about the New York Times reporting, the false claim that mass rape of Israeli women was perpetuated by Hamas continues to circulate around the world. Along with this false claim is the conflation of Israel with Judaism. While most of the alleged victims were Israeli, it is an all-too-common narrative that Jewish women were specifically targeted, drawing on the historical victimhood of Jewish femininity while sidestepping their whiteness. The co-optation of the “Me Too” hashtag through campaigns like “#MeToo unless you’re a Jew” is not only infuriating because it uses feminist language to justify genocide, but also sickening, considering how many war crimes against Palestinian women are committed daily and subsequently ignored by the international community.  

This dangerous rhetoric persists. In June, Vice President and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris spoke at a screening of ‘Screams Before Silence,’ a documentary from former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg that purports to showcase “never-before-heard eyewitness accounts” of “sexual violence committed by Hamas.” During that event, Harris said, “We cannot look away. And we will not be silent.” 

Efforts to legitimize claims of widespread rape ordered by Hamas—which do not appear to have happened—builds on decades of feminist work to make sexual violence visible. It has taken years to arrive at a point in which women who experience sexual violation are referred to as “survivors” whose stories should be heard. Yet when it comes to Oct. 7, not a single survivor has come forward, even anonymously, to corroborate the claim that Jewish women were targeted with sexual violence by Hamas. The family of one of the reported survivors cited by the New York Times has fully denied it occurred, accusing the media of inventing the alleged rape. And any attempted analysis of the allegations is stonewalled with co-opted feminist language about believing survivors.

Sexual violence in the context of war is well documented. We should not deny that any soldier, whether belonging to Hamas or the Israeli military, is capable of it. But the shaky reporting around Oct. 7, coupled with the lack of equal care and concern for the sexual violence experienced by Palestinian women in Gaza and that occurs inside Israeli prisons, should raise alarm bells. 

The language of feminism—and the use of supposed sexual violence consciousness-raising—is being used to support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians while also reinforcing the idea that Arabs are inherently savage and purposefully violating the honor of Jewish women in Israel. Through the use of frameworks that urge the general public to believe women, maneuvering liberal feminism as an appeal and call to action, the Israeli propaganda machine purposefully creates a crisis of women’s safety that justifies the carpet-bombing of Gaza. By solely focusing on the allegations of targeted mass rape by Hamas, Israel sinisterly co-opts the language of abuse and sexual violence that survivors have created for themselves to obscure the reality of sexual violence against Palestinians. 

As Sandberg is lauded by The New York Times for her tenacity in bringing these allegations to light—as if these claims haven’t already received immense media attention—she obscures the credible allegations that Palestinian men and boys are victims of sexual torture in Israeli prisons. Within the current framing, the only survivors worth listening to are Israeli women. Meanwhile, actual evidence of horrific sexual crimes against Palestinians are documented and filmed. 

The claim that Hamas ordered the mass targeted rape of Jewish women galvanized women’s rights groups to dehumanize Palestinians, painting them as a unique danger to Jewish women in Israel. 

According to my own reporting and conversations with women’s rights organizations that have made anti-war and pro-ceasefire statements, the allegation of widespread sexual violence against Jewish women is often used to dissuade groups from speaking out in support of Palestine. The implication is that every man in Gaza is a rapist and therefore deserves to die, and that feminist and women’s organizations calling for the end of the occupation are abandoning Israeli survivors of rape. This conclusion necessitates a complete erasure of Palestinian suffering, including Palestinian women and men who have been victims of sexual violence perpetrated by the Israeli military or inside Israeli prisons. These war crimes are not given the same weight as the allegation of mass rape that supposedly took place on Oct. 7, despite actual evidence and documentation. 

The purposeful erasure of Palestinian suffering coupled with the constant framing of Palestinians as dangerous, vindictive savages reinforces the “us versus them” approach to public safety that essentially supports the apartheid state. If Palestinians are “animals” and “beasts” as Israeli leaders have repeatedly said, Israel is justified in its ability to kill, maim, incarcerate, and rape any Palestinian. Security—paired with the racialization of the natives as savages who inherently want to violate the female population—has always been used by colonizers to justify the slaughter, exclusion, and incarceration of Indigenous populations. When prison abolitionists say that Palestine is the litmus test for progressivism, this is what they mean. It is true that women suffer violence at the hands of patriarchy, it is also true that women’s safety is a serious concern policymakers must contend with. But relying on carceral and punitive measures to deal with this very real issue gives too much power to incarcerate, kill, and maim anyone a state or occupation deems dangerous to white women. 

Reimagining how sexual violence is dealt with requires imagining and demanding a world without occupations, colonization, and the dehumanization of people of color who are often seen as inherently dangerous. Reckoning with how we deal with women’s safety is urgent—and not just in Palestine. Women’s safety is an urgent and real issue, but when will we learn that incarcerating or killing people because the state has framed them as potential rapists is not how we keep each other safe? This is how we create more violence and perpetuate an endless cycle of brutality. The cycle must be broken, and feminist movements cannot allow our language and political work to be co-opted to perpetuate the logic of apartheid.