In First, Delegation of European Female MPs Coalesce in Solidarity With Israel’s Victimized Women
European parliamentarians and activists gathered in the Knesset to address the victimization and rape of women on October 7, highlighting the global issue of gender-based violence in conflict zones
In a packed Knesset meeting room, women and many men gathered to attentively listen to testimony and statements from European parliamentarians and activists highlighting the victimization and rape of women on October 7. It was a show of recognition and a historic moment of coalescence. The program also displayed a fashion show illustrating the plight of Israel’s exploited and abused women: the raped, the murdered, the kidnapped.
The fashion show representing the hostages. (Felice Friedson/The Media Line)
The concept was cemented when Member of Knesset Shelly Tal Meron sat center stage in a circle of seats packed with invitees. Among the distinguished women who followed Meron as she opened the session to raise global awareness of the magnitude of rape as a weapon of war were relatives of hostages, a Syrian Lebanese activist, and an Iranian British activist.
We have 128 hostages, and especially the 17 women who are still held in Gaza
“We have 128 hostages, and especially the 17 women who are still held in Gaza. Today we are gathering as a global coalition. … I’ve been doing it together with the minister for gender equality in France and other countries. And we must acknowledge this new kind of terror because this is threatening not only Israel and Jewish women, but every country in the world. … So we must stand united and call for action against this new method of terror,” Meron shared with those in attendance.
Meron pointed out that not many people around the world were discussing the sexual assault happening to women in conflict areas globally.
“It’s not only happening with Hamas and Israel, it’s also Ukraine, and Africa and ISIS, and different locations around the world,” Meron charged.
Representatives from 12 European nations attended to reinforce the establishment of a Global Coalition Against Gender-Based Violence as a Weapon of War at the behest of MK Meron, who is from the Yesh Atid party, and partnering organization ELNET, which fosters relations between Israel and Europe based on shared interests.
“Powerful women, members of parliaments, journalists, and community activists coming from all over Europe with the idea of protecting more women” is how Yossi Abravanel, ELNET deputy executive director, described the event.
“If there is a subject where we have consensus between Israel and Europe, it’s the issue of violence against women and gender-based violence. The purpose of this gathering is to show the world that there is a new tool in the arsenal of terrorist organizations: They are now using sexual violence as a weapon of war,” Abravanel shared with The Media Line.
The goal of the event is “to make noise” and to publicize the issue, according to Abravanel, who is looking toward the passage of legislation in each represented country.
Concurring with Abravanel, Emmanuel Navon, the CEO if ELNET Israel, said, “I think we need to make this a crime that can be prosecuted in courts of law, both in national and international tribunals.”
Partner Aurore Bergé, minister for gender equality and the fight against discrimination, spoke via Zoom. “Israel can count on France’s determination. We will stand by your side to shed light on what happened. These crimes must not go unpunished.”
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(R-L) MK Shelly Tal Meron, ELNET Deputy Executive Director Yossi Abravanel. ELNET Israel CEO Emmanuel Navon, and in the foreground, Syrian-Lebanese peace activist Rawan Osman attend the ELNET meeting in the Knesset in Jerusalem. (Felice Friedson/The Media Line)
Moroccan-born Steve Maman, who heads the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq foundation, saw this moment as significant enough to fly to Israel and share his experiences representing Yazidi children from Iraq and his understanding of the exploitation of women in war.
“The Yazidis went through a genocide which was barbaric at the hands of ISIS. They were picked out to be women, where they would be married, forcefully married to Yazidis and not given a choice. They were raped,” he said. “It was used as a weapon of war. Their husbands were murdered to make them available to fighters.”
ISIS needed fighters to conquer the caliphate, Maman reiterated to The Media Line. “They couldn’t send fighters without women. They offered pay and sex as incentives.”
Hamas has taken the lead in this brutality. What has been done to Israeli women, children, and men is far beyond what ISIS did to the Yazidis.
Maman says that “Hamas has taken the lead in this brutality. What has been done to Israeli women, children, and men is far beyond what ISIS did to the Yazidis. In the case of the Israelis, they were raped, brutally mutilated, and killed. The point that Hamas was trying to make was not to engage in sexual abuse. They were trying to defile, to humiliate, to belittle the Jewish identity and they succeeded.”
Maman, who is Canadian, didn’t expect more from the current Canadian government, which has sidelined the hostage issue completely.
“The Canadian government has failed to call out Hamas to return our four Canadian hostages still in Gaza. It tells a lot. When you don’t call out, a Jew doesn’t have the same value as another Canadian hostage. A Canadian Jew doesn’t bear that same value.”
“We, as a Jewish community, believe the honeymoon between the Jews and the Liberal Party of Canada is over,” Maman said.
Bold and passionate, Rawan Osman, a Syrian-Lebanese peace activist, spends many hours following the news in the Arab world and sees Israel omitted from the narrative of October 7.
“Hamas leaders, also academics and professionals in the Arab world, they still argue that civilians were not targeted, although children and elderly were released after the hostage deal. It’s a shaming that women and mothers deny what we’ve seen filmed and broadcast by Hamas,” she tells The Media Line.
Osman, who resides in Germany, founded a project on social media to explain Israel and Judaism in Arabic or with Arabic subtitles.
“I was surprised with the overwhelming number of messages I receive from all over the world, from Muslims, from Arabs, from ex-Muslims, also from people in Iran, in Iraq, in Egypt, telling me. ‘Thank you, we wish we could speak up, but they can’t because they are scared,’” she said.
Asked what drives Osman to stand up and speak in Israel, she said, “I will not be passive. What was done is savagery, and I owe it to my son, to my grandchildren, to the future generations, as we all do, to try and stop this before it’s too late.”
The abundant denial of the October 7 tragedy and the rapes brought the coalition together. The Media Line asked what would turn the tide.
“Wow, difficult question. As you said, many in the Arab world, the Islamic world but also in the West, all the woke and far left are demanding proof. They want videos of these rapings which we don’t have, but I am one of the people who translated after October 7, already on October 8, many of the videos that were propagated on social media. I saw everything with my own eyes and tried to explain.”
Osman’s championing has not come without pushback.
“I’m mostly called a traitor, which I knew before I stepped into the public sphere. But, I just wonder, who am I betraying? These are my people, my children, our children. Those who advocate peace are not the traitors. Traitors are those who inflicted a war upon Syrians, upon the Lebanese, upon Gazans.
“Gazans were not consulted. I think those living comfortably in Qatar and in Turkey, received as heroes are, these are the true traitors. So, I couldn’t care less about the pushback.”
“I lost many friends, but I won much better friends,” she stated.
Throughout history, there has been a conspiracy of silence surrounding sexual violence during war
Opposition Leader MK Yair Lapid echoed the chorus of voices and warned, “Throughout history, there has been a conspiracy of silence surrounding sexual violence during war. This is what enabled it. Women are raped, humiliated, murdered and the world is silent.”
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid (L) addresses the ELNET meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem. (Felice Friedson/The Media Line)
For Abravanel, silence is not an option, with plans in motion to hold a series of events, with France taking center stage next.
