Rape Is Not Freedom Fighting

The Hamas led attacks on southern Israel on October 7 resulted in mass murder, rapes and kidnappings. 

The evidence is overwhelming - the murderers filmed and boasted about their cowardly deeds on social media - and the Israeli hostages didn't kidnap themselves, obviously.  

Sheryl Sandberg speaks out against the Hamas rapists in this powerful interview with the Sunday Times. 

"When Hamas burst through Israel’s defences on October 7, clear evidence of widespread rape alongside the mass murder began to pile up. What happened that day, says Sandberg, was 'premeditated, co-ordinated, multi-location, all on one day, rape and unbelievable sexual violence'. 

"She expected that her allies in the fight would be with her. But she was met with silence. Many who had fought with courage and commitment against sexual violence over the years didn’t appear motivated to speak." 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f8a11d85-f268-4f38-b632-107a1a4156fb?

INTERVIEW BY CHARLOTTE IVERS

Sheryl Sandberg on Hamas rapists and those who say nothing

The former Meta boss tells Charlotte Ivers of her new goal: combatting the lies about what happened on October 7

Sheryl Sandberg stepped down from her roles at Meta to concentrate on campaigning against gender-based violence - Photo AUSTIN HARGRAVE

By Charlotte Ivers - The Sunday Times

In addition to being a Silicon Valley titan, Sheryl Sandberg is a feminist, known as much for her work encouraging women to “lean in” and reject marginalisation as she is for her key roles running Google and Meta. She is, in fact, a symbol of global feminism, working with organisations such as the G7 and the UN to campaign against gender-based violence.

When Hamas burst through Israel’s defences on October 7, clear evidence of widespread rape alongside the mass murder began to pile up. What happened that day, says Sandberg, was “premeditated, co-ordinated, multi-location, all on one day, rape and unbelievable sexual violence”. She expected that her allies in the fight would be with her. But she was met with silence. Many who had fought with courage and commitment against sexual violence over the years didn’t appear motivated to speak.

For many long weeks, despite mounting evidence, organisations such as the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (known as UN Women), as well as the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) did not condemn Hamas’s gender-based atrocities.

Consequently, Sandberg has taken it upon herself to champion this issue. Her campaign began when she spoke outside the UN in New York and expressed her concern that the “silence” around these crimes threatened to undo progress made by women fighting against sexual violence.

It continues this week, when she will come to London for a press conference and an event in the House of Commons on Wednesday, alongside representatives from the Labour Party and the government, including Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary.

Sandberg, 54, announced in June 2022 that she was leaving her role as chief operating officer of Meta; she said this month that she would also be standing down as a director. She is now on a mission. The slow reaction of UN Women was, she tells me from her office in San Francisco, “unacceptable”.

Photo - Jack Guez/Getty Images

Why were so many so slow to react? “These are very, very, very political times,” she says. “When times are this political, I think we sometimes are so busy arguing with each other that we forget to find our common ground. There is one thing that needs to unite us at all which is that rape is unacceptable ever, ever.”

With the group appearing on Wednesday will be Shari Mendes, an Israel Defence Forces reservist who was part of the forensics team that examined the bodies of female soldiers killed during the attack, and Mirit Ben Mayor, an Israel police chief superintendent, who received the victims’ testimonies. Sandberg, who is Jewish, is also visiting France and Germany with these witnesses, because she wants “people to understand and acknowledge what happened — sexual violence is not freedom fighting”.

From the very first moments that footage of the October 7 attacks was broadcast, there were suggestions of sexual violence against women, with pictures of Naama Levy, a young hostage, bleeding from her trousers as she was taken into Gaza.

It took some weeks for more forensic evidence to emerge and the western media to pick up on it, but reports in this newspaper and elsewhere put together a devastating case.

Naama Levy, a young hostage,  was pictured being taken into Gaza

Shari Mendes examined the bodies of fellow IDF fighters killed on October 7 - Photo LEV RADIN/SIPA USA

In December, a witness at the Supernova music festival, where Hamas killed 364 people, said he had seen fighters gang-raping one woman before shooting her. He watched others strip another woman and behead her.

For Sandberg, being quiet on this issue is not an option, regardless of where people stand on the broader conflict now playing out in the Middle East. “I do believe anyone with any shred of humanity, which is almost everyone, will be calling out for this to be prosecuted.”

And yet it was eight weeks until UN Women issued a statement on the issue of rape and October 7. In November, the UN announced that a commission of inquiry would look into potential war crimes on both sides of the conflict, and would focus on sexual violence committed by Hamas. Israel called this “too little too late”.

“I say to the women’s rights organisations,” Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told a press conference in December, “you’ve heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible atrocities, sexual mutilation — where the hell are you?”

Several feminist commentators have attributed this sluggishness to the fact that these crimes did not fit within a comfortable oppressed versus oppressor model. Some of those who are critical of Israel’s ferocious response to the October 7 attacks find themselves disinclined to focus on the sexual crimes of Hamas.

Although she stresses that gender-based violence is her priority, Sandberg is also concerned about rising antisemitism in her home country, the US. I ask about her alma mater, Harvard, which has been embroiled in rows over antisemitism on campus and accusations of a lacklustre response by the university authorities. “I’ve been very concerned about some of the things that I see happening, that I don’t think would be allowed to happen to other historically discriminated against groups,” she says. “I think everyone deserves the same protection.”

She was troubled by the testimony given to Congress by the former Harvard president Claudine Gay, which set in motion events that led to her resignation. Gay refused to be drawn on whether calls for Jewish genocide were in breach of the college’s rules on harassment and bullying. “I don’t think you should be able to call for the genocide of anyone on a college campus,” says Sandberg. “That’s just not the kind of speech a college campus should [have].”

Sandberg is much less plain spoken, however, when I ask her about the role of social media companies in platforming hatred and misinformation over October 7 and the current war. After all, alongside Mark Zuckerberg she built Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, into the global behemoth it is today.

The problem is obvious. There have been times in recent months when my social feeds have been awash with it: from flat-out denials that the rapes took place, to tweets with thousands of likes claiming that the photos they contain show female hostages looking lovingly at their captors. Sandberg expresses concern that my asking about this will take attention away from the issue she is here to discuss.

When I insist that misinformation may be inextricably linked to the issue of persuading the public — young people in particular — that October 7 was a monstrous crime, Sandberg eventually tells me that “the responsibility we have is to put the truth out there, and when people are not believing because the victims have died, keep the truth out there”.

Members of the security forces  search for identification and personal effects at the Supernova Music Festival site, where hundreds were killed

Members of the security forces  search for identification and personal effects at the Supernova Music Festival site, where hundreds were killed - Photo LEON NEAL/GETTY

So repetition is the solution to misinformation? “I think what’s happening now, is that people who are the witnesses — who saw what happened — are able to put this out there in their own voice and their own time and to really get people focused,” she says. “Now if people choose to deny that, I think you just have to say it again. I think you have to demonstrate what happened.”

The work done by Sandberg and others appears to be having an impact. This week, a UN special representative will visit Israel to watch footage from the attack and meet hostages who have been released. The use of rape as a weapon of war is illegal, and the UN says it will pass on evidence to the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, on Friday the International Court of Justice said it would continue to investigate Israel, against which a case of genocide has been brought by South Africa.

These legal sagas may play out over months and years and will be mired in complexity. In the meantime, Sandberg carries a more simple message. No matter the broader picture, no matter one’s views on the Middle East, rape must be called out and prosecuted without hesitation or reluctance.

“I want people to understand and acknowledge what happened — sexual violence is not freedom fighting,” she says. “Sexual violence is not resistance. I think when people remember and think about what happened, they get there.”