Community members from the Baltimore metropolitan area came together in front of Baltimore’s City Hall on Friday, March 8, to bring attention to the sexual violence perpetrated against Israeli women by Hamas on Oct. 7, as well as to the hostages still in Hamas captivity.
The End the Silence protest was part of a global campaign led by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.
The rally was organized by Baltimore Area Jewish Feminists, a new group that formed a few weeks ago, propelled by a growing exchange of ideas over the social media channel WhatsApp.
“Friday’s protest was an incredible moment of turning our feelings of hopelessness and despair in a post-Oct. 7 world into a moment of action and forward movement,” said Beth Vander Stoep, one of the rally organizers and leaders of Baltimore Area Jewish Feminists. “We reclaimed our murdered sisters’ names and said that we have had enough of the silence around the documented, premeditated and real sexual violence that was inflicted upon Israeli women by Hamas on Oct. 7. The victims are not abstract concepts; they were people we knew and loved.”
Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, one of the rally attendees, said she participated in order to stand in solidarity with those calling for an investigation into the sexual violence.
“A recent U.N. report suggests that rape might be continuing against the women still held hostage,” Cardin said. “Such violence needs to be condemned. Yet for too long it was not acknowledged.”
Five months after Hamas’ brutal attack in southern Israel, and after months of reports that women had been brutally raped by Hamas, a United Nations envoy released a report on March 4 stating that there were reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence had taken place on Oct. 7.
“The U.N. envoy focusing on sexual violence in conflict said in a new report Monday that there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe Hamas committed rape, ‘sexualized torture,’ and other cruel and inhumane treatment of women during its surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7,” AP News reported on March 4. Moreover, it went on, “Based on first-hand accounts of released hostages, … the team ‘found clear and convincing information’ that some women and children during their captivity were subjected to the same conflict-related sexual violence including rape and ‘sexualized torture.’”
Israel has been critical of the U.N.’s slow response to the accounts of rape and sexual violence from survivors of the Oct. 7 attack.
Vander Stoep said that Baltimore Area Jewish Feminists is ”a community that has been born out of a real need for a progressive, pluralistic, Jewish space in which we do not have to compromise our identities, nor our connections to Israel, in order to promote our feminist values.”
Vander Stoep highlighted the fact that many progressive organizations failed to validate the reports of rape by Hamas.
“In a post-Oct. 7 world, many ‘progressive’ organizations held a silence louder than words could ever express when they refused to condemn the sexual violence that took place,” she said. “Some ‘progressive’ spaces have gone as far as saying it was justified.”
The Baltimore Area Jewish Feminists group is still working on goals and objectives, Vander Stoep said. The group members know that they want to act locally and think globally. Everyone is welcome, and participants must commit to what Vander Stoep referred to as simple requirements. “Our requirements for entry are simple: you need [to] identify as a feminist, you need to believe that all women regardless of ethnicity and or national heritage deserve to be believed when they come forward to talk about sexual violence, and you need to be willing to publicly say ‘the sexual violence that occurred on Oct. 7 was real and that rape is not resistance,’” she said.
