In the early hours of Saturday, October 7, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, savagely murdering 1,200 babies, children, women, men, grandfathers, and grandmothers in their homes, and taking another 240 as hostages.

Among all the atrocities—documented by the terrorists’ bodycams, by surviving eyewitnesses, and by Israel police investigators —the ones committed against the women and girls were among the most hideous and shocking.

The Israel police, as well as a commission established by the Knesset to investigate crimes against women during the Hamas attack, have gathered extensive evidence of the rapes, gang rapes, and of post-mortem female mutilation.  An IDF spokesperson for the unit responsible for identification and burial of female soldiers told the Daily Mail that “there is evidence of mass rape so brutal that they broke their victims’ pelvises –women, grandmothers, children.”

One surviving eyewitness reported to the Israel Police that she observed a woman being gang raped; during the rape, the terrorists cut off one of the woman’s breasts and tossed it around among the gang rapists. One of those same men executed the woman with a bullet to her head even as he was raping her.

Twenty years ago, Rabbi Harold Schulweis, of blessed memory, and I co-founded Jewish World Watch as the Jewish community’s response to atrocities in Darfur, many of which involved the systematic rape and mutilation of women and girls. At the time, the world’s response to that violence was silence.

We pointed out then that the underlying history and political issues in Darfur, as in most such conflicts, might be complicated, but distinguishing between right and wrong behavior is not. And silence in the face of hideous abuse of women and girls doubles the horror.

Whatever one’s views are on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what Hamas did on October 7 is not fraught with ambiguity or complexity—the rapes, murders and kidnappings are heinous crimes that should shock the conscience of all human beings.

Yet, even when confronted with such appalling images and information, where is the cry of outrage? Where are the reactions by international bodies, including women’s organizations, to these unspeakable attacks?

Even when confronted with such appalling images and information, where is the cry of outrage? Where are the reactions by international bodies, including women’s organizations, to these unspeakable attacks?

There is only silence from the U.N. Security Council, from the myriad U.N. committees established for the very purpose of calling out conflict-related sexual assaults against women, from the independent international organizations created to promote the safety, well-being, and political rights of women.

It is unfathomable to me why the violated bodies of Israeli women and girls are not being singled out for condemnation of the men who savaged them.  If the world’s institutions created to defend women can’t speak and act here, then what is their reason for existing?

Eight decades after the Holocaust, is the world tired of hearing about savagery against Jews? Or is it that women the world over are so often victims of violence that the gender-directed atrocities of October 7 are just another episode on a list as long as time?

One thing is becoming clear—this palpable silence has unleashed a centuries-old fear among Jews, a fear by now deeply enmeshed in our DNA, that, except for some brave leaders, we Jews may once again find ourselves standing alone.

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, who directs Israel’s Bar-Ilan University’s Rackman Center on the Advancement of Women and who has represented Israel on the UN Committee to Eliminate Discrimination against Women, told Haaretz: “I feel a strong sense of desertion and even betrayal… [W]hat we are witnessing now, is simple disregard for what happened on October 7.”

Another prominent Israeli women’s rights advocate, Elkayam Levy, said, “All of the agencies that are involved in humanitarian crises should have at least offered recognition and support. We can’t even get them to the first stage of recognition.”

This silence betrays more than Israelis and Jews worldwide; it is a clear betrayal of humanity. I am outraged by the evil acts and outraged a second time over the silence.  If you are not outraged by and moved to speak out against the rape, mutilation and execution of Israeli women and girls, what will outrage you?

Janice Kamenir-Reznik is an attorney and co-founder, with the late Rabbi Harold Schulweis, of Jewish World Watch, an organization founded in 2004 to combat genocide. 

Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest is America and the Holocaust: A Documentary History, published by the Jewish Publication Society & University of Nebraska Press.

“I, for one, will never begrudge—on the contrary, it warms every fiber of my soul—the scenes of Gaza’s smiling children as their arrogant Jewish supremacist oppressors have, finally, been humbled,” cheered Norman Finkelstein, one of Israel’s bitterest academic critics, when he heard about the October 7 massacre. “Glory, glory, hallelujah. The souls of Gaza go marching on!”

When I read his statement, the question I found myself asking was, why? What was it that excited Finkelstein so much about news of slaughtered people?

One might speculate that, as a self-described loner, Finkelstein is some sort of sociopath without any moral sense. But that can’t be quite right. In the very same essay, Finkelstein unmistakably conveyed ethical feelings such as his conviction that chattel slavery and Nazi antisemitism were wrong. Like many advocates for the Palestinians, moreover, he has always presented himself as a humanitarian, genuinely concerned with the wellbeing of oppressed people everywhere.

“For the past 20 years the people of Gaza, half of whom are children, have been immured in a concentration camp,” was how Finkelstein justified his celebration of Hamas’s pogrom. “Today [Oct. 7] they breached the camp’s walls. If we honor John Brown’s armed resistance to slavery; if we honor the Jews who revolted in the Warsaw Ghetto—then moral consistency commands that we honor the heroic resistance in Gaza.”

Or as he later told the podcaster Candace Owens, “Everybody thinks, ‘Yeah, we should start with October 7th, that’s when the story begins,’ but … that’s not when the story begins; that’s where the story climaxes: After being born into a concentration camp, and living in that inferno for twenty years, they finally resolved to revenge the curse that had been inflicted on their lives.”

What warmed every fiber of his soul, then, wasn’t a result of his lack of morality; instead, it was because his ethics are more pristine and consistent than ours. The revulsion we felt at reports of tortured Israeli families and kidnapped children was transcended in his higher consciousness by a more penetrating insight into their Jewish supremacism and systemic oppression.

But before we aspire to his higher moral awareness, let’s pause to ask two questions whose answers Finkelstein appears to assume he knows. The first is: Was life in Gaza really so accursed and wretched?

Recent data from the UN’s Human Development Report Office (HDRO), whose reports enjoy editorial independence from the politicized United Nation’s General Assembly, painted a rather brighter picture of life in Gaza and the West Bank. Last year, the Palestinian areas were given a Human Development Index (HDI) value of 0.715, “which put the country in the High human development category—positioning it at 106 out of 191 countries and territories,” according to the HDRO study (italics mine).

This “high” development score signifies that, prior to Oct. 7, the standard of life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip had surpassed nearly half the countries worldwide, when measured by such vital indicators as life expectancy at birth, mean and expected years of schooling, and overall economic prosperity measured in U.S. dollars. Obviously, the same could not have been said for the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto and Southern slavery.

Finkelstein’s analogies of concentration camps and slave rebellions are further belied by social media posts that ordinary Gazans themselves had been posting in recent years about their interesting lives. Visit @imshin’s valuable X account, for example, to witness countless instances of extravagant Gazan consumerism, from exquisite dining in beachfront restaurants and resorts to playful excursions in amusement and water parks.

Finkelstein’s analogies of concentration camps and slave rebellions are further belied by social media posts that ordinary Gazans themselves had been posting in recent years about their interesting lives.

Thanks to Gazan social media, one can vicariously experience the allure of their designer clothes and adorable baby attire, behold their fascination with fancy cars at their luxury car dealership, indulge in the festive atmosphere of their bustling shopping malls, savor afternoon tea in their charming rooftop cafés, unwind in their luxury chalets and villas, and discover the glamour of their finely crafted gold, including spectacular gold-plated iPhones. Moreover, one can share in their delight in filling up grocery carts at stores packed with delicious foods, and witness their holiday vacationing and sporting events beyond the supposedly impossible confines of their concentration camp.

Somewhat ironically, the much-discussed hospitals in Gaza, with footage of advanced medical equipment, is yet another indicator that life in their “refugee camps” wasn’t quite the hellscape that Finkelstein and others would have us believe. One of the reasons Gaza received a high HDI value was because Palestinian healthcare had been fairly good. As observed in these pages in 2021, a pregnant woman’s baby stood a better chance of survival in the West Bank and Gaza Strip than in Brazil, Turkey, Egypt and numerous other nations around the world.

That is not to say that most Gazans were wealthy or even that the wealthy among them had been satisfied with their relatively affluent existence. According to the latest UN-sponsored World Happiness Report, Palestinians were indeed one of the gloomiest populations globally, ranking 99th out of 137 nationalities. Which leads to the second question: Why were they so unhappy before Oct. 7?

Finkelstein, a Marxist, replies that Palestinian sourness was due to their living in a crowded open-air prison under appalling material conditions. But that’s quite unpersuasive. El Salvador’s quality of life, for instance, was markedly worse than the Palestinians and yet Salvadorans were significantly happier, according to UN data. External material factors, it seems, can only account for so much when it comes to the riddle of human happiness.

There is a spiritual dimension to our experience of joy. The nineteenth-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who spent his life contemplating the nature of sorrow, astutely pointed out that the world in which each of us lives is shaped by the way in which we look at it. That is why identical external events affect individuals differently; even in similar circumstances, each person inhabits a unique universe of their own.

“All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing Don Quixote in a miserable prison,” Schopenhauer remarked memorably. The inner universe of Palestinian psychology, not the outside world, brought about the 7th of October.

Following their worldwide street celebrations of that day, Palestinians and their supporters are now posting lamentations of their lost paradise on the Gaza Strip after Israel’s retaliation. It is as though many of them believed their previous affluence was divinely ordained—as though they had been oblivious to how good life had been. Instead of appreciating their general wellbeing, and rather than building upon the constructive possibilities of the Abraham Accords, they stewed in anger over Israel’s continued existence, plotting cruelties of unimaginable barbarity.

Schopenhauer again: “A man never feels the loss of things which it never occurs to him to ask for; he is just as happy without them; whilst another, who may have a hundred times as much, feels miserable because he has not got the one thing he wants.” In the case of Gazans, despite being materially better off than many other populations on earth, the crucial missing element in their quest for happiness has been conquering their hated Jewish neighbors across the fence, once and for all. As a consequence of their failure to do so, they have ungratefully indulged their otherwise decent lives while nursing revenge fantasies and willingly risking it all in pursuit of that one elusive thing.

Finkelstein, presenting himself as their friend, keeps encouraging them in this self-destructive Quixotic adventure. Like many in the pro-Palestinian movement, he exhibits an irrational inclination to catastrophize—a cognitive distortion that prompts people to make giants out of windmills, or in Finkelstein’s case, a concentration camp out of an area ranked highly on the human development index. It is this widespread irrationalism at the rotten bottom of his side’s political thinking that, ironically and fatefully, does so very much to perpetuate Palestinian miseries.

And, as old Schopenhauer would have us note, even if the Gaza Strip really had been the inferno that Finkelstein depicts, it still wouldn’t follow that such unpleasant external conditions necessarily inspire most men to think and behave as grotesquely as the Palestinians did on October 7th—or, for that matter, to cheer it on as Finkelstein did, no less cruelly.

Jonah Cohen is communications director for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA.org).

There has been a worldwide focus on civilian casualties in Israel’s war in Gaza. Frequent demands are heard for an immediate ceasefire on the grounds that there are too many civilian deaths and this killing must be stopped at once. These calls fail to face the bitter truth that a cessation of hostilities would leave Hamas in power, bloodied but not broken and able to massacre again. President Macron of France and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada — who initially supported Israel’s right to defend its citizens after the October 7 massacre — are quoted as saying that Israel must stop killing women and babies. The implication is that Israel is engaged in a war of revenge, that the IDF is targeting women and children or at least not taking care to minimize civilian casualties. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is important for supporters of Israel to know that when the Jewish state created an army, its leaders recognized that this was a turning point in Jewish history. Instead of living on sufferance of the host society — and frequently being victimized due to their powerlessness — the Jewish people decided to become sovereign and take political and military power to have an important role in determining their own fate. This meant giving up the self-righteousness of being the victims (and never the abuser). This meant taking on the risk of exercising power where failure meant disaster for Jewry. This also meant taking on the risk of waging wars that would inescapably result in civilian casualties. The new ethical challenge was to fight with restraint and act to minimize collateral damage. The IDF believed that soldiers would be better fighters if they believed in the justice of their cause and that their army fought justly using moral standards. 

The IDF set out to minimize civilian casualties and in the process became the most moral army in the world. Note: Keep in mind the sad truth that the definition of a moral army is that it minimizes (but cannot eliminate) civilian casualties.

The IDF adopted a strong tohar haneshek (purity of arms) doctrine. The code started with the emerging ethical principles of international law: necessity (an army goes to war only if this is the only way left to enable life to go on); distinctiveness (the army is careful not to harm civilians and attacks only soldiers and military targets); proportionality (if the enemy mixes civilian and military so that it is impossible to fight without putting civilians at risk, then if the attacks would harm civilians more than the military advantage gained, it would not be done).

The IDF codified its rules and gives a copy to every soldier. Officers spend serious time instilling those values as part of the basic training process. After the IDF codification, a Judicial Advocate General office (praklitut tzva’it) was set up to monitor behavior, investigate deaths or abuses of civilians and hold people accountable before military tribunals. The Israel Supreme Court then took over ultimate review of military justice and tactics to ensure that the army fully lives up to its code. A free press and media also investigate abuses and check potential violations.

The army developed ordnance to minimize collateral damage, including smart bombs to ensure that only intended military targets were hit and special munitions that reduced explosive scatter. In the Gaza war, IDF introduced “Iron Sting,” a newly developed mortar munition that reduces scatter. Such munitions reduce the chances of wounding civilians in the vicinity of military targets. The classic case is the Iron Dome missile defense system, which neutralized rockets’ ability to destroy civilians and civilian life. 

The IDF developed tactics to reduce enemy civilian casualties. These included canceling missions in actual operation where it was determined that too many civilians would be hurt; mass telephone calls warning local inhabitants to get out before their area was bombed or invaded; dropping flyers warning of coming military actions; and “knock on roof” shells  that did not explode but gave a last warning to civilians to get out before their building was struck. Many of these tactics allowed terrorist fighters to get out of harm’s way, but the IDF was determined to minimize civilian casualties at all costs. In retrospect, this tactic boomeranged as some of those spared terrorists went on to murder hundreds and planned to murder millions. 

The real measure of the IDF’s accomplishments was articulated by Richard Kemp, leader of the United Kingdom’s armed forces in Afghanistan. Driven by the need to gain the support of the population against the Taliban, the Allied forces made an all-out effort to reduce civilian casualties. By strenuous effort, the Allies brought the ratio of civilian deaths to fighter deaths down to a historically unprecedented level — three to four civilians killed for every fighter. Hamas is a group which deliberately places its military installations and fighters among civilian populations. Yet by 2021, after repeated military conflicts with Hamas, the IDF brought the ratio down to one fighter killed for every civilian killed. No other army in the world has reached such levels of protecting civilians. It is literally true that IDF was the most moral army in the world — on the heartbreaking understanding that a moral army kills as few innocent civilians as possible.

The Hamas October 7 massacre was so massive and cruel that it generated a wave of anger. Many Israelis called for revenge and retaliation. Extremist ministers called for indiscriminate collective punishment and wholesale destruction of Gaza. The IDF rejected these ideas as incompatible with its values. The government and the IDF determined that Hamas must be destroyed and its governance over Gaza ended — but the war would be fought according to the IDF’s code of ethics, including minimizing civilian casualties. The air bombing targets only military sites. The IDF called upon the inhabitants of Northern Gaza to evacuate the area in order to sharply reduce civilian losses. Israel itself evacuated over 120,000 civilians in northern and southern Israel to put them out of harm’s way. Hamas soldiers blocked civilians from leaving while its media department claimed Israel was carrying out ethnic cleansing. An estimated 70% of Gazans exited northern Gaza. 

Why then are Palestinian deaths so high? The first answer is that the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Department inflates the figures. In the Al Shifa hospital incident, Hamas blamed an IDF strike and claimed there were 500 deaths. Later evidence showed that the strike was a failed Islamic Jihad rocket aimed at Israel that broke up and blasted the hospital’s parking lot, with about 50 casualties. The Gazan report includes the 1,500 Hamas fighters who were killed inside Israel during the IDF counterattack to the massacre, as well as Hamas terrorists killed in the Gaza fighting. It also includes all the casualties caused by Hamas and PIJ rockets. Over 8,000 rockets have been fired toward Israel and an estimated 20% of them fall in Gaza, causing Palestinian casualties.

The definition of proportionality has also changed. In the past, a terrorist leader with a few civilians nearby would be spared. Now, knowing that this man, spared, could order the killing of hundreds of civilians, the strike goes on — justifiably.

Hamas turned Gaza’s citizens into human shields. They so intertwined their military with civilians that any and all attempts to stop their assaults cause civilian casualties.

The major reason for the increased casualties is that Hamas multiplied its military installations in Gaza. It dug kilometers of attack tunnels with numerous openings in civilian neighborhoods, and placed rocket launchers in proximity to schools, hospitals, etc. They placed command and control centers in (that is, under) hospitals. They turned blocks of civilian buildings into military posts. This mixing is a war crime. Hamas turned Gaza’s citizens into human shields. They so intertwined their military with civilians that any and all attempts to stop their assaults cause civilian casualties. The deepest cynicism in this strategy is that Hamas set up Gaza to maximize Palestinian civilian casualties, in the belief that civilian deaths bring sympathy and support to their cause. 

In the classic chutzpah narrative, a man kills his father and mother and pleads for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan. Hamas has done better. It sets up tens of thousands of civilians as human shields. Then, after massacring a thousand civilians, it demands a ceasefire. No one should fight back against its terrorism — since civilians will be hurt. 

We have to fight the false implication that the higher civilian casualties in this war proves that Israel is not trying hard to minimize them. The evacuation of Northern Gaza saved countless lives; however, this escape route also allowed many terrorists and Hamas’ top leadership to get out of the line of fire by moving alongside the civilians. Israel’s protection of civilians costs it dearly in terms of mortal enemies who take advantage to save themselves. It is important for Israel’s supporters, here and elsewhere, to let the world know that in the face of staggering barbarism, Israel is still making extraordinary efforts to reduce Palestinian civilian casualties.

When Israel took up the burden of defending Jews’ right to live, we did not imagine the devastating cost of that defense in Palestinian lives. Since every human life is of infinite value, we deeply feel the pain of every innocent Palestinian life lost. The death of children in Gaza is particularly painful. The fault is all Hamas’ and its deliberate use of human shields —but we still feel the sorrow of every loss of life.

The war carries a heavy cost in our own fighters’ lives as well as  Palestinian civilians’ but this is the outcome of the principle of necessity. There is no other way to stop the attempt to destroy Israel. For the same reason, a ceasefire now would save Hamas from destruction and allow terrorist groups to regroup. Those who sincerely are calling for a ceasefire in order to save civilians should know that unchecked, radical jihadists will kill hundreds of thousands, even millions, in the future —not just in Israel, but in the rest of the free world.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg serves as the President of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life (JJGI) and as Senior Scholar in Residence at Hadar.