KINSELLA: Dinah Project report documents Hamas' use of sexual violence
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Horrible.
The Dinah Project is a group of feminists and female legal experts from around the world, including Canada. This week, they released a report — a book, really — that provides, in forensic detail, evidence about the extreme sexual violence Israeli women and girls experienced at the hands of Hamas and Gazans on and after Oct. 7, 2023. Their report, many months in the making, is indeed horrible.
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Their mandate was “gather, analyze and verify information on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) from Oct. 7 onwards.” They did that. They “documented clear evidence of severe sexual acts such as rape, torture and humiliation. Incidents of rape and gang rape occurred at several locations (in Israel), notably the Nova music festival, Hwy. 232 and Kibbutz Re’im.”
The Dinah Project does important work. It has briefed the UN Security Council, the UN Commissioner of Human Rights in Geneva, White House senior staff and ministers, ambassadors and diplomats from around the world. For most, their work, and their word, is not in dispute. They have won awards and accolades for what they do.
Their new report, running nearly 100 single-spaced pages, is not for the faint of heart. Titled A Quest for Justice, the report — funded in part by the U.K. government, universities and human rights groups — is almost certainly going to serve as the evidentiary basis for prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity when the Hamas-Israel conflict ends. Over 18 months, the group interviewed hundreds of eyewitnesses and surviving victims — along with first responders, morgue personnel and health-care professionals.
Their conclusion: “Clear patterns emerged in how the sexual violence was perpetrated, including victims found partially or fully naked with their hands tied, often to structures like trees or poles; evidence of gang rapes followed by execution; genital mutilation; and public humiliation. Sexual violence continued in captivity with multiple returnees reporting sexual harassment … Most victims were permanently silenced — either murdered during or after the assaults or remaining too traumatized to talk.”
Antisemites, of course, have always denied atrocities against Jews. Holocaust deniers like Ernst Zundel or Jim Keegstra, for example, repeatedly denied the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis. Similarly, a new generation of deniers, some motivated by antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias, has appeared since Oct. 7, denying the atrocities, denying the violence. And, in particular, denying the extreme sexual violence that took place on and after that terrible day.
Knowing this, the Dinah Project knew their report could not be speculative or open to debate. “A solid factual foundation is essential,” they wrote. And, they wrote, “we seek to set the historical record straight: Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon of war.”
Their report, as horrible as it is, leaves little doubt about that. Says the report: “No source was accepted at face value. Each piece of evidence was first scrutinized to assess its relevance to our subject matter and then analyzed for its content and evidentiary value.”
Seventeen witnesses saw and described rapes, gang rapes, sexual violence and mutilations. Fifteen returned hostages, too, reported “extreme sexual assaults,” sexual violence and dehumanization. Notes the report: “In most of cases, the rape victims were murdered during or immediately following the assault. There was more than one report of continuous sexual assault after the victim was no longer alive.” In more than 30 eyewitness accounts at six different locations, first responders and eyewitnesses described “bodies with objects inserted into their private parts, bodies with signs of shooting or other mutilations in the area of the genitalia, bodies of naked women cuffed onto trees, bodies of half-naked or fully naked women, some lying with their genitalia exposed and legs spread.”
Most of that happened at the Nova Music festival, but it also happened at Kibbutz Be’eri, just up the road from Nova. It happened on the road leading to Nova and Be’eri, too, and at different kibbutzim.
It is evil. It is horrible. All of it is also fact for any reasonable person who has read the report. Which brings us to University of Toronto religion professor Ruth Marshall.
Marshall, still gainfully employed at the prestigious Canadian university, has written online that “there wasn’t rape there was a RAPE HOAX.” She has reposted statements that “querying the rape narrative” is appropriate. She is a signatory to a letter/petition that stated testimonies about Oct. 7 rapes and assaults were “unverified accusation(s) that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence.”
In the week that the Dinah Project report was released, it was timely to ask Marshall if she still stood by these words. Whether she still denied the barbarity Israeli women and girls experienced on Oct. 7 and on the days that followed. Whether the rapes were “a hoax” — which, coincidentally, is what Zundel called the Holocaust.
By press time, Marshall had not responded and she had not disavowed her denials of rape.
Which, in itself, is horrible, too.
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