The Israel Exemption Nada Elia

 

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The Israel Exemption

Nada Elia

Pages 66-74 | Published online: 11 Jul 2025

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This essay proposes a discursive shift from the “Palestine exception” to the “Israel exemption” from accountability, in order to recenter Israel’s culpability. It documents the long record of Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians, beginning in 1948, and peaking during the current intensified genocide. The author argues that this pattern of sexual violence is a feature of settler colonialism and racism, and that Global North feminists’ outrage over allegations of Palestinian rape of Israelis on October 7 while ignoring verified Palestinian experiences illustrates the exceptionalization of Israel. The author concludes by examining how Israel and its allies continue to weaponize antisemitism and feminism to exempt it from its crimes.

Activists are familiar with the expression “progressive except for Palestine,” which refers to the blinders that most liberals, and even some progressives, have when it comes to the oppression of the Palestinian people. We speak of the Palestine exception to free speech, the Palestine exception to the right to resist, the Palestine exception to boycott, and so on. Without disputing the stifling reality of the Palestine exception, what I propose here is that we start rephrasing the Palestine exception to the Israel exemption from accountability. I argue that this discursive shift empowers us to recenter Israel’s culpability as we discuss the multitude of egregious crimes it has committed from its foundation to the present.

In this essay, I focus specifically on sexual violence. Since 1948, Israel has been exempt from accountability for the sexual violence it systematically commits against Palestinians, despite ample evidence that in many cases Israel itself does not deny. This exemption persists to this day. The allegations that Hamas militants raped Israeli women on October 7, 2023, constitute the first instance of allegations of Palestinian sexual violence against Israelis and cannot explain the exemption or justify Israel’s recourse to sexual violence, nor can they retroactively account for how Israel has for decades been getting around accountability for its crimes. Instead, we must look at the nexus of settler-colonial ideology and anti-Arab racism, and at Israel’s weaponization of antisemitism and feminism, which absolve it from any wrongdoing. The outrage of Global North feminists over the allegations of Hamas rapes, while they have long ignored Palestinian women’s experiences, is an illustration of this nefarious Israeli exemption.

Sexual Violence Since the Onset of the Nakba

The Israeli settler-colonial project has been employing sexual violence in its ethnic cleansing of Palestine since the onset of the Nakba. In her extensive research on violence against women in conflict zones, Palestinian scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian examines the “severe effect of [Israel’s] militarization and violence on women’s everyday lives, their bodies and survival strategies.”

Footnote

1 She interviewed many Palestinian families who said they fled their homes in 1948 out of fear of rape.

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2 Indeed, Palestinian oral history tells of many instances of rape, generally whispered as “it happened in the next village” or “it happened to our neighbors’ daughter.”

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3

In 1949, a platoon of Israeli soldiers kidnapped a young Bedouin girl, described as “in her mid-teens.”

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4 When their commanding officer gave them the choice between using her as kitchen staff or a sex slave, they opted for the latter. They cut her hair and washed it with kerosene, so she would be “clean for f–ing,” then gang raped her so violently that on the next morning the officer in charge, Second Lieutenant Moshe, “saw fit to remove her from the world.”

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5 Moshe entered the incident in his log, as did Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, whose diary contains many other reports of the rape and gang rape of Palestinian women and girls in 1948 and 1949.

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6 These reports, many of which go into graphic details, are cited in many Palestinian and Israeli historians’ scholarship.

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7

Israeli historian Benny Morris also lists numerous acts of rape of Palestinian women by Zionist forces throughout 1948:

In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg.

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8

While it is safe to assume that there were many instances of rape that were not reported, there is also evidence that government officials were quite aware of the fact that Israeli soldiers were engaging in sexual assault. Aharon Zisling, Israel’s agriculture minister in 1948, declared in a Knesset meeting that he deemed the rape of Palestinians acceptable. “Let us say that instances of rape occurred in Ramle. I can forgive instances of rape, but I will not forgive other acts,” Zisling is quoted as saying in minutes of a July 1948 meeting that were disclosed due to a technical glitch.

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9

Israeli sources are thus replete with details of the sexual violence Israeli forces committed against Palestinians throughout the inception of the Zionist state. The veracity of the many reports of rape is not in question. They are historical facts, yet Global North feminists remain silent on the topic. They have never discussed the history of Israeli rape of Palestinians, let alone denounced it—a clear case of the Israel exemption.

Beyond 1948: A Long Record of Abuses

The rapes that Israeli forces committed in the early years of the Zionist state were not anomalies. Israel has utilized sexual violence systemically since 1948. Reports by various human rights groups show a long record of officially sanctioned torture, frequently sexual, by Israeli soldiers of Palestinians, primarily civilians rounded up for administrative detention. In September 2008, Amnesty International submitted a report to the International Committee on Torture, documenting the pervasiveness of torture and sexual assault of Palestinian men, women, and children in Israeli prisons.

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10

In April 2021, Human Rights Watch published a report, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, averring that Israel is engaging in the crime of apartheid, and making “excessive use of torture” of Palestinians in administrative detention.

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11 In November 2023, Amnesty International published another report, Horrifying Cases of Torture and Degrading Treatment of Palestinian Prisoners, on the same topic.

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12 In August 2024, Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem published a report, Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps, documenting some of the torture, including sexual violence and gang rape, of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

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13 As the report makes clear, rape, or the threat of rape, is often used during interrogation to coerce Palestinians to confess to crimes they did not commit.

On August 9, 2024, in the midst of the ongoing genocide, an Israeli television channel broadcast CCTV footage from the Sde Teiman Israeli detention facility—described as more horrific than Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo

Footnote

14—showing Israeli soldiers sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee. The independently confirmed video first shows a large number of prisoners lying face down on the floor with their hands on the backs of their heads. Shortly after, one prisoner is taken away and three soldiers use shields to block the view, as up to ten soldiers proceed to rape him, while a military dog barks nonstop, barely three feet away from the prisoner. The attack was so brutal that the prisoner was unable to walk after being transferred to a hospital.

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15

Israeli officials did not deny that the gang rape took place. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, was outraged not at the rape, but at the fact that security footage was leaked.

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16 Other ministers, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, argued that anything and everything, including gang rape, is permissible for the sake of Israel’s security.

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17 Another Israeli Knesset member, Hanoch Milwidsky, upon being asked by Palestinian Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi if it was “legitimate to insert a stick into a prisoner’s rectum,” replied: “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!”

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18

On November 17, 2024, reports emerged that Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, head of orthopedic surgery at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, had been raped to death.

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19 He and other doctors, nurses, and medical staff had been working at al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza when they were rounded up and taken away by Israeli soldiers for “national security reasons.”

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20 From there, Dr. al-Bursh was transferred to Sde Teiman. Four months later, al-Bursh was dragged and dumped into the prison yard, naked from the waist down, bleeding, unable to stand. He died moments later. He had been gang raped to death by Israeli soldiers.

Al-Bursh was one of the over three hundred medical staff arrested in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

Footnote

21 Many of them have reported cruel treatment, torture, and sexual violence, including rape.

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22 A Human Rights Watch report published on August 26, 2024, details some of the abuse they endured, including a detainee who was “bleeding from his bottom” as “three soldiers took turns raping him with an M16 [assault rifle].”

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23 In March 2025, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, published More Than a Human Can Bear, a report examining “the sharp increase in sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated by members of the Israeli Security Forces and settlers online and in person across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including rape and other forms of sexual violence.”

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24 The report also examines “how sexual and gender-based violence has taken different forms when committed against male and female members of the Palestinian community in order to dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people in whole or in part.”

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25 To be sure, this is a direct reference to the UN definition of genocide, which states that “Deliberately inflicting on [a] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” is a defining criterion of this crime against humanity.

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26

The Israeli state strategically and systematically uses sexual violence against Palestinians in order to cause ruptures in Palestinian life and society that lead to a climate of terror and a lack of social cohesion. Indeed, a March 2025 report by the UN confirmed this: “Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination.”

Footnote

27 Yet, Palestinian women have long overcome traditional modesty to come forward and speak openly of these violations. The expression al-ard qabla al-‘ard (land before honor), which circulated widely among Palestinians during the first intifada, reflects the Palestinian conviction that despite Israeli soldiers assaulting and raping Palestinian women during interrogations to extract information from them, their honor remained intact because of the greater cause: liberation of the land.

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28

While the idea that a woman’s honor is jeopardized by her having been sexually assaulted should be problematized, this popular saying indicates Israel’s longstanding and pervasive use of sexual violence against Palestinians. Rasmea Odeh’s rape during her interrogation in 1969 is a case in point. During the interrogation, Odeh’s father was brought into the room and the Israeli soldiers tried to force him to have sex with her.

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29 He was unable to perform, but that is when she confessed, under extreme physical and psychological torture, to having participated in a terrorist attack. Confessions obtained under torture are not admissible in court, according to international law, yet Odeh was convicted in an Israeli court on the basis of that confession. She served ten years in Israeli prison, then immigrated to the United States, where she became a naturalized citizen. Decades later, however, Odeh was stripped of US citizenship and deported to Jordan on the basis of the accusations of the Israeli state.

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30 Global North feminists remained silent.

“Except for Israel”

How do we explain that Global North feminists are not outraged by Israel’s historic and ongoing systematic sexual assault of Palestinians? Israel and its allies do not see Palestinians as humans, but rather, as an entity to eliminate in order to protect the Jewish state. Connectedly, Israeli exceptionalism in the Global North is possible because, for Israel’s allies across the political spectrum, “the only democracy in the Middle East” must be absolved of the crimes it commits against the so-called savage Palestinians. The settler-colonial state must defend itself at all costs.

Palestinians and our allies have long been familiar with the expression—the phenomenon—of “Progressive Except for Palestine.”

Footnote

31 While many of us argue that in fact one cannot truly be progressive and exclude Palestine, the nuanced reality is that many people who embrace progressive causes such as refugee rights and anti-racism do exclude Palestine. But they do so not because Palestine is exceptional, but because they are exceptionalizing Israel. That is, they would hold any country accountable for documented, confirmed, and unquestionable crimes, except for Israel.

This is why, so long as we question why these progressives do not recognize the humanity of Palestinians and the crimes committed against us—why Palestinians continue to be an exception to those deemed human, mournable, and relatable to Western progressives—we are approaching the issue from the wrong angle. Examples of this abound. In 2015, Layali Awwad published an “Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from a Young Palestinian Feminist,” in which she tries to reinscribe the Palestinian experience into Clinton’s narrative. Awwad tells Clinton: “There are millions of women and girls like me. What about us? According to your article, we do not exist. We are invisible, like women have been treated throughout history. Did you know that half of Palestinians are women and girls? Did you know that like our brothers, we also live under military occupation, and that Israeli settlers steal our land? Did you know that pregnant women rushing to the hospital have been stopped at checkpoints and have given birth there?”

Footnote

32 Awwad’s powerful words hinge on the assumption that Clinton is blind to Palestinian women and girls’ circumstances, rather than the fact that Clinton is exempting Israel from responsibility for its violence against them.

The truth is, if any country other than Israel did to Palestinians what Israel is doing—a longstanding illegal occupation; an officially sanctioned apartheid system; a war that Israeli scholar and Holocaust expert Raz Segal has declared “a textbook case of genocide,”

Footnote

33 with manufactured famine, relentless bombing of supposed safe spaces such as hospitals, schools, and aid distribution centers, the rounding up, torture, and execution of medical staff, the burning alive of patients in hospitals, the gang rape of prisoners with hot iron rods, electrified sticks, and sometimes, trained dogs—the outrage from progressives and the not-so-progressive would crescendo until an end is reached to these crimes against humanity.

Weaponizing Antisemitism and Feminism

Israel gets away with its crimes because it has weaponized antisemitism by claiming that any and all criticism of its practices is rooted in, stemming from, and uniquely motivated by a hatred of Jews, rather than the Palestinian people’s desire to live in safety and dignity, free of a crushing military occupation and genocide. Israel has also weaponized feminism. One of the achievements of feminism globally is the insistence on believing women who come forward with accusations of sexual assault and violence, and the determination to not blame the survivor. And a feminist truism is that sexual violence increases in militarized contexts—soldiers, fighters, even “peacekeepers” in conflict zones rape.

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34 Indeed, the expression “rape, pillage, loot,” frequently used to describe the actions that accompany armed conflict, is a recognition of that sad reality.

In the case of Israel’s war on Gaza, these arguments, including the feminist mantra, “we believe women,” are being used to perpetuate the accusations of a systematic pattern of gang rape of Israeli women by Hamas militants, in the absence of any irrefutable evidence.

Footnote

35 I am not referring to possible isolated instances of sexual violence that some Hamas fighters may have committed on October 7, 2023, but to the claim of a systematic pattern of gang rapes pre-planned by the masterminds of the Hamas breakthrough. This claim was first made in a New York Times article in December 2023, which quotes “Israeli officials” telling the reporters that “everywhere Hamas … struck … they brutalized women.”

Footnote

36

The fact that not one of the accusations came from a survivor and that the families of the alleged victims denied that these women had been raped continues to be completely discounted. Even when Israelis recant their allegations, as Chaim Otmazgin did, the accusations continue. Otmazgin, who had volunteered on a kibbutz following the October 7 attack, said that he saw “evidence of sexual violence,” but that “it turned out to be different,” as further investigation showed that the woman he believed had been sexually assaulted had not been so.

Footnote

37 These unverified and unverifiable accusations serve to justify the ongoing genocide in all its forms, including the torture and sexual assault of Palestinian detainees.

The prime witness for the October 7 rape allegations remains Yossi Landau, the director of ZAKA, a group of emergency response teams whose mission is to collect the remains of Jews killed in resistance attacks, road accidents, or other natural or human-made disasters, so as to provide them a Jewish burial. Landau went on television to report on what he had allegedly witnessed upon arrival at the scene of the Hamas attacks. He launched into a detailed description of babies with their heads chopped off, as well as piles of babies burned alive.

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38 Shortly after, the Israeli government denied these crimes had actually happened. Yet, Israeli exceptionalism is such that even though Landau is known to have lied about the decapitated, burned babies he supposedly saw in the aftermath of the October 7 attack, his claims about the systematic pattern of rape are somehow not questioned.

Meanwhile, we have official reports by human rights groups and confirmed videos posted on social media by journalists and Israeli soldiers themselves that leave no room for doubt about the fact that Israeli soldiers are routinely engaging in sexual violence against Palestinians. Additionally, since Israel’s intensifying genocide of the Palestinian people after October 7, we have been reading daily reports about the targeting of that constituency so dear to Global North feminists—women and children. Almost every casualty report specifies how many of the dead and injured are women and children. We read that approximately 150 Palestinian women are giving birth every day in Gaza, with no healthcare whatsoever, and that children are being amputated without anesthetics.

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39 We see footage of newborn babies decomposing in incubators.

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40

Just like they dismiss reports meticulously documenting decades of Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians, this genocidal violence does not bother the Global North feminists who are outraged at the accusations of the rape of Israeli women by Hamas fighters. Moreover, when outspoken Palestinian feminists or queer Palestinians criticize Israel, we are rebuked with “Hamas would kill you for being who you are.”

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41 Do these feminists not see that it is Israel that is killing us for who we are? Do they not realize the many insidious ways Israel manipulates and exploits our sexuality for its own self-serving purposes?

Our Global North so-called allies also seem to dismiss another feminist truism, namely, that military conquest is gendered and frequently imprints itself sexually on the subjugated people. Do they not recognize Israel as the illegal occupier, or its war as a genocidal assault on Gaza? The Western, liberal exceptionalizing of Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East” with the “most moral army” in the world seems to absolve this country and its soldiers from all possible guilt—even as the country itself no longer projects itself as a democracy, and while its soldiers proudly post of their depravity on social media, dressing in Palestinian women’s intimate wear and decorating their tanks with the toys of Palestinian children they have just murdered.

Any outrage at the possibility of Hamas militants’ rape of Israeli women that is not accompanied by outrage and denunciation of the amply documented Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians does not stem from feminism, but from racism.

Footnote

42 Ultimately, Zionists, and Global North feminists who have historically embraced the Zionist narrative, are weaponizing feminism, with its understanding of gendered violence during armed conflict, to justify Israel’s genocide while perpetuating racist tropes of Palestinian men as savage sexual predators. They are also continuing the colonial practice of erasing Indigenous experiences as they craft a narrative where only the colonizer’s perceived experience is accounted for. When will this betrayal of feminism end?

What will it take to stop exceptionalizing Israel and start holding it accountable? It is, quite simply, because Israel is the perpetrator of these crimes against the Palestinian people that they are tolerated by the world. But not just Palestinian people. Israel is not held accountable when it kills US citizens either, such as Rachel Corrie or Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who advocate for Palestinians. It was not held accountable for the murder of Tom Hurndall, a British citizen shot in the head while protecting children in Gaza in 2003.

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43 Nor was it held accountable for the killing of ten activists in international waters on the Mavi Marmara in 2010.

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44 Thus, it is not Palestine that is the exception, but Israel that is exceptionalized, exempted from accountability. Israel gets away with sexual violence and genocide, not because the world does not view us as human, but because Israel can get away with the most egregious crimes. Because it is Israel.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nada Elia

Nada Elia is an associate professor of ethnic studies at Western Washington University. She is the author or coeditor of five books, including, most recently, Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine (Pluto Press, 2023), and is currently completing Falastiniyyat: A Century of Palestinian Feminisms.

Notes

1 Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case Study (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 13.

2 Associated Press, “Re-Exposed: A Horrific Story of Israeli Rape and Murder in 1949,” Al Arabiya, August 17, 2015 (modified May 20, 2020), https://english.alarabiya.net/perspective/analysis/2015/08/17/RE-EXPOSED-A-horrific-story-of-Israeli-rape-and-murder-in-1949.

3 Based on the author’s experience growing up in Palestine.

4 Aviv Lavie and Moshe Gorali, “‘I Saw Fit to Remove Her from the World,’” Haaretz, October 29, 2003, https://www.haaretz.com/2003-10-29/ty-article/i-saw-fit-to-remove-her-from-the-world/0000017f-db62-d856-a37f-ffe2fa5b0000.

5 Lavie and Gorali, “‘I Saw Fit to Remove Her from the World.’”

6 Gershon Rivlin and Elhanan Orren, eds., David Ben-Gurion, War Diaries (1947–1949) [in Arabic], trans. Samir Jabbour (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1998).

7 For more on Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians, see the works of Palestinians Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Fadwa El Guindi, Mona El-Farra, and Hunaida Ghanem, and Israelis Ilan Pappé, Benny Morris, and Anat First.

8 “An Interview with Benny Morris,” CounterPunch, January 16, 2004, https://www.counterpunch.org/2004/01/16/an-interview-with-benny-morris/.

9 “Israeli Minister Said He Could ‘Forgive Instances of Rape,’ 1948 Documents Reveal,” Middle East Eye, January 6, 2022, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-ben-gurion-wipe-out-villages-1948-show-documents.

10 Amnesty International, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt): Briefing to the Committee Against Torture, September 2008, https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/mde150402008en.pdf.

11 Omar Shakir, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, Human Rights Watch, April 27, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution. Administrative detention is the Israeli practice, inherited from the British Mandate, of arresting and imprisoning Palestinians for up to six months at a time, renewable indefinitely, without trial, and under allegations Israel keeps secret. This makes it practically impossible for their lawyers to mount a defense case.

12 Amnesty International, “Israel/OPT: Horrifying Cases of Torture and Degrading Treatment of Palestinian Detainees amid Spike in Arbitrary Arrests,” news release, November 8, 2023, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-horrifying-cases-of-torture-and-degrading-treatment-of-palestinian-detainees-amid-spike-in-arbitrary-arrests/.

13 B’Tselem, Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps, August 2024, https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell_eng.pdf.

14 Iqbal Jassat, “Removing Shackles from Palestinian Hostages at Israel’s Sde Teiman Black Hole Not Enough–It Must Be Shut Down,” Palestine Chronicle, July 10, 2024, https://www.palestinechronicle.com/removing-shackles-from-palestinian-hostages-at-israels-sde-teiman-black-hole-not-enough-it-must-be-shut-down/.

15 Simon S. Cordall, “‘Everything Is Legitimate’: Israeli Leaders Defend Soldiers Accused of Rape,” Al Jazeera, August 9, 2024, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/everything-is-legitimate-israeli-leaders-defend-soldiers-accused-of-rape.

16 “Smotrich Demands Finding Person Who Filmed Sde Teiman Rape Video,” Middle East Eye, August 8, 2024, https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/smotrich-demands-finding-person-who-filmed-sde-teiman-rape-video.

17 Cordall, “‘Everything Is Legitimate.’”

18 Cordall, “‘Everything Is Legitimate.’”

19 “New Report Tells Chilling Details of Israel’s Torture, Killing of Gaza Doctor Adnan al-Bursh,” New Arab, November 15, 2024, https://www.newarab.com/news/report-details-israels-torture-killing-renowned-gaza-doctor.

20 Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta, “Prominent Gaza Doctor Dies in Israeli Prison,” Reuters, May 3, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/prominent-gaza-doctor-dies-israeli-prison-2024-05-02/.

21 Healthcare Workers Watch–Palestine, Unlawful Detention of Healthcare Workers by Israeli Occupation Forces in Palestine Since October 7, 2023, last updated February 25, 2025, pg. 1, https://healthcareworkerswatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/HWW-update-on-unlawful-detention-of-HCWs-in-Palestine-February-25-2025_Updated.pdf.

22 This list of reports is far from exhaustive and only cites those published by the most widely recognized international human rights monitoring organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

23 Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Palestinian Healthcare Workers Tortured; ICC Prosecutor Should Investigate Attacks on Health Care, Detainee Abuses,” news release, August 26, 2024, https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/08/26/israel-palestinian-healthcare-workers-tortured.

24 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, “More Than a Human Can Bear: Israel’s Systematic Use of Sexual, Reproductive and Other Forms of Gender-Based Violence since 7 October 2023, March 13, 2025, A/HRC/58/CRP.6, pg. 1, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session58/a-hrc-58-crp-6.pdf.

25 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, “More Than a Human Can Bear,” 1.

26 G.A. Res. 260 A (II), Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (December 9, 1948), https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-prevention-and-punishment-crime-genocide.

27 “Rights Probe Alleges Sexual Violence Against Palestinians by Israeli Forces Used as ‘Method of War,’” UN News, March 13, 2025, https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/03/1161081.

28 Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East; Kitty Warnock, Land Before Honour: Palestinian Women in the Occupied Territories (Springer, 1990).

29 Sean Nevins, “Rasmea Odeh: Raped and Tortured by Israel, Now Being Prosecuted By The U.S.,” Mint Press News, October 28, 2024, https://www.mintpressnews.com/rasmea-odeh-raped-and-tortured-by-israel-now-being-prosecuted-by-the-u-s/198257/.

30 Nehad Khader, “Rasmea Odeh: The Case of an Indomitable Woman,” JPS 46, no. 4 (2017): 62–74, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2017.46.4.62; Eman Ghanayem, “Colonial Loops of Displacement in the United States and Israel,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 47, no. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2019): 71–91, https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2019.0045.

31 See, for example, Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics (New Press, 2022). In his 2019 blog post, “Except for Palestine,” Steven Salaita rightly argues that “Progressive Except for Palestine (PEP) is a myth. Adherence to Zionism inhibits comprehensive political decency.” See Steve Salaita, “Except for Palestine,” February 20, 2019, https://stevesalaita.com/except-for-palestine/.

32 Layali Awwad, “Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from a Young Palestinian Feminist,” Huffington Post, November 9, 2015 (modified November 9, 2016), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-palestine_b_8513966.

33 Raz Segal, “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” Jewish Currents, October 13, 2023, https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide.

34 There have been reports of members of UN peacekeeping forces raping women in Haiti, Somalia, the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. See Skye Wheeler, “UN Peacekeeping Has a Sexual Abuse Problem,” The Hill, January 11, 2020, https://thehill.com/opinion/international/477823-un-peacekeeping-has-a-sexual-abuse-problem/?rnd=1578754838.

35 Sherene H. Razack, “The Weaponization of Feminism in a Time of Genocide: A Response to Masha Gessen,” JPS 53, no. 2 (2024): 113–19, https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2024.2392475.

36 Jeffrey Gettleman, “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,” New York Times, December 28, 2023 (modified March 25, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html.

37 Tia Goldenberg and Julia Frankel, “How 2 Debunked Accounts of Sexual Violence on Oct. 7 Fueled a Global Dispute over Israel-Hamas War,” PBS, May 22, 2024, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-2-debunked-accounts-of-sexual-violence-on-oct-7-fueled-a-global-dispute-over-israel-hamas-war.

38 Short String, “ZAKA Is Not a Trustworthy Source for Allegations of Sexual Violence on October 7,” Mondoweiss, December 30, 2023, https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/zaka-is-not-a-trustworthy-source-for-allegations-of-sexual-violence-on-october-7/.

39 World Health Organization, “Women and Newborns Bearing the Brunt of the Conflict in Gaza, UN Agencies Warn,” news release, November 3, 2023, https://www.who.int/news/item/03-11-2023-women-and-newborns-bearing-the-brunt-of-the-conflict-in-gaza-un-agencies-warn; Save the Children, “Women Self-Inducing Labour and Facing Life-Threatening Complications in Pregnancy After Nine Months of Gaza Conflict,” news release, July 8, 2024, https://www.savethechildren.net/news/women-self-inducing-labour-and-facing-life-threatening-complications-pregnancy-after-nine.

40 Yasmine Salam et al., “Abandoned Babies Found Decomposing in Gaza Hospital Weeks After It Was Evacuated,” NBC News, December 2, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/abandoned-babies-found-decomposing-gaza-hospital-evacuated-rcna127533; Allegra Good­win et al., “Infants Found Dead and Decomposing in Evacuated Hospital ICU in Gaza. Here’s What We Know,” CNN, December 8, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/08/middleeast/babies-al-nasr-gaza-hospital-what-we-know-intl.

41 “Queer and Feminist Palestinian Leadership Defies Pinkwashing and Resists the Occupation,” Freedom Socialist Party, June 2024, https://socialism.com/fso-article/queer-and-feminist-palestinian-leadership-defies-pinkwashing-and-resists-the-occupation/.

42 Razack, “The Weaponization of Feminism in a Time of Genocide.”

43 “Remembering Tom Hurndall,” Middle East Monitor, January 13, 2024, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240113-remembering-tom-hurndall/.

44 Patrick Keddie, “Remembering the Mavi Marmara Victims,” Al Jazeera, July 21, 2016, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/7/21/remembering-the-mavi-marmara-victims.

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