Women’s Media Center Condemns Hamas for Sexualized Violence

The brutal October 7 attack by Hamas on Israelis (and numerous foreign nationals) deserves condemnation for many reasons, but we at the Women’s Media Center join with women and men all around the world who are denouncing Hamas for their premeditated use of sexualized violence – specifically gang rape, rape combined with murder, attacks on infants and children, and abduction of civilians, some of whom are still in captivity. We unequivocally condemn these and other atrocities employed and sanctioned as part of the Hamas terror strategy.

The Women’s Media Center has one of the very few media channels focused on sexualized violence, WMC Women Under Siege, which we launched in 2011. We publish stories on the myriad ways in which gendered and sexualized violence against women and nonbinary persons (and also some men) has been weaponized – including in warfare. We at WMC have trained many survivors of sexualized violence and advocates in media skills and leadership. Every week we promote experts on sexualized assault, harassment, and violence to producers, bookers, and journalists to expand the understanding and conversation, and we have published multiple reports on sexualized violence, including during the Holocaust. We have provided tip sheets to journalists on covering sexualized violence and sensitively interviewing survivors. We agree wholeheartedly with the international tribunals that codified the crime of sexualized violence as a crime against humanity and a war crime.

We urge those at the United Nations and in the U.S. government to acknowledge all war crimes against women and we pledge to support survivors and to campaign for justice for those who have perpetrated these crimes.