Yifat Bitton, an Israeli lawyer and activist, speaks during a press conference announcing the establishment of a new political party led by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv on June 26, 2019. Photo courtesy of Flash90. | Flash90
By JNS
The Israeli law professor and activist Yifat Bitton grew increasingly alarmed as she saw the volume of imagery of Israeli women circulating on social media on Oct. 7, 2023 in the aftermath of Hamas’s terror attack on southern Israel.
“As someone who has been an expert in fighting sexual violence, it immediately worried me,” she said during a Nov. 6 lecture at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, noting that Hamas terrorists were occupying military bases, kibbutzim and the Nova festival site. Bitton contacted other legal scholars and activists to try to grasp the enormity of what was happening and to discuss preserving evidence.
Wanted To Help
“I am devoted to protecting those in harm’s way and dedicated to my brothers and sisters in Israel,” she told JNS. “I decided to step in and see how I could help.”
The president of Achva Academic College, Bitton began hearing testimony of first responders and survivors and documenting the rape and sexual assault that occurred that day.
“My decision was not to go for the hardcore evidence. I was not competing with the police in that respect,” she told JNS. She tried to find “what people missed,” she said, including overlooked clues.
The unprecedented brutality of the terror attacks left many first responders, who had never encountered so many examples of sexual violence, traumatized.
“People would share with me that they saw a naked woman’s body that looked to have been violated sexually,” Bitton told JNS. “For many of them, it was the first time they were doing so. They were looking for someone to tell it to, and they trusted me.”
UN Ignores
Conversely, international organizations, including the United Nations, remained silent about the crimes, despite their scale and severity.
“People will assume that if the United Nations doesn’t put out a statement, it means it never happened,” Bitton told JNS. “It creates a type of propaganda.”
Silent Feminists
Some of the “greatest feminists of our time” supported Israel and the victims but most “did not take part in condemning what happened,” Bitton said. She blames that silence on people oversimplifying who the David and the Goliath are in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Under these circumstances, the women are always those who pay the extra price and for that they are inherently weak,” she said. “There’s no room for politics.”
“What’s deeply disturbing is that people you would expect to offer a more nuanced perspective are resorting to overly simplistic analyses,” she added. “Even if I were wrong, I would still expect them to believe and support Jewish women.”
Documentation
Bitton told JNS that she is in the final stages of producing a comprehensive report about the sexual violence perpetrated on Oct. 7. The report addresses instances of gang rape, which the United Nations has now confirmed, but also addresses other kinds of sexual abuse. It also counters claims that there is no evidence of the abuse.
“This report is important for every feminist in the world who is worried about how we collect evidence and document and identify sexual crimes that are being perpetrated against women under chaotic circumstances,” Bitton told JNS.
Since the report’s beginning stages, Bitton’s motivation has been “the protection of victims’ rights.” She has worked on it in her free time, she told JNS, and though the Israeli state supports the report, she sees it as something more broad than that.
“It’s a woman’s fight,” she said.
