Shared silence, shared outrage, shared humanity: The cumulative trauma of Israelis and Palestinians

Can we find a way for both the cacophony of anger and the victims' silence to make way for a more humane world? Maybe by quieting the extraneous noise so only their voices can be heard.

Like many of my essays, this needs to be read slowly, perhaps in more than one sitting (and even more sittings to explore the source materials), and with an open mind for nuanced truths. What might seem contradictory might actually be complementary. Enjoy.

I’ve been agonizing over how to respond to that Nicholas Kristof opinion piece alleging sex offenses by Israelis toward Palestinians (particularly prisoners) in the New York Times¹, which coincidentally (or not), appeared concurrently with a report documenting a two-year investigation into sexual violence by Hamas toward Israelis on October 7 and beyond.

I did not feel obligated to share my thoughts on so weighty a topic and planned to do so only if I have something to add to a conversation that has already saturated social media with mostly tribal, angry talking points and expletives, among a few thoughtful analyses.²

I’d like to suggest three complementary observations:

• All sexual crimes of this nature, whether perpetrated by individuals or groups in positions of power, whether by my tribe or my enemy’s, or anyone else, are to be condemned. Rape is not a zero-sum game, with winners and losers. There are only losers. Some lose their lives. Most lose their souls. The pain of these traumas is cumulative and knows no national or ethnic boundaries. What dehumanizes one dehumanizes all.

• While Kristof’s investigation is not antisemitic, we need to recognize that there is something deeply embedded in our culture that focuses international animus on Jews. This sickness goes back centuries and is now being cultivated, especially and deliberately, by the oligarchs who own social media. That recognition should summon us to filter out much of the constant vilification being steered toward not only Israel, but Jews everywhere.

• Violent, abusive acts such as these fly in the face of all the religious traditions in question, including Judaism and Islam.

Babylonian Talmud. Yevamot 79a

I’ve shared in the footnotes the full Kristof article from the NYT print edition, which came out on Sunday, nearly a week after it first appeared online. Interestingly, by the time Kristof’s words were “fit to print” on real newsprint, no mention of it could be found on the front page of that print edition - where opinion pieces are often teased; another one was here - and Kristof’s piece couldn’t be found even on the front page of the Opinion section. It’s as if The Times was very subtly hedging its bets and realizing that this presentation of a shocking news investigation by a reputable journalist on the opinion pages might not have been the best idea.

Can you imagine the Pentagon Papers as an opinion piece? ³

I share below the first section of Kristof’s piece, along with the pdf download of the full 300-page report by the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, an independent, non-profit organization, along with key findings of that report. I share them side-by-side, as it were, not to lay the groundwork for claims of “bothsidesism,” but rather to view these tragedies as cumulative in their impact, while each account also is uniquely shocking. Even if not every detail of each account can be conclusively verified, it only takes one grain of truth to justify serious soul searching.

Each incident makes us all a little less human, shattering again and again our fragile belief in the potential of people to overcome rage, unchecked power and the temptation to use that power to abuse a neighbor. The anger might not be shared, but the pain is. Everywhere we look, there is agony.

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I want people to have easy access to these reports, so here they are. Bookmark and share this page, read the testimonies in small portions, and reflect on them this week, as jews prepare for Shavuot (Pentecost) and Americans for Memorial Day.

Hamas Sexual Terror Report

9.66MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Here is the first part of Kristof’s opinion piece.

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The two reports are very different, one investigated by a team over the course of years, the other an opinion piece. But zoom in to see, not the map of the conflict writ large, but the landscape of tears on the faces of the victims and their loved ones, and we see how at their essence, these crimes have a commonality. It is disorienting that the online cover pages from both The Times’ website and the Civil Commission’s, which I’ve posted at the top of this piece, almost look like mirror images of each other. Same white on black color scheme, same use of the word “silence.”

I’ll try to be as clear as I can with this complementary pair of points:

• The evils perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, which went far beyond the sex crimes described here, are incomparable and sui generis. They stand alone. I’ve been saying that since just days after the massacre, and nothing has changed that fact, even the war crimes Israel will have to answer to. Hamas also committed their crimes with clear genocidal intent. For one thing, genocidal intent is in their charter, and the exact opposite is in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.⁴

• But all sexual crimes of this nature, directed at any gender, whether perpetrated by individuals or groups in positions of power are to be condemned, whether at the Nova festival or in Gaza, or Israel, or in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Ukraine, Uganda, Abu Ghraib prison - or Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion. They are, at their core, all the same crime. The pain never ends, it only grows with each added scream. It seems fitting that on the same day Kristof’s and the Oct.7 reports were being made known, Epstein survivors were giving testimony in Palm Beach. More cries to toss out into the ether.

Dahlia Scheindlin wrote in Ha’aretz, in quasi-defense of Kristof:

Tigray. Sudan. Indonesia. Kosovo. Bosnia. I could go on; Kristof has covered these issues for a lifetime… Sexual violence that includes physical mutilation, desecration, torture, family assault, humiliation, infection and destruction mean that any assertion that Israeli- or Palestinian-perpetrated crimes are especially brutal simply dismisses or denies the horrors suffered by multitudes of victims around the world.

…Kristof too wrote that his reporting on sexual abuse over the years taught him that "a combination of dehumanization and impunity can propel people into a Hobbesian state of nature. I've encountered this drift toward savagery in killing fields from Congo to Sudan to Myanmar." He cites American abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and by New York City police. Do Israelis or Palestinians really think they alone are above doing those things, or that no other people have been accused?

People are outraged, but part of that anger is misdirected. I’m still waiting for international organizations, particularly those who typically defend Hamas, to address Hamas’s sexual crimes with the appropriate outrage. But I’d also like to see fewer Jewish groups directing their ire at The New York Times and take more seriously the questions raised by Kristof. Every act of such utter inhumanity should outrage us. Granted, Israelis have reason to have little empathy with prisoners who may well have killed or raped their friends and relatives. But we can’t lose our humanity, we who adhere to faith traditions that advocate compassion and empathy. If we lose our capacity to love the stranger, we’ve lost the essence of Torah.

All inhumanity should outrage us. That is the default position. If it turns out that some details are left wanting and that maybe dogs can’t be trained to become rapists (does sniffing butts count? Asking for a furry friend), that should not reduce our deep, deep concern about each incident described in each of these reports.

And of course, there’s antisemitism….

At the same time, we have to ask serious questions about why these accusations seem to land more often in Israel’s lap than anywhere else. Hamas aside, Russian atrocities in Ukraine and China’s genocidal treatment of the Uyghurs have receded to the back pages, and atrocities in places like Ethiopia have barely been covered at all. But Israel? Never fails. Part of that is the fault of the perpetrators. But not all.

There is something unique about the hatred of Jews that goes far beyond anything borne by any other group. It’s not a competition (and if it were, I wish we would lose), but read this excerpt from an excellent Substack column by Julie Roginsky. She speaks of forces that “have quietly and relentlessly pushed public discourse beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and into something far darker — a nihilistic contempt for the existence of an entire nation, its people and, increasingly, Jews far beyond its borders.”

What Anti-Zionists Can Learn from The Devil Wears Prada

Today, the “lumpy blue sweater” hanging in the bargain bin of public discourse is antisemitism — only now it comes dressed up as anti-Zionism or anti-Israel sentiment. It is one of the few things both parties’ bases increasingly agree on. And while acolytes of Tucker Carlson and Hasan Piker may believe they are mortal enemies who arrived at their views honestly, many of them did not arrive there independently. Like the assistant whose illusion of free will Miranda Priestly so icily dismantles, they have been dressed in someone else’s ideology — manipulated into beliefs by forces they do not even realize exist.

This is not a column defending the Netanyahu government, which has become a stain on the nation of Israel, much as the Trump administration is a stain on the United States. Netanyahu has done incalculable damage, not only to Israel itself and to the region, but to diaspora Jews who are left to absorb the backlash from his cruelty, corruption, and disastrous choices. Nor is this a defense of AIPAC, which demands blind allegiance to a government that many Israelis — and certainly most American Jews — reject.

This is a column about something else: the forces that have quietly and relentlessly pushed public discourse beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and into something far darker — a nihilistic contempt for the existence of an entire nation, its people and, increasingly, Jews far beyond its borders.

For years now, the conversation has drifted well past the specific actions of the Netanyahu government in Gaza or the West Bank. It has moved into a much more dangerous place, where people often slide, without even realizing it, from debating foreign policy into blaming “Israel,” “AIPAC,” “Zionists” and Jews for everything broken in American life.

(And please do not tell me this does not happen. Almost every time I go Live, someone in the chat blames “AIPAC” or “Zionists” for whatever domestic crisis we are discussing in the United States, no matter how unrelated. That is not criticism of Israeli policy. That is an old conspiracy theory wearing new language.)

Roginsky goes into detail on how antisemitism has infiltrated into all corners of social media:

The result is an online ecosystem where antisemitism no longer arrives wearing a swastika. It arrives disguised as “decolonization” and algorithmically boosted through emotionally manipulative content streams engineered to maximize outrage, tribalism, and radicalization. Social media companies have almost no incentive to stop it because rage is profitable — and because their investors are increasingly despotic Middle Eastern autocrats that have either expelled Jews from their own lands or have every vested interest in having Americans direct their ire at Israel and not at them.

This hatred goes back millennia, long before social media, and it can’t be ignored.

One might ask The New York Times just why this report was run when it was, and in the manner it was, and on the same day of a completely unrelated piece about Israel supposedly wielding undue influence over Eurovision. It wasn’t a very serious piece of journalism, but on the same day? In the NFL, they would have been flagged for piling on. But we’re to believe that no editor noticed that no one even worried about the perception of piling on. That’s the subconscious double standard at work. Hundreds of years of “blame the Jews” - just substitute “Eurovision voting” for poisoned wells.

Our task as Jews -and other people of faith - is to fight this evil

But still, this does not justify downplaying accusations like Kristof’s and picket the NYT. Sheindlin put it best at the end of her piece:

We cannot have it both ways. Jews deserve the same as all other human beings – protection, human rights, national rights. And precisely because we are human beings like all others, we – like everyone – have the capacity for evil. It is my responsibility to believe, expose and seek to end it.

Rates of Domestic Violence have become unspeakably high during the Trump era. On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. Treating women like chattel, a Trump/Epstein specialty, undoubtedly has had something to do with that. But all genders have been victimized by the hyper-brutality of our age. Not surprisingly, transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime. And those numbers predate Trump 2.0.

At a time like this, of all times, the Jewish people need to set an example by reaffirming the brilliant wisdom found in our traditional sources. And while I am no expert on Islam, just as rape is condemned in Judaism it clearly is condemned in normative Islamic law too. At a time when most victims are still silent - or silenced forever by death - we look to the Bible for inspiration. When Jacob’s daughter Dina was raped, the trauma was so great as to render silent not only Dina, but her father Jacob as well. And not only Jacob, but God.⁵

This selection from the Talmud perfectly encapsulates my response to the two reports:

I can imagine Oprah asking God and Jacob, after the rape of Dina, “Were you silent? Or silenced?”

We’ve all been silenced by our own anger, tribal chauvinism and good old-fashioned fearmongering. In that sense we are all victims. It’s time for all of us to speak up.

1. Kristof’s full piece (linked here).

2. Among the most helpful initial analyses are Hen Mazzig’s widely quoted posting, “What was the goal here?” and Dahlia Scheindlin’s from Ha’aretz (see below):

3. Pentagon Papers

4. On Hamas and genocide:

Policy Brief Sara E

185KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

5. Commentaries on Dina’s and Jacob’s silence:

By being denied the opportunity to share her experiences with her family and community, by being faced only with social disgrace, devaluation, and shame, Dinah suffers perpetually the fate of the silenced rape victim, isolated, stigmatized, and deprived of a supportive audience.
Caroline Blyth

Why is Jacob silent?
In traumatic events, and particularly rape, there can also be secondary victims. Researchers note that, following a sexual assault, family and friends may experience emotional distress, including shock, helplessness, and rage, which can parallel the response of the victim. They too may feel violated, guilty, devalued, and may engage in self-blame. As Herman chillingly formulates, “witnesses as well as victims are subject to the dialectic of trauma…it is even more difficult to find a language that conveys fully and persuasively what one has seen. Those who attempt to describe the atrocities that they have witnessed also risk their own credibility. To speak publicly about one’s knowledge of atrocities is to invite the stigma that attaches to victims.”
Jacob has no power, no ability to act, and few options... In many ways, Jacob mirrors Dinah; his silence is also her silence. As his sons negotiate on Dinah’s behalf, they are also negotiating for Jacob. Perhaps like Dinah, Jacob is shocked into silence by the violence committed against his daughter.
The story in Gen. 34 ends with Dinah’s silence, and with Jacob’s. A silence which too often accompanies the victims of violent crimes and their families.
Ari Silberman

We should not devalue the story by saying “that’s the way it was back then” (by then I mean the context depicted in the narrative and the historical context of composition), accepting that the story of Dinah was set in a historical context in which women were regarded frequently as objects and did not have their own sexual autonomy. “That’s the way it was back then” does not need to be apologetic but instead can be empowering. We can highlight where we can identify patriarchy in the text—in a narrative that does not care about the feelings and trauma of its daughter, who is silenced by the men around her and the text itself. Reading this story publicly each year, even if it challenges us to wonder why it is included, reminds us that the worlds described in the Torah are not necessarily the worlds that we want to inhabit. Instead, we should strive to inhabit a world in which we listen to the voices of victims, in which we deal honestly, and in which we use our identity with pride and do not wield it as a weapon of destruction.
- Dr. Alison Joseph

Despite God’s reticence, the Torah’s narration clearly condemns rape, describing it as a “vile deed” and “defilement,” even though it never provides similar commentary on the circumcision-through-deception or mass murder. Although the general consensus is that vile deed notwithstanding, Jacob’s sons did a terrible thing, I would like to posit another theory: by wreaking havoc on the Canaanites, Jacob’s sons were condemning rape culture that allowed their own sister’s assault. And God is fine with this.
Though we no longer condone murdering an entire town for the acts of one, we do still believe that “it takes a village,” and hold entire towns responsible for the failures of a few. The Torah, it appears to me, agrees with this stance...
Just as God’s silence allowed for rabbinical victim blaming and misplaced empathy for the story’s wrongdoers, the lack of leadership on changing rape culture allows some to claim there’s no real systemic problem at all. And sadly, victims’ voices, like Dinah’s, all too often get washed away in the ensuing aftermath and uproar.
But that’s why, despite its flaws, complexities and misguided interpretations, we need to read this story as both the Torah’s condemnation of rape, as well as its willingness to hold responsible the people who allow a culture to evolve where rape is acceptable. God may not wield the gavel here but as the translation of Dinah’s name suggests, judgment was still rendered.
Deena Shanker - the Forward