The sexual violence against Israeli women by Hamas terrorists on October 7 remained in the shadows for months due to a campaign of misinformation on social media, the care taken with forensic evidence and the war’s chaotic atmosphere in the attack’s immediate aftermath.

However, within days the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel knew from surviving victims there had been sexual abuse.

Center Executive Director Orit Sulitzeanu said she had made initial inquiries to the International Red Cross, which was soon followed by “a storm” of international media inquiries, but they were rebuffed so as to not further traumatize victims. However, it was clear what had happened.

“The story is the MeToo story,” said Sulitzeanu during a January 4 virtual program, attended by 700 viewers, sponsored by UJA-Federation of New York. “The story is ‘Yes, my name is X,Y, Z and I was gang-raped by the Hamas.’”

Yet misinformation on social media and from Hamas and its supporters kept appearing and the truth needed to be told using only facts, which revealed an increasingly horrifying reality as more information became available.

Ayelet Razin Bet Or, former director of the Authority for the Advancement of the Status of Women in Israel’s Ministry of Social Equality, said five men have reported being victims of gender-based violence during the assault at the music festival. Advocates now have at least six eyewitness testimonies of sexual assault where the victims were then murdered. There were bodies positioned “in a way that leaves no question” they were sexually assaulted.

A former adviser to the rape association and criminal prosecutor in the state attorney’s office, Razin Bet Or explained that she has devoted her entire professional life to advancing women’s equality and to the eradication of gender-based violence. But what happened that day shocked her.

“With all our hearts we hoped it was an exaggeration, a misunderstanding, a confusion of description, but the testimonies kept coming and are still accumulating,” she said. “Each description is suffocating and beyond our worst nightmares.”

However, to get the truth out was no easy task and required work both inside and outside of Israel.

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, academic director of the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women’s Status at Bar-Ilan University, was a member for 12 years of the United Nations Expert Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, including serving four years as its vice chair. As such Halperin-Kaddari has status within its human rights community, including the Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women—also known as UN Women—and the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. She had been asked by the American delegation to brief the Security Council about the sexual violence, but was blocked by the Chinese.

Halperin-Kaddari noted her background gave her credibility to bring evidence of the sexual attacks to U.N. officials and demand the international human rights organizations and U.N. bodies acknowledge “that these crimes had happened, that Hamas has committed the worst crimes on the book of law” and they must condemn Hamas “with all the ramifications that should follow.”

Razin Bet Or had recently returned from leading a delegation to New York where she met with U.N. representatives. A U.N. conference last month drew more attention. The conference had been spearheaded by the Israeli delegation in response to the weak response from U.N. agencies, particularly UN Women, which took 50 days before finally putting out a half-hearted statement.

Mandana Dayani, whose family fled Jewish religious persecution in Iran for the United States when she was a child, considered it “the greatest honor of my life to stand there and hold people accountable” by appearing at the U.N.

“We know rape was a premeditated, orchestrated, deliberate act of war,” she said. “There were no two sides.”

An attorney, former talent agent and activist who helped launch “I Am a Voter,” a national nonpartisan organization to help boost civic engagement, said she was “genuinely heartbroken” by the hypocrisy and silence of those with whom she had stood “shoulder to shoulder” in the feminist movement and every other issue of marginalization who chose “politics over truth.”

“Instead of building a network of support with people I had built an allyship with, I’m going on the internet to defend the dignity of our victims and families,” said Dayani. “There was no logic to any of it. As an activist it was the most profound injustice I had ever experienced.”

That inability to show up as feminists, parents, activists or human beings and “politicizing the pain of these people” did nothing to advance the well-being of Palestinians because, said Dayani, “we do not advance rights by taking them away from other people.”

Razin Bet Or has been working with international authorities in military and criminal law and governmental relations expertise to accurately map the events of October 7. Among the challenges presented is interviewing first responders, many of whom are in combat, and getting the attention of various Israeli authorities who were slow to react.

“It was like this with most government authorities, health, welfare, of course the army, the police, all authorities,” said Razin Bet Or.

She would often get files from different sources stating there was nothing there, “but we showed them again and again there are bodies stained in blood in the pelvic area. There are indications of this gender-based violence.”

However, the authorities were focused on looking for faces of hostages and terrorists, rather than searching for evidence of rapes. In interrogations, Shin Bet knew how to ask about terror attacks, but not about sexual assault, said Razin Bet Or.

A protocol for sexual violence was needed for released hostages since several already freed have reported being sexually assaulted while being held, she added. Both American and Israeli authorities have said Hamas may be reluctant to release more hostages because they too have been assaulted.

After the “deafening silence” of the U.N. was broken, a decision was made to work with some media to shed light on the sexual war crimes.

“The silence was deafening, but it has changed now,” said Halperin-Kaddari. “It has very much changed because of the traditional, conventional media. The social media is leading the fake denial campaign but the traditional media really picked up on the issues.”

Razin Bet Or cited The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for having done extensive articles.

Sulitzeanu said The New York Times interviewed 150 people but it was a photograph of “the woman in the black dress,” lying dead with her underwear off, that told the story in a way that not even Israeli journalists did. The paper found out her identity and her parents cooperated in telling her story.

“I think it helped to have a concrete person even if not alive tragically,” she noted, adding the victim left behind a husband and two children.

Contributing to the silence of international organizations, said Halperin- Kaddari, has been the failure to collect forensic evidence to back claims of sexual weaponization in the chaotic aftermath of retrieving and identifying bodies and notifying families.

Pramila Patten, the special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence, in Combat has been invited to Israel despite the mistrust of Israeli authorities. It has just been reported that Patten will visit later this month.

Halperin-Kaddari said the representative’s report would be submitted to the Security Council and General Assembly. “We have to do that despite the suspicion and skepticism of the U.N.,” she said. “We have to have this investigation report. It will go down in history, the record of October 7, the same as in Bosnia and Rwanda and Congo and Ukraine. We need this investigation to occur.”

Debra Rubin has had a long career in journalism writing for secular weekly and daily newspapers and Jewish publications. She most recently served as Middlesex/Monmouth bureau chief for the New Jersey Jewish News. She also worked with the media at several nonprofits, including serving as assistant public relations director of HIAS and assistant director of media relations at Yeshiva University.