Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder of Shurat HaDin, spoke to Arutz Sheva-Israel National News on the challenging situation facing Israel after the October 7th attack and the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
“The problem with the world is that it is simply indifferent towards sexual assault and the rape that happened on October 7th and happens every day and every hour to all hostages, women and men, right now in captivity of Hamas in Gaza. The world chooses to ignore it. The world tried to deny it in the beginning, and now it simply doesn’t want to act, doesn’t want to work, doesn’t want to help the hostages right now,” said Darshan-Leitner.
She continued, “Rape, as a weapon of war, is a common phenomenon in wars. In every war there are rapes, in Kosovo, in Serbia 20,000 women were raped. In Russia, in Ukraine, thousands of men and women were raped by the Russian army. There, when women and men were raped, the world acted in both conflicts. We know the MeToo, we know the women organizations. We know the voices and the yells and the screaming coming out of war in other conflicts. Here the world just keeps silent and we in Shurat HaDin believe that the world has to wake up and the only way to wake up the world is to bring the terrorists to justice, both internally but also outside.”
Nitsana is insistent that the world is not waking up. “Antisemitism, did we mention Jew hatred? Did we say Israel is the most hated country in the world? And who is the world? The world is the UN. Look at all the international organizations in the UN. Look at the Red Cross. They totally ignored the hostage situation in Gaza. Look at UN Women. They totally ignored the rape. Look at UNRWA, the international organization that is embedded with Hamas. They helped Hamas to carry out act of terrorism against Israel. Look at UNICEF. The head of UNICEF visited Gaza, held a press conference. Her heart went out to the children in Gaza, how they are dying, they are under buildings, how they get crushed, but she didn’t step foot in Israel to take care of Jewish children. No one is worried about the hostage children in captivity. This is the world. The world is anti-Israel.”
Nitsana believes that the next stage is for Israel and the legal community is to bring the world to get involved, to intervene. “We are bringing complaints against the leaders of Hamas in the International Criminal Court, but it’s not enough. We’re working very hard, persistently, to bring the terrorists themselves, the ones that took part in the October 7 to justice for rape, not just the massacre, for rape. If you get an indictment, if you get a verdict declaring that those terrorists are guilty of those acts of rape, of sexual assault, the world will not be able to ignore it any longer.”