Haaretz Podcast

“I knew right away that sexual violence was part of the events of October 7, but obviously, I could not have known the extent of the cruelty that Hamas engaged in,” says Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, who served for 12 years on the UN Committee on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Halperin-Kaddari now feels “completely betrayed” by the international women’s rights organizations with whom she’s worked for years, for their failure to condemn - or even recognize - the rape, kidnapping and other atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli citizens on October 7.

In conversation with Haaretz Weekly host Allison Kaplan Sommer, Halperin-Kaddari, a member of the newly-formed Civil Commission on Hamas’s Oct. 7th Crimes Against Women and director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University, explains that “unlike any previous incidents of 'conflict related sexual violence,' as the UN calls it, the Hamas terrorists had body camera and they filmed their actions. They broadcasted it both to the families of the victims and on social media, so the horrific footage emerged right away.”

Also on the podcast, domestic violence advocate Lili Ben Ami, founder of the Michal Sela Forum, expresses her deep concern over the dramatic expansion of the ability of Israelis to obtain personal weapons in a campaign initiated by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Her organization, she says, “is now receiving calls every day from worried women and domestic violence survivors” that their abusers will now get access to a firearm. When her group looked into the matter, she tells Haaretz Weekly, they found that the distribution plan did not contain a screening mechanism that would prevent men with a criminal record related to domestic violence from obtaining a gun.

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