Biography
Shulamit Almog is a Full Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa. She is Co-Founding Director of the Forum of Law, Gender, and Policy at the Faculty of Law. She founded Law and Literature research in Israel and is an internationally renowned expert in Law and Culture, law and literature, children’s rights, and feminist legal studies. She has published numerous books and articles in US, Canadian, European, and Israeli law reviews. Her recent book, published in the De Gruyter Law and Literature series, is “The Origins of the Law in Homer.” Alongside her academic work, she is publicly active on human rights issues, appearing before the Israeli Knesset, drafting sections of Israel’s report to the UN on the International Convention on Children’s Rights, and participating on the committee reforming Israel’s Adoption Law. In recent years, her work has inspired parliamentary bills concerned with reforming the regulation of prostitution in Israeli law and protecting employees against bullying.
Gal Amir is a research fellow in the faculty of law at the University of Haifa. Dr. Amir researches the legal history of regime transitions in Israel/Palestine in the 20th century and the larger issue of women’s rights. Amir is a member of the Women Historians’ Forum at “Isha L’Isha” ’s Feminist Research Center in Haifa.
Abstract
This essay focuses on sexual violence against women during the October 7 massacre and the following captivity of female hostages in the Gaza Strip. Its premise is twofold. First, it puts forward the resoluteness with which sexual violence against women must be condemned, as it transcends any politics. Sexual violence against women is unacceptable under any circumstances and cannot be used as a weapon in any kind of conflict. Next, various silencing walls that obstruct both condemnation of such violence and full exposure of it will be delineated. These are walls of Political Silence, Collective Shame Silence, Victim’s Shame Silence, and Post-Traumatic Silence. While these categories may overlap, this taxonomy helps illuminate the various factors that perpetuate silence regarding wartime sexual violence against women. These walls of silence not only obstruct truth-finding but also impede accountability and the development of effective preventive measures against future sexual violence against women. As concluded, there is an urgent need to dismantle themechanisms that obscure wartime sexual violence and to invest efforts in strengthening new strategies that will effectively protect women from sexual violence in wartime.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Almog, Shulamit and Amir, Gal (2025) "Wells of Pain, Walls of Silence: October 7 and Sexual Violence Against Women at Wartime," Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence: Vol. 10: Iss. 2, Article 1. https://doi.org/10.23860/dignity.2025.10.02.01
Included in
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, International Relations Commons, Jewish Studies Commons, Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons, Social History Commons, Social Justice Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons, Women's History Commons
