When Sexually Assaulted Women Are Not Believed: “Ideal Victims” and Political Relativity in the October 7 Hamas Attack

This research note investigates the reasons for the silence, disbelief, and denial of the sexual atrocities perpetrated by Hamas during the October 7 attack. It employs as a framework Christie's "ideal victim" conceptualization as adapted by van Wijk to explain the silence of international organizations and female-led civil society groups, about the abuse of Israeli women, including ensuing debates, despite expert reports documenting sexual abuse during conflict. We first discuss the reasons for and function of rape in war to effect political and demographic changes. We then review the respective Israeli and Palestinian narratives about the origins, history, and key events in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict leading up to the October 7 attack. The evidence for the sexual violence and efforts to question/deny it is contrasted with other international cases of wartime sexual abuse in DRC Congo, Iraq, Rwanda, and Nigeria. The endorsement of the Palestinian narrative by segments of the international community, which casts Israelis as deserving victims is then discussed. We conclude that, over time, the determination of who is a victim deemed worthy (or unworthy) of the international community's sympathy and recognition, is a political judgment. Nils Christie's concept of the "ideal victim," is heuristically useful but politically contingent on the vicissitudes of the international zeitgeist of the moment, but not one based on forensic evidence or documentation of gender-based crimes.