Recognition and Justice for the victims of conflict-related sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas and its allies

Yesterday October 9th, 2025, I attended a conference in Ottawa by Professor Nava Ben-Or from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former Israeli judge and prosecutor. She, along with other Israeli colleagues, has launched the Dinah Project to investigate the sexual violence perpetrated primarily against women(and also some men) by Hamas and its terrorist allies during the attack on October 7, 2023, and during the subsequent kidnapping of several women while in the hands of Palestinian militants.

Professor Ben-Or explained that what she and her colleagues that the facts surrounding the “victims of conflict-related sexual violence” (CRSV) in the specific case of October 7 and the following days has generated three types of reactions: jubilation, as seen among academics in the United States and even union leaders in Canada; denial, as exemplified by the tourist-activist from the flotilla called “Gaza Barbie,” who claimed recently that female hostages were “very well treated by Hamas”; and silence, meaning the blindfold that many so-called feminist militants and academics have placed over their own eyes regarding the sexual violence committed by Palestinian terrorists against Israeli women.

The project led by Professor Ben-Or and her colleagues aims to counter denialism and achieve recognition of these facts, which reveal not only Hamas and its allies’ strategy of using sexual violence as purposeful actions in their terrorist attack but also as expression of the ideology of the Islamic fundamentalist group. In Hamas 1988 Founding Charter, Article Seven clearly states:

“…The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam and his brethren the fighters, members of the Muslim Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Muslim Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1968 and after.

“Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters, obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 

“‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.’ (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).”

Killing Jews and subjecting them to sexual violence is part of Hamas’ declared objectives. In this sense, Hamas (and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad) have always been consistent with their political-religious programme.

The research led by Professor Ben-Or and her colleagues is called “Project Dinah,” named after Dinah, the daughter of the patriarch Jacob, who was raped by Shechem, leading her brothers Simeon and Levi to take revenge on the rapist and all the men of his tribe. The decision by Simeon and Levi to seek vengeance provoked great anger in Jacob, not only because it endangered his family’s stay in the land of Canaan but also because they had taken justice into their own hands violently. 

Professor Ben-Or reminded us yesterday that “Dinah” comes from the word “Din,” meaning justice, and that “Dinah” means “justice for her.” This is precisely the aim of this project: recognition and justice. This team of Israeli researchers has already published a book titled A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond, available in English at this link (it can be downloaded free of charge): https://thedinahproject.org/the-book/

Absences sometimes speak volumes. Yesterday, there was not a single professor in the room from the feminist and gender studies institutes of the two universities in Ottawa: neither from the University of Ottawa nor from Carleton University. This is part of the silence that Professor Ben-Or denounced. Two years after these terrible events, parts of the feminist-gender studies camp continue to ignore the facts about October 7, 2023.