UNforgivable

Tuesday was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women — a date and subsequent 10 days of activism created by the United Nations to raise awareness regarding the sex-based violence that women face across the globe … and to draw attention to the insidious way that this epidemic is so often passively ignored or actively hidden.

But you wouldn’t know that this anti-violence activism applied internationally to all women, and you wouldn’t know that it was intended to truly shine a light on female subjugation versus diminishing its existence, because the United Nations’ mentality of disinterest to disdain embodies the alarming global attitude toward these victims of terror … and worse, it gave unadulterated permission for the world to follow suit. And so for two years, there has been all but complete radio silence and belittlement of the sinister brutality that Jewish women have suffered at the hands of sadistic men.

This sadism against women is easily arguable as both the worst of what was committed on Oct. 7 and the worst that one human can do against another … not simply due to the nature of the pain the women endured, but because it reveals the undeniable nature of the criminals inflicting it. That they chose this deliberately, as the crime of sexual violence is always absolutely unnecessary in any situation. That they wanted to cause the most pain possible, because if destruction and death were the only goals, it would have been so much simpler to only shoot their victims and burn their homes. These men made the premeditated decision to commit the most gruesome acts, not only because they wanted it to be personal and to inflict the maximum amount of physical and emotional pain, but because they thrived off of it.

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However, perhaps even worse than the intention of pain inflicted in the moment was their intention to bestow a future pain beyond that day. Mass sexual violence is historically used to psychologically defile and humiliate a population, not only the dead, but the survivors and community as well, and sexual violence is intended as a double weapon to assault both in the moment and every moment going forward. In this particular case, they not only counted on the painful lack of justice due to the reality that they also slaughtered most of their victims … they also clearly banked on the current global political temperature and everlasting biases to ensure an ultimate humiliation of never being taken seriously. There is no doubt that this strategy’s endgame was the foreseen lasting trauma via antisemitic justification of or overwhelming apathy toward such crimes against our women. Therefore, the very worst of what was done that day led to the very worst of the ensuing aftermath.

As Sheryl Sandberg once posed at the United Nations itself, are we going to believe the Hamas spokesmen who claim that such violence is forbidden in Islam, and therefore it could not have possibly happened? Or are we going to believe the women whose bodies tell us how they spent the last minutes of their lives?

In something out of an alternate universe, what we have unfortunately witnessed is that “believe all women,” something always enough for other victimized women, expired that day into a resounding disbelief for these Jewish ones in favor of their monstrous abusers … or just simple disbelief that they mattered at all.

Throughout this bizarrely inhuman response, three types of perpetrators against women emerged.

The outright denier, who rejects all evidence due to unshakeable bigotry, including those who may not deny the actual assault, but instead deny its evil, clinging to the narrative that it was all necessary resistance.

The ambiguous both-sideser, the morally superior fence sitter, the “feminist” who can’t eke out a condemnation without the loudest “well”… the sickening individuals who hide their ethical shortcomings behind the guise of “balance” or “nuance,” though they are too narcissistically performative to admit them outright.

But while many have loudly and actively doubled down on the insistence to deny, excuse, or justify, either to reestablish the guilt of Israel or uphold necessary oppressed freedom fighting ideals, others have quietly confirmed their own passive brand of bias. Not to be forgotten in their quiet ineptitude, though they were sincerely hoping to be, the third and final type are those desperate to remain silent, frozen in their duties of protecting women as they are paralyzed with the fear of upsetting politics and ideology.

The sobering truth is that many people’s public support is contingent upon the political temperature of the victim, and many women’s supposed “feminism” is grossly outshadowed by their stronger antisemitism. So the undeniable age-old reality remains: While crimes and violence against women are typically ignored anyway unless politically useful, crimes against Jewish women sink to the bottom of the barrel, for the very reason that even after millennia, at very best much of the world unconsciously continues to view Jews as not fully human, and at worst, many consciously deny our humanity outright.

No one has been failed in as many ways as Israeli women since that day, and no one has failed them quite as spectacularly as those expected to set the global tone for humanitarianism.

Sitting on their international throne of hypocrisy, the most obvious faults go to the antisemitic mothership itself and its U.N. Women offshoot, who in true U.N. fashion, ensured any fleeting embrace of reality was always overdue and undersold, lest it show too much dangerous empathy to the Jewish state. Setting the pathetic tone of the next two years, they completely ignored women being violated in every manner that horrendous day. Two full months passed before the women’s organization could even half-assedly condemn the crimes perpetrated against the Israelis they pretend to include in their faux activism.

It then took until March of 2024 for them to state that there was “reason to believe” that Hamas committed sexual violence against women, what everyone else somehow seemed to already know. Finally, in August of 2025, nearing the second anniversary of the massacre and after the haunting Dinah Project report was officially released, the U.N. was willing to call the unmistakable evidence “reasonable to convincing” in its annual report on global conflict-related sexual violence. But as we know, it didn’t take nearly two years to determine that enough evidence existed. With an overwhelming amount of viscerally overwhelming proof, from multiple categories of sources, proof was never genuinely in question — human worth was. The truth is that it simply took two years of Jewish perseverance to publicly embarrass them enough to care.

Yet despite the layup opportunity to finally serve as a decisive model of morality for the rest of an avoidant society, the U.N. simply could not rise to the challenge.

In classic ethical impotence, it took its trademark low road of false equivalence, drawing attention away from Hamas’ proven crimes with an equally long scolding of Israel itself, alleging “credible information” from biased sources on unproven Israeli sexual abuse of Palestinians. No matter that Israel is never even listed in this report as one of the many entities at fault of CRSV, nor whether such claims have genuine merit.

Not even one month ago, Reem Alsalem, the “Special Rapporteur” for violence against women and girls (and someone who virulently objects to accusations of personal bias, despite the ease with which she tosses around libels of Israeli “genocide” and “extermination” of Palestinians), not only doubled down on the narrative, but took it one step further, pushing the alleged “pattern of sexual violence” by Israelis against Palestinians as far more credible and verified than sexual violence committed by Palestinians against Israelis on Oct. 7 and beyond.

Yet again, the U.N.’s inability to filter out its own anti-Israel prejudice continues to undermine both the evil of that day and its own integrity going forward. Its pathetic “but” is truly the butt of its morally defunct ideology, and the depressing fact that this is not surprising but expected demonstrates a long-standing, perpetuated problem.

In revealing the barest of truths about the victims and the abusers, these women didn’t just shine a spotlight on the raw reality of the massacre. Their abuse eviscerated the predominantly preferred and pushed Israel-as-oppressor and Palestine-as-oppressed narrative … something deeply unacceptable to have exposed and possibly corrected.

Therefore, the U.N.’s deliberate stance and actions (or lack of) go beyond the attempt to emphasize that Israeli and Jewish pain aren’t worth enough on their own to solely condemn: It continuously and purposefully keeps the door open for antagonism against Israel through the refusal to ever unequivocally acknowledge reality. And those who should be held accountable must never be fully, as to always keep the insidious implication that Israel may have deserved it after all.

At its utmost core, it perfectly encapsulates and demonstrates the mindset that has allowed for such misplaced infantilism and intentional hate to root in order to produce such a massacre of both body and truth … keeping in place a timeless and fatal status quo, the ultimate goal in which too many are still invested. And that despite the U.N. and U.N. Women’s lovely claims of women’s advocacy and rebukes against patriarchal harms, they are more than content to throw women under the misogynistic bus for the very violence, men, and system which they purport to fight.

It is unimaginably shameful that this organization has led the world in tasking such a small community with the ridiculous onus of having to constantly stress what these women went through matters enough. For forcing the release of horrors that should never have been, purely in the hopes of getting someone else out there to finally believe that these daughters, sisters, or wives are worthy of the same concern as one’s own. And for still continuing to place as much value on these women’s rapists and executioners as the women themselves.

This unconscionable betrayal can never be forgiven and forgotten for a few shallow mumbles of the very bare minimum, and their despicable failure of these women and grotesque success in leading global apathy must always be remembered. Terrorists on the ground may have assaulted these women first, but terror sympathizers in suits were responsible for the second assault of abandonment, and each should be equally held to account.

These women who have been silenced, both by those who stole their lives and those who later deemed their lives unworthy of any voice, deserved so much better than this compounding nightmare of barbaric terrorism and insufferable indifference. All of Israel deserves better. And, honestly, the whole world should want to deserve better as well. Dehumanizing these women only ends up dehumanizing all women and our entire society. Not only is that an unforgivable prospect, but for the sake of humanity’s future, it is one all nations must be united against. PJC

Sarah Kendis is a musician living in Pittsburgh. This article was first published on The Times of Israel.