Of course "local men" are raping the most desperate women in Gaza.

We know rapists thrive in the opportunities presented by any war. Why are feminist women and their organisations afraid to name the problem in Gaza?

“Name the problem!” has long been a war cry of radical feminism. The certainty that until we can say that the problem is male violence, the problem remains hidden. In a situation where the problem is not adequately named, women are “raped” and the necessary characteristics of the rapist are hidden.

A report by Associated Press a few days ago horrifically fails women who are victims of men’s sexual violence in Gaza.

Women tell of the men who are distributing aid targeting them to sexually exploit, stalking them demanding sex, and taking them to isolated locations to rape.

After they were sexually assaulted and raped by Palestinian men, they were failed by the women who took their stories and by the journalists who reported them.

Even the headline of the report is treacherous,

‘Women in Gaza say they were promised food, money or work in exchange for sexual interactions’.

Even if we remove the doubt embedded in the word “say” then we are left with an “exchange” rather than the words “raped” or “sexually assaulted”. Men assaulting women is what happened not a “financial bargain struck”. Rape is what these men are continuing to do even if the women themselves are too fearful to say that is what it is due to potential backlash and further condemnation in their local communities.

So let me say very clearly what is happening according to the smudged details contained in this report, which seeks to blame everyone but Palestinian men,

Palestinian men, given the opportunity offered by a raging conflict, are raping and sexually assaulting Palestinian women.

Women who are desperate for food, for themselves and their children are being sexually violated by the local men who have been given responsibility by aid agencies to give them that food. It is a reprehensible act of the most inhumane cruelty committed by men who should have more cause to show empathy towards those women than any other men.

Surely this is easy to say?

Not, it seems, for the women’s rights agencies on the ground in Gaza who should be outraged that women are being violated by men from their own cities, who have been given power over them, which was intended to help them.

Nor is it easy for the journalists “investigating and exposing” this horror, which is common during many brutal wars, who use carefully chosen words to obscure where the responsibility lies.

The feminist women’s organisations in Palestine should be determined to name the problem. They should be pointing clearly to the men and creating a deafening outrage that Palestinian men tasked with helping the most vulnerable women are instead committing acts of sexual violence against them.

Instead Amal Syam, director of ‘Women’s Affairs Center” in Palestine says,

“Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip and the restrictions on humanitarian aid are what’s forcing women to resort to this,”

This is jaw-dropping treachery. These words absolve the guilty men of blame for their acts of rape and make the women accept responsibility for the sexual violence committed against them.

Being raped by a man is not a choice the woman makes.

The women themselves are understandably afraid to tell their stories first hand and have channelled them through women like Amal Syam trusting that these, presumably feminist, women would understand what they were being told, and help them. Perhaps not to bring the men to justice, but at least make them stop, to force aid agencies to see what the men are doing with the power allocated to them, and remove it from them.

Instead Syam has used her position to advance a political position in the war against Israel rather than one of women’s right to be free of male violence in war. For her the conflict is to blame, Israel is to blame, the humanitarian crisis is to blame. Everyone except the Palestinian men committing the crimes against women. She disgusts me. She even admits that organisations like hers are more concerned with the war than women, even though that is her specific remit.

“Before the war, exploitation reports happened once or twice a year, but are up dramatically, said Syam, of the Women’s Affairs Center. But she said many organizations won’t highlight the numbers or the issue.

“Most of us prefer to keep the focus on the violence and violations committed by the Israeli occupation,” Syam said”.

The two AP journalists who wrote this piece disgust me too when they write,

“As hunger and desperation grow across the enclave, women in particular say they’ve been pushed to make impossible decisions.

These women have not “made a decision” vile, heartless men have coerced them into sex. In every example she has been exploited and raped BY HIM. Not because he is desperate but because he was handed some power over a woman and chose to sexually abuse her. It seems lots of these men have and it is “just the tip of the iceberg”.

Throughout this horrible piece of journalism the sexual violence committed against women is called an “interaction”, an “exploitation incident”, or a man raping a woman as “his exploitation attempts”. I have never seen such horrendous obfuscation which heaps blame on women, deflects blame from Palestinian men and throughout drops it at the feet of the Israeli government.

How convenient for the Palestinian rapists who can now continue. How heartbreaking for the Palestinian women they are raping.

Buried in the body of the report is the thing which should be in the headline,

“The women said all the men were Palestinian”.

and,

“women say they have been exploited by local men — some associated with aid groups”

The aid groups themselves have let women down. Women have bravely reported the men only to be told they need evidence. No one seems to want to hold these vile rapists to account because they are aggressors at odds with the popular narrative where Palestinian men are only the victims of the war, not beneficiaries. It is obvious that some can be, and are, both.

Perhaps I have missed the outcry from feminist organisations and leading feminist commentators here in the UK? Perhaps they simply forgot what we have known down the decades, that during conflict men rape women both as a weapon and as an opportunity. Or is it simply that they are afraid to name the problem because the problem is inconvenient? Naming the problem as men is suddenly more difficult when the men are Palestinian and when some of those women have joined marches. It’s an awkward truth I suppose.

In ‘Our Bodies Their Battlefield’ Christina Lamb’s seminal text on the use of sexual violence in conflict zones she wrote,

“The longer I have done this job, the more disquieted I have become, not just at the horrors I have seen, but at the feeling we often only hear half the story, perhaps because those collating the accounts are generally male.”

But here it is not men but instead women from women’s organisations who have taken these stories, offered a vague picture which attempts to evade allocating the blame on the specific men responsible, and therefore really does tell far less than half of the story. The men continue to do what they are doing. This story is toothless to do anything to prevent them.

So who will say something? Who will drag these rapists out into the street and expose them. The sexually violated women have done their best but the women’s organisations have used them to smash at Israel. The journalists have lacked any courage whatsoever and held the women responsible for their “choices” whilst likewise quietly nodding in the direction of Israel.

Somewhere today a desperate woman is holding out her hand to a man to ask for an aid package to feed her child and later instead he will put his dick in her hand. Both his dick and her hand are Palestinian however, so women there and women here will conveniently look away.