Press Releases

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz hosted an event to raise awareness around the sexual and gender-based violence that Hamas perpetrated on October 7th and since against Israeli women. She was joined by Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog and Mrs. Shirin Herzog, State Department officials, as well as several Israeli and civil society officials.

Several Members of Congress also joined, including Reps. Susan Wild (PA-07), who sits on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Lois Frankel (FL-22), who chairs the Democratic Women’s Caucus, and Kathy Manning (NC-06), who co-chairs the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism. Other Members who took part included Reps.: Grace Meng (NY-06) Gwen Moore (WI-04), Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (FL-20), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), and Claudia Tenney (NY-24).

“It’s unacceptable that skepticism still follows survivors, and unconscionable that hate and bias are driving people to ‘believe only some women.’ We cannot equivocate. We cannot let this revolting ideology create a permission structure for premeditated and intentional rape, “ said Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz. “And we cannot give an inch to those who would overlook sexual violence specifically against Jews, because they are the heirs to the darkest moments in our history. Today we helped lift that silence and confronted the hate that feeds it.”

“Today, we shine a light on the horrors inflicted upon Israeli women on and since October 7th and amplify the voices of those still suffering from the aftermath,” said Ambassador Herzog.  “It may be difficult to bear witness to these atrocities, but we must not allow Hamas’ violence against women to go unnoticed. When so many have been unwilling to believe Israeli women, the evidence shows their hypocrisy.”

"The only difference we could perceive [here] was the perception that all the victims were Jews. In fact, some of the victims were non-Jews, some were Druze, some were Muslim, some were others,” said Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism. “But the perception was these were all Jews. Silence is always bad in the face of tragedies. But silence from those who proclaim to be advocates for human rights, silence from those who claim to be fierce defenders of women, silence from those who take upon themselves the responsibility to speak out when there is suffering. That is a different kind of silence. That is a kind of silence that speaks to their very credibility. And that is the silence that is so deafening to many of us in the room who have dedicated so much of our lives to these movements."

Among the group participants Wednesday: Dr. Renana Eitan, an Israeli Witness and the chair of the psychiatry division at the Ichilov Tel Aviv medical center; Noa Tishby,  the former Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism and the Delegitimization of Israel;  Sheila Katz, the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW); Rhoda Smolow the immediate past President of Hadassah; Meredith Jacobs the CEO of Jewish Women International (JWI); Danielle Ofek, founder of #MeToo_Unless_Ur_A_Jew campaign

The full video of the event can be viewed here.

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