On December 4, over 700 persons attended the “Special Session at the United Nations on Sexual Based Violence War Crimes that Occurred on October 7th by Hamas in Israel.” I was fortunate to be one of them.
The Israeli Mission to the United Nations convened the event. It included Sheryl Sandberg (the Lean In founder who has been outspoken about the sexual assaults that Hamas perpetrated), Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women Sheila Katz, Iranian-born entrepreneur and influencer Mandana Dayani, and Israeli first responders. The purpose of the session was “to give voice to those [women and girls] silenced” on October 7.
Of the eyewitness accounts, the testimony of Israeli-American Shari Greenwald Mendes haunts me the most. Originally from the United States, Mendes is an architect who lives in Jerusalem and serves as a member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reserve unit established by the Military Rabbinate to identify and prepare deceased female soldiers’ bodies for burial. She moved to Jerusalem in 2003 with her family.
In a kind and calm voice, Mendes, a mother of four, recounted that she began working at the IDF Shura base the day after the attacks.
According to Jewish tradition, only women may prepare the women for burial, explained Mendes.
Mendes noted that most of the bodies were unrecognizable because Hamas terrorists had shot them in the head, mutilated their faces, and/or severed their limbs. Many corpses were burned beyond recognition. “It seemed as if mutilation of these women’s faces was an objective in their murders,” remarked Mendes.
Her account continued: “These women arrived with their eyes opened, their mouths in grimaces, their fists clenched,” said the Barnard College and Columbia University alum in calm, deliberate sentences. The women’s expressions of agony survived their deaths. Many of the deceased young females arrived at Shura “in bloody shredded rags or just in underwear—and their underwear was often very bloody.”
Mendes described how “Our team commander saw several female soldiers who were shot in the crotch—intimate parts/vagina—or shot in the breast. This seemed to be a systematic genital mutilation of a group of victims.”
Jewish burial rituals include requirements before burial to honor the deceased. They include staying with the deceased before being buried, washed, and covered in white shrouds. At Shura, they used sheets in place of shrouds.
Mendes was matter of fact when she told our rapt audience that the female IDF teams who prepared the bodies for burial are often the last to see them before they are lowered into the ground. They worked in “a room of women taking care of other women.” She said of Hamas, “These barbarians did not show these women any honor in life, but it was important to us and our teams, groups of women, that we show them deep love and gentleness as we prepared them for burial.” There were quiet sobs and applause in the audience as Mendes shared, “We held them in our hearts, even just for a moment, as if they were our daughters. We really loved them.”
I found it hard to breathe as Mendes shared the crushing details of her eyewitness account of not just death—as if dying were not enough—but of the humiliation and violation suffered by Israeli women on October 7.
That the female victims could not be buried until they were identified — recognized – serves as a metaphor and an imperative: The sisterhood of women must acknowledge, identify, and honor the Israeli victims of sexual assault on October 7 as victims. Their identities must not be erased. Since Israeli and American Jews have worked to bring these horrors into the mainstream conversation, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have condemned the rapes of the Israeli women as a weapon of war.
That the bodies of the women violated by Hamas enter a room—a sisterhood—of Jewish women, to be gently touched, quietly cleaned, and softly held before burial, offers some solace. And for those of us who choose to believe the voluminous, irrefutable evidence, let us give voice and hear the victims’ stories and help bury the women in white shrouds of dignity. Let us cover the victims with unequivocal determination that rape must never be an act of war.
