On Sunday, his 22nd birthday, Shirel Golan made the decision to end his life after battling post-traumatic stress disorder for a year.
After surviving the Nova Music Festival massacre on October 7, 2023, she suffered from dissociation and withdrawal and was hospitalized twice with acute episodes of PTSD-related stress, according to her family.
The brutal atrocities committed that day, especially at the Nova Festival, were beyond imagination. I don't know how anyone goes through this fear and moves on.
And on top of the pain of witnessing their friends being hunted down, tortured, raped and murdered by terrorists, the festival survivors face an online world that refuses to believe them.
Female hostages who have described how they were sexually assaulted while in Hamas custody have been brutalized denial and ridicule on the internet.
“She lies and reads a script,” reads one charitable reply to Amit Susana's account of being molested and forced to perform sexual acts by his captors.
Other survivors see this as well. It makes it feel impossible to heal, let alone share what happened.
In his December 2023 mission report on the situation in Israel, the United Nations Special Representative said: Pramila Patten wrote “National and international media scrutiny of those who made their accounts public has impeded access to survivors of the attacks, including potential survivors/victims of sexual violence.”
The movement to deny systemic conflict-related sexual violence is as old as the use of rape as a weapon of war. And our modern ability to utilize social media to spread these messages to millions of people only further exacerbates the spread of fear and suffering.
Even more insidious is the use of campaigns to reshape the narrative. Not only do they not believe the survivors; condemnation They justified “rape as resistance” and argued that it was natural.
I have met survivors who have dedicated their lives to telling their stories. They find meaning in speaking for those who are no longer able to do so, not only those who have been murdered, but also those who, like Shirel, have been silenced by mental suffering.
These survivors share their stories over and over again, often shouting into the void, desperately trying to counter lies with truth.
But who is listening? Who's thinking is changing?
More importantly, why do they have to relive the scariest day of their lives over and over again?
There's a reason why those of us working to end gender-based violence know that we must believe survivors, that we should never blame them, and that rape is never justified. there is. Failure to do so will cause further damage.
I'll never forget what Miriam Schuller, executive director of the Tel Aviv Rape Crisis Center, told me shortly after October 7th. “What's worse is that the world doesn't believe in us.”
October 7th remains one of the most recorded atrocities in history, thanks to footage shot by the terrorists themselves and from the cellphones of survivors and victims.
There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of video and photographic evidence, as well as testimony from survivors, witnesses, and first responders.
It's easy to dismiss disturbing evidence as fake news. But we don't need to care about, or even support, Israel to care about raped and traumatized women being silenced and humiliated.
International organizations tasked with bringing perpetrators of conflict-related sexual violence to justice need to include what happens online in their investigations. Spreading fear and suffering through online campaigns can become a deadly weapon if left unchecked.
Survivor guilt is real. And it is made worse by the fact that Israelis routinely encounter online accounts that denigrate their very existence, denying or glorifying the atrocities they have endured.
The evidence should speak for itself. But unless we address the problem of harmful and deadly online rhetoric, survivors around the world will continue to suffer.
I believe in Israeli women. And this belief, and our commitment to supporting all survivors of sexual violence, means that we must never deny or erase what happened to them.
Meredith Jacobs is the CEO of Jewish Women International.
