- Michael Balaban
President & CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, I am deeply disappointed in the continued lack of regard for facts during this crisis. This distortion of reality has caused unquantifiable harm for the Jewish community, hostages and the survivors of gender-based violence committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 and since. 

This past week has been fraught with the spread of disinformation, which has been used as a tool to enforce false narratives about Israel’s actions and to peddle antisemitic tropes.

On Tuesday, Amit Soussana bravely came forward as the first former hostage to publicly say she was sexually abused and tortured while in captivity. The details of her story are horrific and sickening. At the same time, Al Jazeera falsely claimed that IDF soldiers raped women in Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which took over the media waves and galvanized those with anti-Israel senitments. While Al Jazeera removed the article once it was debunked, the outlet further perpetuated the harm already done by not issuing an official apology or retraction statement. 

This sequence of events only further solidifies what we have previously seen: when false claims of sexual assault are thrown at IDF soldiers, the world jumps on board to persecute them. But when true reports of sexual assault come out about Hamas terrorists, the world stands idly by.

The violence and cruelty of Oct. 7 continues to be exploited to retraumatize Israelis and dehumanize Hamas’ victims. Just last week, an Associated Press photo depicting Hamas terrorists in a truck with the lifeless body of 22-year-old German-Israeli Shani Louk won a Picture of the Year award, one of the most prestigious photojournalism awards.

This not only profits disgustingly off of Louk’s death – and the suffering of all impacted on and since Oct. 7 – but it preserves her memory as a brutalized victim instead of a young girl full of life and light, as her family wishes her to be remembered.

No matter how often we see these appalling images and witness these distressing reports coming out of Israel, there are still so many who insist on positioning Israel as an oppressor while disregarding Hamas’ atrocities and the continued captivity of the hostages.

On Wednesday, a student group at Haverford College organized a campus event entitled “COVID in Times of Genocide: How Israel uses COVID as a Tool for Settler Colonialism in Palestine.” This event’s title dangerously and inaccurately implies that Israel spread coronavirus to advance its global control, fueling centuries-old antisemitic tropes about Jews taking advantage of crises to further their own interests.

This is nothing more than a modern day blood libel built on weaponized disinformation, and it must not be tolerated. Speech like this directly endangers Jewish students and faculty on Haverford’s campus, especially at a time when antisemitism on college campuses is at an all-time high. You can contact Haverford college now to voice these concerns.

As this war goes on and these disturbing instances of gender-based violence, dehumanization and antisemitism continue to occur, we must amplify the stories of survivors without turning their suffering into a spectacle. You can advocate for the Jewish people and the victims of Hamas by clicking here. 

May the memory of Shani Louk as a bright, vibrant young woman live on in all of us. And may Amit Soussana, and all of those who have faced sexual violence and all of those still held captive, find healing and strength throughout this horrific ordeal.     

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