Anti-Israel activists accused of sexual blinders

Groups ostensibly devoted to protecting women have been accused since Oct. 7 of prioritizing attacks on Israel over that mission.

UN Women took nearly eight weeks to note “numerous accounts” of Hamas gender-based violence. Amnesty International did not fully acknowledge such violence until December 2025. Feminist and human rights activists wrote in February 2024 of Israel “weaponizing the issue of rape” after Oct. 7.

Meanwhile, anti-Israel organizations have been accused of overlooking sexual misconduct in their own ranks.

David Azerrad, assistant professor and research fellow at Hillsdale College’s graduate government school, told JNS that people who claim to care about women show their true priorities when they focus instead on attacking Israel.

“The cause is so important to them that they will overlook injustices for fear that drawing attention to them would hurt said cause,” he said. “More importantly, it reveals what bad people they are.”

“They hector and claim the mantle of justice while committing vicious acts and preying upon others,” Azerrad added.

Mika Hackner, research director at the North American Values Institute, said that anti-Israel activists overlook sexual misconduct accusations because they have “a necessary and willing blindness, so that they can continue to believe that the cause is just.”

“Any action in its service must be just, too,” she told JNS. “They have fully accepted the idea that it is not for the privileged or the oppressors to question how the oppressed ‘resist’.”

Taryn Thomas said that she joined an encampment at Stanford University but changed the way she viewed Israel and Hamas after seeing an exhibit in Los Angeles about the Nova music festival massacre.

“There is no propaganda in a half-finished text message from a dying girl,” she told JNS. “It forced me to acknowledge the suffering on the other side that the movement required me to ignore.”

Thomas said that at the Stanford encampment, “there was certainly a willingness to look away from various forms of misconduct.”

She experienced racism and saw “blatant antisemitism,” where “physical or verbal abuses could be sidelined if addressing them threatened the group’s cohesion,” she said.

“This environment was undoubtedly influenced by the broader denial of sexual violence occurring on Oct. 7,” she said. “When leaders publicly rationalize, victim-blame or dismiss such violence, it sets a dangerous precedent.”

Thomas shared screenshots of what she said    was a conversation with an encampment leader, who allegedly suggested Hamas attackers may have thought the Nova festival was a “sex cult.”

After Thomas shared verified reports of sexual assault against Oct. 7 victims, she said the leader responded that “there may have been certain cases. Those need to be fact checked. The official Hamas stance is that committing such acts is prohibited.”

“When the people in charge hold these views, it creates an environment where sexual misconduct within their own ranks is far more likely to go unchecked,” she said.

James Lindsay, a political commentator and author, told JNS that anti-Israel groups “don’t have any interest in anything except advancing their revolutionary activism.”

“It’s a common mistake people make expecting radical leftists to be consistent with their stated values and causes,” he said. “They never are.”

A series of since-deleted Instagram posts alleged anonymously that a member of the steering committee of the 2025 Gaza flotilla engaged in “sexual relations with multiple activists” while aboard the vessel. Organizers failed to act, according to the posts.

The Global Sumud Flotilla denied receiving such complaints and said that it investigated the matter, later stating that “no evidence has been found, and the case is formally closed.”

Anonymous accusers have also alleged sexual misconduct at an anti-Israel encampment at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and within a pro-Palestinian group in Australia.

Jacqueline Carroll, a former sexual crimes prosecutor in Cook County, Illinois, and founder of an extremism consulting group, told JNS that fear often silences victims.

“There’s shame involved, but there’s also a belief that they might not be believed. There’s also fear of retaliation,” she said. “You’re going to be called a ‘liar’.”

“You’re going to be called a ‘Zionist’,” she added.

Students abused at anti-Israel encampments might not report misconduct because authority figures were “very much in alignment with the pro-Palestinian cause,” she said.

Miri Bar-Halpern, a clinical psychologist in Boston and Harvard Medical School instructor, told JNS that victims may stay anonymous out of trauma, fear and dependence on the group.

“If the group has become their source of belonging, identity, purpose or protection, speaking up can feel terrifying,” she said.

“When a protest space starts to function like a high-control group, abuse gets hidden, because the cause becomes more important than the person,” she added.