Guest article for the ICJW newsletter by Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, Founding Academic Director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women, and Co-Founder of the Dinah Project, at Bar-Ilan University; former Vice-President of the UN CEDAW Committee.
Israel is confronting multiple crises, and in times of crisis, women’s rights are often the first to be compromised.
As part of its judicial overhaul, the current government is undermining the Supreme Court, which has historically been the principal protector of women’s rights. We are witnessing aggressive legislation that deepens the exclusion of women from public spaces, the military, and academia. Women are increasingly absent from decision-making positions, with female ministry directors being replaced by male counterparts. Parties that refuse to allow women to serve as Knesset members now determine women’s fate.
When conservative forces strengthen, progress for women halts. Religious parties have become the greatest obstacle to advancement and the strongest catalyst for regression. As a religiously committed woman, it is frustrating to see religion become an oppressive force against women. A coalition dominated by fundamentalist forces promotes expansion of rabbinical courts’ jurisdiction alongside legislation permitting religious discrimination.
The October 7th attack brought Israeli society to an abrupt halt, creating the most severe crisis in Israel’s history. Women and women’s bodies were specifically targeted by Hamas with the aim of terrorizing Israeli women and the entire nation. The world remained largely silent, failing to seek justice for the victims, while in Israel, this issue was overshadowed by the ongoing war and the struggle to free the hostages.
The Rackman Center, with its established leadership in defending women’s rights, took the lead in this new social-legal struggle for justice for women.
Following October 7th, together with other experts in law and gender, communications, and former senior public officials, I co-founded the Dinah Project. The project’s purpose is to collect and document the crimes of sexual violence committed during the terror attack and against hostages, to ensure these crimes are not forgotten, to develop legal solutions enabling prosecution of terrorists for these offenses, and to end impunity.
The Dinah Project—named after our Biblical sister whose rape was the first recorded in the Bible—has already built a comprehensive knowledge base and become the leading resource in Israel and globally for recognition and justice for victims of sexual violence on October 7th. We were instrumental in bringing the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict to the region, resulting in a report documenting clear evidence of systematic sexual crimes.
Looking ahead, our initiative includes convening an international conference, promoting investigations through novel evidence-based analyses, advocating for our thesis of collective responsibility to enable domestic prosecution, and introducing revisions in international criminal law.
The distressing images of Shiri Bibas struggling to protect her children are seared in our hearts. In the name of this protective motherhood, we must continue to demand the return of all hostages and the end of the war, while fighting for justice for victims of sexual violence.
