A UN report buried the information that some Gaza women are being forced into prostitution by aid workers to get food.
This fact did not even merit an entire sentence in the context of a much larger report.
Palestinian men have been sexually abusing Palestinian women and children every day for decades;. And in Gaza, things are worse than ever.
The fact is that sexual abuse has always been rampant in Palestinian areas. You just have to dig deep to find anyone willing to talk about it.
A UN report last year said:
An estimated 1.9 million people across the gender spectrum in OPT are vulnerable to and/ or experiencing GBV [Gender-based violence] , 80 per cent of whom are women, and 65 per cent in Gaza. Violence against women, particularly by intimate partners, remains at an alarmingly high rate. Palestinian women face multiple layers of discrimination within the legal system. According to the 2019 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistic (PCBS) survey on violence, which was updated in July 2022, 59 per cent of married or previously married women between the ages of 15 and 64 experienced violence by their husband in the 12 months preceding the survey – 70 per cent in Gaza and 52 per cent in the West Bank.
But as bad things were before, they have gotten worse in Gaza since October 7. Instead of pulling together, Palestinians are allowing predators to rape and abuse women and children.
And the UN knows it.
The latest UN Protection Cluster report from this month says quite clearly that the danger to women from the war comes from their fellow Arabs:
The scale of the conflict has a multidimensional impact on all people in Gaza, and this has very significant consequences for gender-based violence. A report on the gendered impact of the conflict, published in January 2024, demonstrates the degree to which women and children are now affected by the war....The GBV risks for children have dramatically risen with the external protection threats and the increase in negative coping mechanisms. This includes increased reports of child marriages within shelters, and incidents of sexual violence. Girls with disabilities are at higher risk of violence and exploitation....Insufficient and unreliable aid, distributed under conditions of insecurity that do not allow adequate targeting, expose vulnerable groups to violence, exploitation and abuse, trafficking and forced prostitution, including by aid workers. Specific risks observed in Gaza associated with aid include the presence of unofficial humanitarian workers without identification [in] mixed distribution lines for men and women. There are reports of individuals adopting harmful coping mechanisms, such as reducing food and liquid intake, to minimise such risks.
There are several classes of major crimes being barely mentioned here that would be front page headlines anywhere else:
- Aid workers are sexually abusing women, presumably in exchange for food, and even forcing women into prostitution.
- Women are too frightened to stand in line together with men for food, because they know they will be sexually harassed, so much so that they would prefer not to eat at all.
- Young girls are being raped and married off to older men in the camps.
- Disabled girls are especially vulnerable to being raped in shelters.
Notice how hard the UN tries to minimize and obfuscate the incidents. Instead of saying that women ar preferring to go hungry out of fear of being abused while waiting for aid, the UN says "individuals" are "adopting harmful coping mechanisms, such as reducing food and liquid intake, to minimise such risks."
Does this sound like an organization that fights for the rights of women in Gaza? The UN cares more about avoiding shaming Palestinians than protecting women.
These incidents are clearly well known, enough that the UN is aware of them - but I do not recall seeing a single article on these topics in eight months. Even here, the UN is trying as hard as possible to bury these issues in much larger reports that are on more familiar anti-Israel territory.
The UN and other NGOs, when they mention this at all, usually speak elliptically, even though this is a well-known phenomenon among the aid workers themselves. For example, in a website that invites interns to work in Palestinian areas in the West Bank, the applicants are told, "We meticulously search for families that our female participants feel comfortable with during their stay in Hebron." Why would that concern even occur to anyone if it wasn't well known that pro-Palestinian activists have been raped and sexually abused in the past?
There is very little interest in Palestinian human rights when Jews cannot be blamed. This applies to the media as well as to NGOs, but the NGOs on the ground actively try to cover it up and even pressure women victims not to report the incidents.
