From this side of the globe we have watched years of assaults against Palestinians living in the world’s largest “open air prison”, as its inhabitants have described Gaza. Therefore in line with the government’s stance, Indonesians have staunchly shared the Palestinians’ hopes for freedom, which have intensified since the latest war that has killed over 18,000 people so far.  A figure reached in just two months, far topping the estimated 12,400 civilian casualties in 20 years of war by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan, the New  York Times reported, citing Neta C. Crawford, a University of Oxford professor and co-director of Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

Thus the stunning accusations of sexual violence have emerged in the thick of emotional outpouring for the civilian victims of war, mostly women and children. Deniers here refer to decades of Israeli occupation and propaganda, making it difficult to trust so-called sources of testimonies alleging sexual violence by Hamas. Feelings of “Muslim solidarity” for the occupied further dominate the pro-Palestinian camp; even the commendable Tempo media refers to Hamas as “Palestinian warriors” (“pejuang Palestina”).

The experts among us may be waiting for results from the new UN commission into abuses committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, in the hopes of eventually bringing about justice for the victims and families of all those subjected to alleged rape, murder, mutilation and burning victims alive, before and after sexual torture, however elusive it may be.  

The team has little to work with, Israel has refused to cooperate with the “biased” United Nations and victims were buried as soon as possible with no samples taken, missing any opportunity to preserve forensic evidence, Israeli women’s organizations have said.

Unlike the experts, I am just an ordinary woman, who in believing just a part of the reports risks being gullible to Israel’s propaganda.  What burdens me more, nevertheless, is the risk of entirely dismissing the accusations of unimaginable crimes. Even before seeing the signs in massive protests against “UN silence” against the reported crimes, the placards reading “MeToo -- except if you are a Jew”, I have grieved for the reported victims and their families; some men were also reportedly raped, part of the “systematic” indications of the Hamas use of “rape as a weapon of war” against the enemy.  If civilians were not raped, “just” stripped, tortured, shot and burned to death, could one still glorify Hamas?

Totally branding the allegations as lies brings to mind the denials of similar crimes in our present and past. Indeed, our circumstances have not been a setting of war against foreign occupiers since our independence. The internal settings have included “military operations” against insurgencies in former East Timor and Aceh with patterns of attacks on civilians including sexual violence, similar to, among others, testimonies from survivors of the 1965 crackdown on alleged communists.