Editor – Nearly three years have passed since I watched the horror of October 7 unfold on television, and in the hours and days that followed images emerged that have never left me. A young woman who had gone to dance at a music festival was seen after being killed, her body carried away in the back of a vehicle. A terrified mother was pictured clutching her two little red-haired boys, one four years old and the other just nine months, as they were taken captive. Another young woman was filmed crying out as she was driven away on the back of a motorcycle, reaching desperately towards her boyfriend as he was led away separately. These were not abstract images from a distant conflict. They were women, children and families caught in terror, their suffering witnessed around the world.
What has stayed with me just as strongly is the question of where the voices were for these women.
For years, we have been told that violence against women must be confronted, that women must be believed and that silence in the face of abuse is unacceptable. Yet when Israeli women were among the victims, too many voices seemed hesitant, qualified or absent.
The Metropolitan Police has confirmed that at about 12:50pm on October 7, while the attack was still unfolding, it was contacted by an organiser acting on behalf of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and informed of plans for a demonstration the following Saturday.
That timing is difficult to forget.
Whatever one’s views on Israel, Palestine, governments, borders or history, surely there should first have been a moment of simple human compassion.
People were being murdered. Women were being brutalised. Children were being kidnapped.
Where was the grief for them?
This is not an argument against compassion for Palestinians. It should be possible to care deeply about Palestinian civilians and also to condemn, without hesitation, what happened to Israeli women and children.
Human rights mean very little if they apply only to people whose suffering fits comfortably with our politics.
Women’s rights must be universal. Children’s lives must matter universally. Compassion must not depend on nationality, religion or ideology.
Before the slogans, before the marches and before the politics, there should have been humanity. That is what I found missing.
Three years on and I am still asking: when these women and children needed voices raised for them, where were those voices?
