Immediately after October 7, 2023, I naively believed the world would unite in horror. The images were unambiguous: children kidnapped, parents murdered in front of their families, women subjected to rape and sexual violence as weapons of terror. Surely, I thought, such barbarity would earn Israel and the Jewish diaspora overwhelming sympathy and support.
I was wrong. Within days, familiar narratives resurfaced. “It didn’t start on October 7,” critics insisted. “If Israel had just given the Palestinians a state…,” “Netanyahu’s government brought this on itself.” The victims, it seemed, had somehow provoked their own massacre.
This reaction did not surprise me as much as it should have. Years earlier, living in Egypt, I witnessed something eerily similar. A woman in Cairo was sexually harassed and assaulted in public. Instead of outrage directed at the perpetrators, many, including other women, blamed the victim. “She was asking for it,” they said. “Look at how she was dressed,” “She shouldn’t have been out alone.” I was stunned. Why would women turn on one of their own when any of them could have been in her position?
