Palestinian women's rights activist Joharah Baker is among five women who are at the UN in New York this week to speak about gendered violence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. They claim Israeli forces are using sexual violence as a “weapon of genocide”. Baker tells FRANCE 24 that they have documented cases of sexual violence against women in Israeli prisons from Gaza and the West Bank.
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NewsTranscript
00:00This is Apropos.
00:04Medics say nearly all of the dead are women and children, including an 11-month-old baby.
00:10One of the latest Israeli attacks in Gaza has left at least 17 people dead and more
00:16than 40 others wounded.
00:18The raid took place at a school-turned-shelter in Yisra'at camp.
00:22Without providing evidence, the Israeli military said it had been targeting Hamas militants
00:26who'd been hiding out among civilians inside the school.
00:30Emily Boyle has the details.
00:35One more school reduced to ruins.
00:38An all-too-familiar sight in Gaza.
00:41In this latest strike, most of the victims were children.
00:45According to staff at Orde Hospital, which took in most of the casualties, dozens of
00:49people were killed and many more were injured.
00:53The bombing hit a school in the vicinity of Noizeraat refugee camp.
00:58I was sitting in a classroom and all of a sudden found bricks and glass over our heads.
01:03I hugged my little girl and I didn't see anything because of the smoke.
01:07I started running and calling my sister.
01:10Thank God I found her alive but under the rubble.
01:13Smoke and fire were all over the place.
01:16The building was being used as a welcome centre for Palestinian refugees.
01:21The Israeli army recognised the strike, saying they were targeting Hamas militants.
01:25They did not, however, provide any evidence to support their claims.
01:30This is a shelter and we have been living here for almost a year.
01:36There are no militants here, only civilians displaced from Gaza.
01:41Two thirds of the martyrs were children, no older than 10 years.
01:47The situation in Gaza is ever worsening as Israel continues their violent operations,
01:52which they say are targeting Hamas militants.
01:56According to Gaza's civil defence agency, at least 770 people have been killed in the
02:02latest Israeli advance, which started on the 6th of October 2024.
02:07The civil defence agency said it had been forced to suspend rescue operations in northern
02:11Gaza.
02:12They said that emergency workers had been detained, wounded or shot, as was the case
02:17of a medic operating in the area on Thursday.
02:23Palestinian rights activist Johara Baker is among five women who are at the UN in New
02:28York this week to speak about gendered violence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
02:33They claim Israeli forces are using sexual violence as a weapon of genocide.
02:38Johara joins us now.
02:41Johara, thank you so much for being with us on the programme this evening.
02:45Firstly, what is your message to the UN this week?
02:53Thank you for having me.
02:56We came here, I came as part of a delegation to the UN with my sister organisation and
03:02other women who work with Palestinian NGOs.
03:06And primarily we have come to the UN to amplify the voices of Palestinian women who we feel
03:11have been sidelined and who have not been heard at the UN and in the world throughout.
03:23So our message here is to speak in this forum and to tell the world about what our stories
03:33are as Palestinian women living under Israeli occupation and the daily indignities that
03:39we do experience over and above what is actually happening in Gaza today, which is a full-blown
03:45genocide.
03:47And so for us, we think that it's very important.
03:49I think that it's not about seeing what's happening in Gaza because that is something
03:54that is very visible to the world.
03:57But the little stories that are happening, I don't think that people have heard it enough.
04:01And this is something that we all experience, not just the women in Gaza, but also women
04:06in the West Bank where I live and women in East Jerusalem.
04:13And so for us, it's very important for the world and we are here to speak to people and
04:19to show them that we have stories as well and that it is a very difficult experience
04:25living under occupation.
04:26And this hasn't been just for this year where the world has all of a sudden looked and seen
04:33what is happening in Gaza.
04:34This has been ongoing for the past 76 years.
04:38And tell us about some of those smaller stories that you mentioned, because very often we
04:42do tend to focus on the big numbers, the latest Israeli attack in Gaza today, for example,
04:47most of the victims, again, women and children, according to medics there.
04:51So what kind of abuse are women reporting to you?
04:57Well, you said it.
05:02The fact that there are numbers that are being reported.
05:06We are not just numbers.
05:07Yes, the numbers are horrific and they're horrendous, but behind every number there's
05:12a story.
05:14And we have documented cases of sexual violence against women in prisons, in Israeli prisons,
05:22from Gaza and from the West Bank.
05:25And when I tell you what the stories are horrific, we are talking about strip searching in front
05:31of men, in front of male and female soldiers, inappropriate touching, use of batons and
05:41sticks that are used on the genitalia, very, very inappropriate language that is used,
05:50intimidation.
05:52There's one woman who we have, we actually documented cases of rape, but because how
05:58sensitive that is in Palestinian culture, we are not able to speak about it.
06:05In the West Bank as well, women are used as human shields by the Israeli army.
06:12I can tell you one story about a woman, we have documented a story about a woman who
06:17was in the Jenin refugee camp, which is in the West Bank.
06:21The Israeli army raided it and they used her as a human shield.
06:25They tied her to a chair while they were carrying out their military raids and shooting
06:29at people, literally shooting from behind her for hours.
06:33Her son had been killed and she didn't even know it at the time.
06:37And it was so traumatic for her that after hours of this, when they did release her,
06:42this woman, by the way, is over 70 years old.
06:47And so by the time that they released her, she was so traumatized that she forgot, she
06:52didn't even realize what happened to her son.
06:55She blocked out the entire incident.
06:57Right now that she started to forget things and every time, and now every time she hears
07:02an army jeep, she starts to scream.
07:05So these are stories that happen across Palestine and it's not just since October 7th.
07:11This has been happening.
07:12I live in the West Bank.
07:14I have had stories with my own children when they were little, where I could cross an Israeli
07:20or they could cross an Israeli checkpoint where I couldn't because I have a different
07:24ID and I would have to call their father to come to the other side.
07:28And my daughter, I remember she was like five years old and she couldn't understand why
07:33I couldn't go home with her because they had declared the area where I was in a military
07:38zone, a closed military zone, and she lives in Jerusalem.
07:42So my husband had to come to pick her up from the other side and I had to hand her over
07:47and I couldn't go home and she was just screaming and wailing because she doesn't understand
07:53why her mother couldn't go home.
07:55And it's just these little injustices, these injustices that happen to women every day
08:00that we want to get, we want people to understand and to hear.
08:05And you say that the conditions have deteriorated over the course of the past year since this
08:09latest Israeli offensive in Gaza.
08:12You describe it as a clear and systematic policy and say that these are tactics that
08:17Israel has long used in Gaza and in the West Bank.
08:24Yes, absolutely.
08:25I mean, as you know, of course, after October 7th, everything has been worsened by exponentially.
08:35However, Israel has used sexual violence as a weapon of war.
08:40It's been systematic ever since its inception in 1948.
08:45And especially against women in prisons, and not just during their arrest, but also when
08:52they are in prison, after they are incarcerated.
08:56They strip search them, they beat them, they intimidate them.
08:59They also accuse that either there are actual documented cases of rape or they're threatened
09:07with rape.
09:09And how they also, they take their husbands and they threaten the husbands with raping
09:15their wives or their daughters or their sisters in order to try to coerce them to confess.
09:22So this has been a systematic weapon of war used by Israel.
09:29And we have documentation of it.
09:30There are documented cases of these, of these cases.
09:34And of course, after October 7th, it's become worse because I don't know how much people
09:39know the condition, the conditions in Israeli prisons now.
09:45They're horrific.
09:46They are actually starving male prisoners, female prisoners as well.
09:51They get very little food, no medical attention, no medical and no family visits.
09:59The lawyers visits are, are very few and far between.
10:03And this is not even talking about the people who have been abducted from Gaza.
10:08And I say abducted because no one knows where they are.
10:11No one knows how many people there are.
10:13There are whole families who have been taken, including women, including children.
10:18And the only way that anyone knows about what's happening to the women in Gaza are if, if
10:23a prisoner is released and they have heard about them or they heard their name.
10:28And when I say heard, I mean, they also tell about the screams that they hear from the
10:34other, from the cells, that they know that the Gazans are being held and they are being
10:38tortured and they hear the cries.
10:41And so we are living through very, very difficult times, whether we are in Gaza, whether the
10:47Palestinians are in Gaza, in the West Bank, in the diaspora.
10:51This is our people who are being systematically annihilated and ethnically cleansed.
10:57And so if I can just go back to your first question, this is why we are here.
11:04We need the world to hear us and to see that we are, we are also, we are not just numbers.
11:11Behind every number is a story.
11:13And Johara, given the difficulty or the impossibility of getting access to people who need help
11:19and providing care, what can be done to help these people, these women and children in
11:24these very difficult circumstances?
11:28Well, in order to help them, the only way to help them is to stop Israel.
11:37This is to be very honest.
11:39These women, Palestine is not a humanitarian problem in its essence.
11:46The humanitarian crisis is a result of what Israel has done.
11:50It's a result of the years-long occupation, and right now it's a result of the genocide.
11:55And it's a result of the fact that Israel has closed off Gaza to the entire world.
11:59So the only way to help them is to force, to make Israel comply with international law
12:09and with its obligations as an occupying force, to open the crossings, to allow humanitarian
12:16assistance, and to stop bombing civilian populations, to stop abducting civilians,
12:25to stop killing women and children, and they are targeting women because this is one aspect
12:30of genocide.
12:31They want to stop women from having children and from the generations continuing.
12:39And so this is the only way to help them.
12:42Any humanitarian assistance that gets in is very, very, very minuscule.
12:49It's not enough.
12:51People are actually starving.
12:52And so again, the only way is to force Israel's hand.
12:56Johara, I'm so sorry for cutting across you there, but we'll have to leave it there for
13:00now.
13:01We do really appreciate your time on the programme and for talking us through all of that.
13:05Johara Baker, women's rights activist, thank you so much for joining us on the programme.
13:11That is it from us for now.
13:12Do stay with us.