photo #9389335

1 in 5 women in North America have been raped. Sorry—no—have reported being raped. Many don’t. I didn’t want to. But those women get the support of the #MeToo movement. They get the hashtags and the often unsolicited, excessive solicitude. But not if you’re a Jew. Me Too unless you’re a Jew. Romi Gonen’s testimony of being raped multiple times in Gaza will likely not be shared by the mainstream. It will be torn apart in the comments. She will be called a liar because people actually choose to believe that terrorists aren’t rapists over the testimony of a young woman who was raped. Nowhere else would you see this happen. I hate that it makes my blood boil as much as it does. If you say “believe all women,” believe this one too: “There were different degrees of severity, the third time was the hardest. It lasted almost half an hour. He (the terrorist) tells me to go to the bathroom, wash yourself in the sink. I cry like crazy, and he is in the prime of his life, he received a gift for life. Until you are not in the situation, you do not understand what is happening to the body, and the fear is paralyzing. I fell silent. I go to take a nap in the living room on the floor, and wake up to Ibrahim and Muhammad talking over my head. He bends over me and says, 'Listen, Hamas called me and said they were going to kill you - and I asked if there was an option to keep you alive for me and they said yes, but we have to escape this house.' He tells me to go to the bathroom, wash yourself in the sink because I don't know when the next time will be. It was the first time he had allowed me to go to the bathroom alone. That was where the third harassment happened: it was the worst of all. Not much went through my mind, except that I was really scared, disgusted, and why? Why? My constant word with everyone - it's not fair. There's one moment in the bathroom when it all happens, there's a small square window, and I look through it - really wow. The sky is blue, the birds are chirping and this is the situation I'm in right now. The dissonance between the beautiful life and the filth in the bathroom. It's a moment I'll never forget in my life. I've reached the worst possible situation - there's nowhere to go from here. When he left the bathroom and I followed him, in one second there's a ringing in my ears and I can't hear anything. I'm starting to feel like the world is spinning around me. All that went through my mind was 'Romi, everyone in Israel thinks you're dead and you're going to be a captive sex slave'. My tears flowed, and he looked at me 'Romi, are you okay or who is okay? Okay or not?' I looked and in my head I thought 'Son of a bitch, how can you ask me that?' I told myself there was nothing you could do. He approached me with a gun and threatened 'If you tell anyone - I'll kill you'. I was taken advantage of - it was his last day. He had time to do what he wanted. He had a window of opportunity - because that day I moved to another place."