On July 14, reports started to circulate regarding a violent assault that had erupted in southern Syria, targeting the Druze community of the Sweida district.
The horrific reports, supported by videos circulated on social media, detailed scenes of a civilian massacre. Eyewitness testimonies described not only indiscriminate killings but also widespread atrocities, including sexual violence and rape.
Anonymous lists began to circulate: names of dozens of women and children who were kidnapped or disappeared. No one knows what has become of them.
As these horrors surfaced, I was struck not only by their brutality but also by the familiarity of the silence. The slow, fractured response echoes the same failures we witnessed in the wake of the October 7 massacre in Israel.
As someone personally involved in investigating the aftermath of those events, I recognize all too well the terrain of such atrocities.
A large-scale civilian massacre of this nature, spread over a relatively wide area, results in a chaotic scene with numerous victims. The evacuation process often occurs while the attack is still ongoing, meaning that forensic evidence is rarely collected, and documentation tends to be fragmented and sporadic.
Sexual crimes committed during a civilian massacre expose intense hatred and are marked by extreme brutality, abuse, humiliation, and the dehumanization of the victims. Often, the victims are murdered and will never be able to testify about what was done to them; in many cases, their bodies are mutilated.
The nature of such sexual violence is so horrific that it defies belief.
Yet, despite these patterns, the response to sexual crimes committed during atrocities is tragically predictable: silence, delay, and doubt.
The dilemma of waiting for certainty or speaking out
It takes months, often years, to piece together the truth of what happened in such chaotic events. Testimonies must be corroborated, photos and videos analyzed, and circumstantial evidence meticulously compared. Even with all that, doubt often lingers.
Still, a decision must be made – one that tests our deepest convictions.
Do we wait for certainty, or do we speak now?
Those of us in the legal, academic, and human rights communities know this dilemma well. On the one hand, our credibility is at stake. On the other, silence costs lives.
The longer we wait, the more distant public attention becomes. Late reports are met with skepticism: ”Why didn’t anyone say anything earlier?” In addition, the mechanisms of doubt kick in, undermining the victims’ voices before they’re even heard.
When it comes to sexual violence in conflict, the choice to remain silent – to wait for “confirmation” – often results in erasure. If we are too cautious, too timid, the suffering of women and girls vanishes from the historical record.
Their pain is swallowed by the fog of war and the paralysis of professional caution. We must acknowledge that reporting sexual crimes in real time, in the midst of atrocities, inevitably involves a margin of error. However, the cost of silence is far greater.
These are the moments that test us, not just as professionals, but as human beings. They test our courage, our principles, and our willingness to risk professional comfort in the face of unspeakable suffering.
The cost of silence is too great
Gender-based violence has been a central feature of the atrocities unfolding in Syria. We cannot turn away from this truth. We must stand with the victims and extend a helping hand.
If we choose caution over conscience, if we wait for certainty while victims are silenced and evidence is buried, we are no longer neutral observers – we are part of the cover-up.
We’ve already seen this once on October 7, when the global response to the mass sexual violence committed against Israeli women was marked by hesitation, denial, and a shameful silence.
In conflicts across the globe, including recent horrors in southern Syria, we’ve seen how sexual violence is often the hardest crime to verify – hidden by shame, stigma, fear, and the chaos of war. Reports are easily denied, evidence is rarely collected, and victims are often silenced forever.
Yet while we must remain vigilant against manipulation, emerging reports only aid the perpetrators. Speaking out is not about politics; it’s about protecting truth and defending human dignity.
Sexual violence is not a footnote to war. It is intentional, brutal, and strategic. When the world looks away or waits too long to respond, it signals to perpetrators that such crimes carry no cost.
History will ask how we responded to the reports: from Sweida, from Israel, and from every place where women are targeted in war. The only acceptable answer is this: we listened, we believed, and we acted.
The writer is CEO and co-founder of the Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children.