Imagine if, during the terrorist attack at the Ariana Grande concert in 2017, women and girls had been violently raped, their dead bodies strewn along Manchester’s roadsides. Or if, on that fateful Saturday night in 2017, young women had been gang raped on London Bridge. Or if, back in 1984, the IRA had kidnapped babies and children from that Brighton Hotel, before planting that bomb. The very idea of that level of brutality against women and children in a modern democracy seems utterly unthinkable.

Protestors gather at the offices of the United Nations Women. The group Bring Them Home Now held a protest to observe International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to bring attention to the Israeli women who were allegedly raped during the terror attack by the militant group Hamas.

Except that it’s not. Because it happened just a few weeks ago. And for those who live in Israel and those who feel connected to it – it is no less intensely shocking than these scenes would have been in the UK.

Now imagine if the world’s largest women’s humanitarian organisation, set up explicitly to fight violence of this nature, had remained silent. It again seems unthinkable. Except that, again, it is not. In the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, UN Women, an organisation which brands itself as ‘the global champion for gender equality’, made no condemnation of these atrocities, despite publishing a report focusing on women in the region less than a week later.

It has taken seven weeks of lobbying by Israeli women’s rights groups for the UN Women executive director Sima Bahous to publicly recognise that “gender-based and sexual violence” against women and children even occurred in Israel that day and for an acknowledgment to be posted on social media. As UN Women launches its annual End Violence against Women campaign, that vacuum of sympathy for Israeli women’s suffering makes a mockery of its humanitarian credentials.

Every year, to mark this campaign, Israel’s First Lady Michal Herzog invites Israeli women – Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze amongst them – to mark the campaign’s launch at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem. Despite what Herzog described last week as “the inconceivable and unforgiveable silence of these organisations whan faced with the rape and murder of Israeli women”, she decided to go ahead with this annual event. But this year, as well as reeling from the shock of the massacre, Herzog described how her nation’s women were now reeling from a second shock: that of ‘betrayal’.

The depravity women suffered on October 7 is unimaginable: reports of gang rape; women, children and elderly so brutality sexually assaulted their dead bodies were found with broken pelvis bones; women with their breasts cut off; babies murdered in front of their mothers’ eyes – one pregnant woman was disemboweled, her foetus removed and killed in front of her before she herself was murdered. The horror goes on and on.

Since the war began there has been immense suffering in Gaza, too. Stories of innocent casualties of this war – both Israelis and Palestinians – are painful on a human level, whatever your views or beliefs. Which is why it’s both deeply hurtful but also immensely troubling when organisations, established specifically for the protection of women, cannot themselves acknowledge suffering on both sides of a divide. If those that pride themselves on being bastions of global justice are unable to respond with humanity, what hope do we have?

Perhaps we should expect nothing less from the UN group, given its recent appointment of Iran to chair its Human Rights Committee and its ongoing willingness to do Hamas’s PR. But some of our homegrown women’s charities have been equally dismissive and divisive. Sisters Uncut, whose ‘feministo’ states that they fight alongside “all those who experience domestic, sexual, gendered, and state violence”, have made no sound about the extreme sexual violence waged against Israeli women. They did however organise a pro-Palestinian sit-in at Liverpool Street station at the end of last month. Of course, they would say, they are not supporting the Palestinian leadership, whose charter, as well as calling for the destruction of Israel and all Jews, is not big on women’s rights. They are supporting Palestinian civilians. But it’s slightly baffling as to why they can’t sympathise with Israeli civilians – or call for the return of Israeli women and children hostages.

The list of similarly hypocritical organisations is endless – and the message is clear. All women have a right to protection against violence – other than Israeli women. To counteract that silence, Israeli tech executive Danielle Ofek launched a campaign  #MeTooUnlessUrAJew, which is gathering momentum on social media and on Monday saw America demonstrating outside the UN headquarters. The aim is to gather 1,000,000 signatures and make one simple acknowledgement: every woman’s life is equally precious.

Whatever their political alignment, organisations set up for the protection of women should condemn rape with equal conviction whoever the victim – and to call for the safety of children and women hostages whatever their religion or race. Instead, their slim acknowledgements and silence echo louder than any words – and the subtext is ‘you deserved it’. In truth, it is the worst, most malevolent form of victim blaming – something modern feminists have worked so hard to stamp out. It’s time some of these humanitarian organisations started behaving with a little more humanity.