The outrage over Cornell is right. 7 October victims deserve the same

Over the last two weeks, the internet has been ablaze with anger about the case being called the “Cornell Seven”. But alongside the horror of the allegations is a question that should trouble us all: why has it taken two years for this young woman’s account to command such attention?

Why did a student newspaper have to raise the alarm? Why did she not feel safe enough to report what she says happened to her? Why must a woman’s alleged ordeal become a public scandal before the demand for answers becomes impossible to ignore?

We have asked versions of these questions too many times. We know the pressures that keep women silent: fear of disbelief, fear of retaliation, fear that speaking will cost them more than it costs the men they accuse. We know how readily an institution’s reputation can become more precious than the women who depend on it for protection.

At the centre of this case is a young woman who alleges that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by fraternity members in October 2024. Her lawsuit names seven men. Messages described in reporting suggest something chilling: a woman being presented to other men as available for their sexual use.

She deserves to be heard and supported. Her allegations deserve a thorough investigation. And she deserves answers about why it has taken this long.

A woman’s body is not communal property. A friendship group cannot grant consent on her behalf. Intoxication is not an invitation. Consent to one act is not permission for another man to join in.

The outrage is right. The demand for institutional accountability is right. As someone who has spent much of her adult life fighting violence against women and girls, I welcome both.

But watching this solidarity gather, I cannot escape another question.

Where was it for the women of 7 October?

Nearly three years after the Hamas-led attacks, people who can recognise misogyny so clearly in an American fraternity remain evasive when the victims are Israeli. They understand why a woman might fear speaking. They understand the damage done by disbelief. Yet when an Israeli woman recounts sexual violence, those convictions suddenly become negotiable.

In an earlier article, I described asking the head of a leading British women’s organisation to condemn reports of sexual violence after 7 October. Her response was that it was complicated.

I have thought about that answer ever since.

What, precisely, was complicated? Condemning rape? Recognising an abducted woman’s humanity? Saying that no political cause permits sexual violence?

I co-founded The Five Foundation to help end female genital mutilation. My work has repeatedly brought me up against people who speak confidently about women’s rights until defending a girl requires confronting a belief, an institution or a relationship they would rather preserve.

I know that hesitation. I know who pays for it.

A woman’s suffering becomes something to manage. Before it can be acknowledged, someone must calculate what it might cost a community, a movement or a cause.

For Israeli women, that calculation has been made in public.

The evidence deserves precision. The UN mission led by Pramila Patten found reasonable grounds to believe that rape and gang rape occurred at several locations during the 7 October attacks. It also found clear and convincing information that hostages suffered sexual violence in captivity.

Then there is Amit Soussana. After her release, she publicly described being sexually assaulted at gunpoint in captivity. Reporting on her testimony noted its consistency with accounts she gave medical professionals shortly after she was freed.

She gave her name. She recounted an ordeal no woman should endure, let alone have to explain to strangers.

What more did those who claim to speak for women need before offering her their solidarity?

Supporting a survivor does not require abandoning scrutiny or due process. It requires treating her account seriously, without first asking whether acknowledging it will inconvenience your political allies.

When Jewish women’s suffering is treated as politically inconvenient, we must also ask what prejudice is shaping that response. Antisemitism does not become acceptable because it is expressed in the language of liberation.

I am a Black Muslim woman. I refuse to accept a feminism that asks me to ration my compassion according to somebody else’s political loyalties.

Nor will I accept that this selective solidarity helps Palestinian women.

People who romanticise Hamas as freedom fighters should ask what their indulgence means for women and girls living under its power. Condemning Hamas’s crimes is part of defending Palestinian freedom, including women’s freedom from coercion and abuse.

Some of those who have offered excuses are people I used to break bread with in London. People who should know better. People who would recognise the danger immediately if other armed men were being granted such moral immunity.

Last month, UNFPA reported a 123 per cent increase in reported forced and child marriage in Gaza between January and June 2026. Hunger, poverty, displacement and school closures are leaving girls exposed to exploitation. The agency also stressed that expanding protection services has helped more survivors come forward, so reported figures cannot be read as a simple measure of the underlying prevalence of abuse.

Those findings do not establish that Hamas perpetrated every case. They demand that we attend to the girls themselves and protect them from whoever threatens them.

I reject the reassuring language of “child marriage” when it conceals a girl being forced into sexual access for a man. A ceremony cannot manufacture consent. Calling a girl a wife cannot erase the violence done to her.

Palestinian women deserve more than being invoked in slogans. They deserve healthcare, protection, safe places to disclose abuse and the freedom to speak about perpetrators within their own communities as well as outside them.

And the damage caused by dismissing 7 October survivors reaches beyond Israel and Gaza. It weakens the principles on which women in Sudan, and everywhere sexual violence is used to terrorise and destroy, depend.

How can those who looked away from the abuse of Israeli women now claim the moral authority to condemn the rape of Sudanese women? How can they demand that survivors be heard when they have made listening conditional on nationality?

Their inconsistency gives perpetrators an opening. Terrorists can see what happens when political sympathy becomes a shield against accountability. They see that even the abuse of women can be excused if confronting it threatens a favoured cause.

I am enraged because, as a woman, I know what disbelief costs. Every time one of us is dismissed, it becomes harder for the next woman to come forward. She sees the suspicion, the humiliation and the demands for ever more proof. She sees that giving her name and recounting the most intimate details of her ordeal may still be insufficient for people who have already decided whose suffering matters.

That damage does not stay within one country’s borders. It follows the next survivor into the room.

As we approach the third anniversary of 7 October, this must become a watershed moment. Remembrance must include a reckoning with the denial and political excuses that followed.

The demand for accountability cannot stop at Cornell. International organisations and bodies entrusted with defending women’s rights must face scrutiny over their response to 7 October survivors.

What did they do when evidence emerged? Whose testimony did they amplify? Whose suffering did they minimise? Did they uphold the standards they demand of others, or allow political loyalties to compromise their responsibilities?

Where they failed, we need answers and meaningful change. Survivors deserve institutions willing to act when their support matters most.

The woman at the centre of the Cornell case deserves dignity, support and a serious pursuit of justice. So do the survivors of 7 October. So do the women and girls of Gaza and Sudan.

Defending all women means speaking when your political allies would prefer your silence.

If “believe women” stops at the Israeli border, it was never a principle. It was a political slogan.

And women cannot build their safety on slogans that collapse the moment solidarity becomes inconvenient. Every survivor who watches another woman being dismissed has reason to fear that she will be next.

The women of 7 October should never have had to fight to be heard. They have already paid for the brutality of men. They must not be made to pay for the cowardice of the world.

Nimco Ali is an FGM survivor, strategist and author. Born in Somaliland, she is CEO and Co-Founder of The Five Foundation, The Global Partnership To End FGM.