Rape is Part of War: The Ugly Truth
This is a topic I want to cover because it gets swept under the rug and ignored. It’s something a lot of Americans do not want to talk about because it paints a different picture than the glorification of the military they see in their everyday lives. In America, the adoration and respect for the Military are crucial for recruitment. The military has a great PR team to make sure stuff like this stays out of public consciousness. It would be pretty hard to recruit any females at all nor men with integrity if they knew the history of rape during times of war. This isn’t specific to America though. This is specific to war in general. Any war.
“A nation is not conquered until the women’s hearts lay on the ground.”
— Cheyenne Indian saying
In war, rape is an assault on both the individual woman and her family and community. Many hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in wars in this century alone, as reported in areas as diverse as Korea, Bangladesh, Liberia, Southeast Asia, and Uganda. Bosnian refugees have described how, in the former Yugoslavia, military forces publicly raped women to systematically force families to flee their villages, contributing to the goal of “ethnic cleansing.”
Assaults are often gang-related and sadistic, including other forms of physical torture. These women may also experience loss of home and community, dislocation, injury, and untreated illness, and these women may witness the murder, injury, or rape of loved ones. The effects of these types of trauma are immeasurable, long lasting, and shattering to both inner and outer worlds.
In Crimes Unspoken: The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War, Miriam Gebhardt presents readers with a detailed and carefully researched account of the extent of sexual violence perpetrated by Allied forces against German women. Recent discussion has focused primarily on assaults committed by Soviet troops, but the author argues that this does not represent the whole picture.
When US troops took Munich on 30 April 1945, the widely held conviction was that they would be well-behaved and considerate towards German civilians. In Chapter Three, the author notes that this impression quickly evaporated: the arrival of US soldiers in Upper Bavaria was accompanied at first by widespread looting and destruction, and then rape.
In 1945, TIME magazine published a letter penned by an unidentified American serviceman who stated that:
“Our own Army and the British Army … have done their share of looting and raping … we too are considered an army of rapists.”
Many of the Bosnian rape victims told no one about what happened to them. Stigma and injustice have surrounded the rape of women for as long as time. In fact, rape was not considered a crime against humanity or war crime until the 1990s.
Portraying All Military Service Members as Heros Needs To Stop
It’s just not truthful. Are there some great people who join the military because they really believe they are doing the right thing and have integrity and honor? Of course. This isn’t a bash veterans article. This happens more than Americans know. Western propaganda has brainwashed us to portray our military as the heroes and saviors of the world. The military recruiters aren’t going to tell you the story of Steven D. Green.
Former Army soldier Steven D. Green, who committed suicide in his Arizona jail cell, was convicted in 2009 of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdering her and her family. He was the last of five soldiers who served in the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to be convicted for the crimes and their subsequent cover-up.
Prosecutors said he and others in his unit plotted an attack on an Iraqi family. Green herded the parents and younger sister of 14-year-old Abeer al-Janabi into another room of a house while two accomplices raped her. He then gunned down her parents and her 6-year-old sister, before joining in the rape and killing the teenager.
Israeli Rabbi Thinks Rape of Palestinian Women Is Completely Acceptable
A prominent Israeli rabbi known to have advocated genocide in Gaza also advised that soldiers may rape during wartime. Eliyahu contended that Israeli soldiers would lose their motivation to wage war if they are not allowed to rape non-Jewish women.
In a column called “Ask the Rabbi,” Eliyahu suggested that a biblical law authorized sexual violence under certain circumstances. He was responding to a question – apparently by one of the website’s readers – about whether women could be viewed as “war booty.” According to Eliyahu, an Israeli soldier should be subject to few, if any, constraints when fighting a war.
The International Criminal Court has confirmed that the use of rape in armed conflict is a war crime.
See Related: Colombian Report on US Military’s Child Rapes Not Newsworthy to US News Outlets
Women Who Join The U.S. Military Are Raped By Their Fellow Soldiers
It’s not just limited to raping civilian women in countries where wars are taking place. This has extended to women service members as well. 1 in 3 women in the U.S. Military are sexually assaulted or raped. It’s 1 in 5 for men. So this is not just a female issue anymore.
What happened to Lavena Johnson should NEVER happen to any service member, male or female. The fact the military is covering up what happened to her is appalling, insulting, and downright disgusting. For that reason, we should STOP giving blind respect and support to ALL service members. Because since the perpetrators often go unpunished, the odds are we are saying “Thank you for your service,” to many abusers and rapists.
It’s 2018. The human race has been entangled in useless banker wars for centuries. There are no winners in war. Innocent people get brutally murdered. Women raped in droves and the lives of those carrying it out altered forever. That’s why 22 veterans kill themselves every day. You’re not supposed to be able to commit heinous crimes against another fellow human being and feel nothing. We’re not cold-blooded killers by nature, we have been manipulated into setting aside our morality when we feel our “freedoms are being threatened” as told to us by the propaganda machine funded by the military-industrial complex.
“Collateral Damage” needs to be erased from human consciousness. One innocent life taken is NEVER JUSTIFIABLE! One innocent woman raped is equally unacceptable. When we realize this we can cause a paradigm shift, and we definitely need one of those right now. Bring up these tough topics in day-to-day conversations. It’s the only way we can stop these atrocities.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2014/02/18/us/soldier-steven-green-suicide/index.html
https://electronicintifada.net/content/rabbi-who-urged-gaza-genocide-excused-rap’-soldiers/21566
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