Story of an Unnamed Woman
By, Dee Roberts
Content Warning: sexual violence, physical and emotional assault
“I want to begin my story by saying that I no longer have any hope. I no longer believe that things will ever be any different.”
Speaking in her native language, Arabic, these were her first words spoken to our group. At 24 years old, this woman has been shot twice, arrested multiple times, and tortured. She’s witnessed the demolition of her home and watched several members of her family be shot. Some have been killed. For what reason? She’s Palestinian.
Joining us at great risk to herself, she shared a harrowing story of abduction, sexual assault, and resilience. I’ve witnessed the genocide of Gaza from a distance, and I’ve known on an intellectual level that many Palestinian women and men have faced similar horrors yet, something about hearing this story from someone sitting directly in front of me has impacted me in an embodied way and I am forever changed.
Blindfolded and taken from her home in the middle of the night in early November 2023, she was brought to a detention center and then transferred to one of Israel's most notorious prisons. She was menstruating at the time of her abduction, and repeatedly made requests for sanitary products from the soldiers. She was systematically and repeatedly denied these essential products. Finally, one female soldier, showing an ounce of humanity, gave her one from a personal supply.
She was stripped naked, brought into a small room with no windows, and beaten by both male and female Zionist soldiers. She did not scream, she did not cry, and she did not show these brutal occupiers the type of reaction that they wanted. In response, their assaults became all the more vicious. This daily process of being taken from her solitary confinement cell, stripped naked, and beaten went on for the duration of her nearly month-long imprisonment. Sometime during the middle of her detention period—which was brought on bogus charges of “inciting violence”— she was transferred to a communal cell with all of the emotionally unstable women in the prison. These women, having experienced unimaginable levels of trauma, were so unwell that they caused violence; not only to themselves, but to others in the cell. Several of the women confined to this dark and overcrowded space were injured, and even murdered, by one another. The unspeakable violence, at the hands of the soldiers of “the most moral army in the world” had broken them. During all the horrors she experienced while being held captive by the Israeli occupation, she refused to succumb to despair. She refused to let the constant brutalization of her body colonize her mind.
Once finishing the story of her arrest and subsequent torture she told us that prior to being detained this time she was studying law, hoping to fight for the rights and freedoms of her people. However, this desire is gone. She is no longer convinced that working within a broken and inhumane system will do any good. With this latest experience in prison, she decided to pursue studies in Psychology and was admitted to a university abroad but had to decline her offer of admittance because she was denied the necessary permits and freedom of movement to travel.
After bearing witness to this story, a heightened wave of urgency to end these horrors—the genocide in Palestine, the illegal occupation, and the Zionist settler-colony of Israel itself—swept over me. I remembered the words of Rachel Corrie, who was killed by the Israeli military while protecting a Palestinian home in Gaza on March 16, 2003. In a letter to her mother, she wrote,
“This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for all of us to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop.” If those of us living comfortable lives in the United States who are complicit in, and responsible for, the ongoing violence towards the Palestinian people are not willing to take some level of personal risk to show our solidarity then what are we doing? Not everyone needs to put their body in front of a Caterpillar D9 the way Rachel did, but we must all be active participants in dismantling these systems of unrelenting perpetual violence.
The story of this young unnamed woman reminds me of the stories of unnamed women in biblical scripture—unnamed but unforgettable. Unlike the women of the Bible who were left unnamed due to the decisions of writers to leave them nameless, or the oral history narrative never having named them, I have to leave this woman unnamed in order to do my part in trying to prevent her from further harm. This particular story of an unnamed woman parallels the story in Luke 8:43-48 of the woman who suffered from a “flow of blood for twelve years.” In a crowd on the street she walked up behind Jesus and touched him and was immediately healed due to her great faith. Unlike the woman in Luke chapter 8, the bleeding woman in my story received no immediate healing and may never know full wholeness again.
In 1989, Nanci Griffith released a song called “It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go.” Towards the end of the song, she sings, “I am guilty, I am war, I am the root of all evil.” These words have been etched in my heart and mind since returning from this most recent delegation to Palestine. We—namely, white Western Christians—are the root cause of the evil that is perpetuated by Israel against the Palestinians. In a desire to assuage ourselves of the guilt of the Nazi Holocaust, a true and horrific evil done to the Jewish people of Europe, we have given the green light to ceaseless bombing of Gaza and the continued ethnic cleansing of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. In our silence, we are complicit.
The story I’ve shared here today is just one part of this woman’s life, one tiny fragment of the human being's full story. Still, it speaks volumes to the realities that so many Palestinians suffer through every day. It is a cruel dichotomy to on the one hand watch the West refuse to lift a finger to help Palestinians, while on the other bearing witness to these daughters of Palestine who have gone through unspeakable horrors with seemingly no end in sight. Both myself and the unnamed woman in this story are created in the image of God. However, I get to have a name and she does not. I get to pen my name to her story while she has been denied the right to share her story herself. If I try to rationalize why I get to have one kind of experience in my womanly body while she is subjected to violence that words cannot possibly expain, it cannot be done. There is no rationalization, no justification in the world, that can possibly explain the reason. On top of being tortured during menstruation, this Divinely created daughter of Palestine doesn’t even get a name—because naming her puts her at imminent risk of more brutalization, more pain, and even death. In her resistance she stayed silent while being beaten, forced into further silence by the occupation. In my resistance I share her story loudly, forced by the occupation to be her voice.
Resistance for Palestinians comes in many forms, from throwing stones to simply staying on one's land. While it is resistance enough for Palestinians to remain in their demolished homes, it is not enough for us in America to simply exist and sit at home. I can do better. You can do better. We must do better. As people of faith we must act. We must act with conviction and be unafraid to speak honestly and with urgency to bring an end to this needless slaughter of an entire people group. As Jesus said in Matthew 25:40-45, “‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’” In our “not doing” we have signaled to our leaders, to the world, and most particularly to the Palestinian people that we simply do not care enough. My faith proclaims to me that all people are created equal, that all people deserve dignity, respect, and freedom and yet so many people who claim my faith—in thought, or practice, or both—do not understand this essential component of Christianity as I understand it. The call from Palestine is very simple, my friends: Do and risk whatever is necessary, and within your capacity, to bring an end to the ongoing Nakba in Palestine.
We must not continue to let the young people of Palestine start their stories with the words, “I’ve lost hope.”
Dee Roberts is a theological librarian and a member of the PJN Steering Committee. Having previously traveled to Palestine, she was a co-leader on the Lenten Solidarity and Witness delegation with FOSNA from March 7-17, 2025. Dee is active in the Atlanta, GA community working with multiple organizations to bring the liberation of Palestine into reality. She serves as one of the co-chairs for the PJN’s Hosanna Preaching Project which exists to challenge and equip activists, educators, and preachers to engage the issue of Palestinian justice from a stance of Christian solidarity with the Palestinian people and utilizing the best contemporary theological resources. In addition to working around Palestinian justice, Dee enjoys playing guitar and singing, hanging out with her two dogs, and attempting to be a gardener.