There is a profound but upsetting appropriateness to the publication of a UN report into the rapes and sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7 in the same week as International Women’s Day.

For months after the massacre there was a wall of denial that sought to dismiss the overwhelming evidence of what happened as fiction. That was particularly troubling from the many women’s organisations, which are normally at the forefront of campaigning against sexual violence but which had absolutely nothing to say when the victims were Jews.

It was not even a sin of omission: it was a deliberate and wilful dismissal not just of the trauma of the victims of Hamas’ brutality but of the pain, anger and, yes, terror felt by Jewish women in the diaspora.

The silence was a sickening realisation of the extent to which anti-Jewish hate was so all-consuming that some supposed feminists could not bring themselves to empathise with Jewish women.

UN envoy Pramila Patten’s report is far from perfect. It refers to “reasonable grounds” to believe that rapes took place in at least three locations across southern Israel, as if it was just a credible supposition.

But elsewhere it does speak of the “clear and convincing” information showing conflict-related sexual violence was carried out by Hamas terrorists including acts of rape and gang rape.

So now even the UN, which has a long and disreputable history of siding against Israel no matter how many intellectual contortions are required, accepts the sexual violence as fact.

Which begs the question to those women’s groups that continue to stay silent over this: what is it about the rape and assault of Jewish women that you find acceptable?