Today no jokes, memes, politics, or culture. Just Israel, Hamas, women & children

Why did it take nearly two months for feminists and women's rights groups to speak out on behalf of the Israeli women & girls raped and brutalized by Hamas?

Newsletter # 148

These days our screens are filled with heart-crushing images of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and the terrible death and destruction in its wake. I grieve for the more than 15,000 Gazans, 70% of them women and children, who’ve been killed in this tragic incarnation of a century old conflict. I despise Hamas for starting it. I’m sad that the Palestinians rarely get the leaders they deserve. I deplore Israel’s high tolerance for “collateral damage.” I feel the anguish of the Palestinian boy (below) and the many thousands of children traumatized by appalling deprivation, chaos and violence.

At the same time, as a Jew and as a woman, I refuse to let Hamas’ brutal assault on Israeli women and girls be forgotten in the fog of war. I feel obligated to describe every violent act committed by Hamas on Jewish female bodies since Oct 7 lest the erasure of those unpleasant “details” facilitates the terrorists’ campaign to rebrand themselves as “freedom fighters.”

Some people are in denial; rapes didn’t happen, they say; Israel faked the murders. Others accept the facts but are chillingly dismissive of the victims, calling them the unavoidable by-product of a noble rebellion. These apologists sugar-coat Hamas’ heinous acts with the honeyed balm of “national liberation” or the slippery rhetoric of “popular resistance.” Still others don’t have the stomach to confront the graphic horrors of that day, (or, for that matter, to contemplate a future hyper-militarized Israel forced to shrink its borders or annex part of Gaza to distance its population from the dozens of October 7s Hamas has warned are yet to come.)

This description of “The 43-minute film of the Hamas massacre” will give you a sense of the unspeakable crimes committed that day — though the London Times reporter who wrote the story admits he couldn’t muster the courage to tell the worst of it. For the worst of it, you’ll need to steel yourself before encountering Medialine’s article, “Evidence on Display at Israel’s Forensic Pathology Center Confirms Hamas’ Atrocities.”

Be prepared to recoil at the sight of defiled Jewish women, children’s blood-soaked mattresses, babies shot point blank in their cribs, their tiny onesies riddled with bullet holes. Don’t sweep those ghastly images under the rug of despair. Make sure others see them. It’s a travesty to look away.

However, that’s what so many of my feminist “sisters” have been doing for the last eight weeks. To their everlasting shame, they turned a blind eye to these “incidents” even as unimpeachable evidence, including survivors’ testimony and footage from Hamas body cams, mounted. The devil is literally in the details, and the diabolical terrorists advertised their own evil.

THE BETRAYAL OF JEWISH WOMEN BY THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

You’d think it a no-brainer for decent people, regardless of their political views, to instantly and unequivocally condemn the atrocities carried out by Hamas on Oct 7. If no one else, certainly, the feminist community should have been quick to denounce the perpetrators of horrific acts against hundreds of Israeli women and girls. These acts, the very definition of gender-based violence, include multiple gang rapes, sexual mutilation, abject humiliation, the slicing of breasts, the evisceration of a pregnant woman and abuse of her dead fetus, the planting of a live grenade inside a woman’s vagina, the desecration of the corpses of murdered women and girls.

You may know the general outlines of these crimes against (female) humanity, but in this case, general knowledge is insufficient. Please don’t look away

#ME TOO — UNLESS YOU’RE A JEW

Protesters outside the UN, last week, lamenting that “Believe All

Women” doesn’t seem to apply to Jews. [Credit: Dana Gat]

For eight weeks, Jewish organizations — among them, notably, the National Council for Jewish Women — hammered away at the depraved violence perpetrated on Israeli women and girls while other feminist leaders and media ignored those crimes because its victims were Israelis. Or, perhaps — let’s face it — because they were Jews.

Astonishingly, hundreds of college administrators and professors, including those in departments labeled “Women’s and Gender Studies,” claimed the only way to respect students’ diverse views on Israel-Palestine was to remain “neutral” about Hamas. I can’t know if Jewish women’s suffering was neutralized because the events of Oct 7 happened in Israel, a contentious place, or because the current political climate has allowed antisemitism to bubble up from the depths and go mainstream. Sadly, I do know that Jew-hating is not a new feminist phenomenon. Way back in 1982. I catalogued its many permutations in my Ms. magazine article, “Antisemitism in the Women’s Movement.” In the years since, it reared its head in various forms — the competition of tears between Jews and Blacks, the brouhaha around who was permitted to stand under what banners at the Women’s March of 2017. (Zionists not allowed.)

Full-page ad in the NY Times December 4, 2023 sponsored by Women Building an Alternative.

But in 2023, for Jewish feminists like myself, the movement’s deafening silence about Hamas’ sadistic abuse constituted a shocking betrayal. We discovered, writ large, that any form of Palestinian resistance trumps the safety of Jewish women. Progressives who did acknowledge that a tsunami of gender-based violence had taken place in Israel minimized its impact and implored us to put it “in historical and political context” or to consider “the complexity of the situation,” as if something, anything, could justify the mass torture and murder of women and girls. Photos of Jewish hostages — infants, children, old women — were ripped from lamp posts, as if, unseen, they might be forgotten.

You can be sure that women who now excuse Hamas’ travesties never would have forgotten or remained “neutral” about #MeToo sex predators. Nor would they have considered “context” or “complexity” before condemning the U.S. soldiers who committed the My Lai massacre, or the U.S. interrogators who tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

So why did it take nearly eight weeks for UN Women — the international organization whose purpose is to protect and defend “A woman’s right to live free from violence?”— to protect and defend the right of Israeli and other women to be safe in their own country. Read this and this and this for more on that shameful farrago.

* Why did my favorite feminist periodical, Ms., pull its punches? Along with a few other petitioners, Gloria Steinem and I, both co-founders of the magazine, pressed its current editors for in-depth coverage of the fate of women and girls on the ground in Israel. Yet in a November online post, Ms. ran a piece on “Combating Terrorism and Misogyny Together” without even a passing mention of the events of Oct 7. And when the magazine did turn its attention to female casualties of the war, it was to pay tribute to the journalists of all nationalities who were killed while doing their jobs, not to the ordinary women and girls who, one by one, were targeted by Hamas for torture, rape, and slaughter. Can you imagine Ms. ignoring hundreds of Black or other women of color who’d been similarly victimized and massacred in one day. I can’t.

*And why has intersectionality, a key ethos of 21st century feminism, become judenrein? (Translation: Jews, per se, must not be excluded from the categories of distress or discrimination that are germane to human experience and relied upon to fuel coalition-building and global sisterhood. )

FINALLY SOME POWERFUL TRUTH-TELLERS

*Yesterday at a UN summit on gender-based violence, co-organized by Sherry Sandler, the National Council of Jewish Women, and other groups, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) gave one of the most extraordinary, passionate, pro-woman speeches I’ve heard in the last 50 years. (Full text here.) “You can’t unsee when you see it,” she said. “The barbaric acts are beyond anything we have seen.”

*At the same UN event, Hillary Clinton was crystal clear and unequivocal. “As a global community, we must respond to weaponized sexual violence wherever it happens, with absolute condemnation. There can be no justifications and no excuses.”

*A Muslim-American activist Anila Ali, who works to promote the rights of women in conflict zones, arrived in Israel with a message for Palestinian women and a blast at the "hypocrisy" of international women's groups pledge to end gender-based violence. “You can't choose victims and decide that you only support the rights of women who aren't Israelis. Even if you don't agree politically with everything that's happening here, you must stand up for the truth.

TAKE A STAND

*I just signed the following document. If you count yourself an advocate for the safety of all women, I hope you will, too.

“Statement by Women’s Rights Leaders on Rape Atrocities During the October 7th Attacks”

“As women’s rights activists and leaders, we stand for the right of every woman and girl, of every nationality, religion, and community, to live free of all forms of violence, including rape and sexual assault.

“In the weeks since October 7th, overwhelming evidence has emerged that widespread, horrific acts of rape and sexual violence were systematically perpetrated by Hamas attackers against Israeli women and girls during the October 7th assault. The evidence includes forensic examinations of Israeli victims’ bodies bearing signs of rape and torture; eyewitness testimony by survivors of the October 7th attacks who saw women being raped and mutilated; the testimony of a paramedic who discovered the bodies of two young adolescent Israeli girls in their bedroom, one with her pants pulled down, semen on her back, and a fatal bullet wound to the back of her neck, and the other murdered on her bed with her legs covered in bruises; video footage filmed by Hamas attackers and recovered from their devices, which recorded actual rapes, including gang rapes, of Israeli women and girls, and which has been viewed and attested to by American journalists and elected officials; videos which have been made public showing a young Israeli woman with bloodied pants, being dragged by her hair in and out of a vehicle by Hamas abductors, and another young woman stripped to her underwear with Hamas abductors on top of her; and testimony being compiled by an independent, nongovernmental commission investigating war crimes perpetrated against women and children by Hamas on October 7th.

“The undersigned have marched, organized, and spoken out for women of every race, religion, identity, and nationality. Our hearts break for all victims of gender based atrocities, and our hearts break for these specific victims, the Israeli women and girls raped and sexually tortured on and after October 7th. Despite our different backgrounds and perspectives, we stand united in these principles:

We denounce the use of rape as a weapon of war, which is a crime against humanity;

We call for a thorough, skillful, and unbiased investigation by international human rights investigators of acts of rape and sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israeli women and girls on and after October7th; 

We call for perpetrators of war crimes to be held accountable by all relevant authorities including the International Criminal Court.

We demand the immediate, unconditional release of all remaining hostages, so that they can receive desperately needed treatment for trauma and other serious medical conditions; we affirm that continuing to hold these kidnapped hostages captive is an ongoing violation of international law; and we say to these hostages and their loved ones: you are not alone.

“We grieve as we witness the heartbreaking anguish of women, children, and all those who suffer through no fault of their own in both Israel and Gaza. We mourn the deaths of so many Palestinian and Israeli civilians who have been killed in this war. We long for a just peace. To denounce rape as a weapon of war is not to express approval or alignment with the governing coalition in Israel, nor does it signal support for the bombings in Gaza. But as feminists we are committed to the universal principle that rape must always be condemned; we bear witness to the mountain of evidence that Hamas and other terrorist groups used rape as a weapon of war against Israeli women and girls; and we demand accountability for crimes that must never be tolerated by the world community. Most of all, we stand with the victims of gender based atrocities, with the survivors and with those who did not survive, and we raise our voices in solidarity with them.”

Please sign onto the above statement here.

MORE REASONS TO STOP VALORIZING HAMAS

Those on the left, especially young Jewish idealists and LGBTQ+ folks many of whom have dubbed Hamas “liberators” or “freedom fighters,” owe it to themselves to read every word of the group’s founding Covenant (1988) and its revised charter (2017).

The covenant says, Israel “will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." More recently, a senior Hamas official vowed that they will repeat the attacks of Oct 7 again and again and again. When asked whether they intend the complete annihilation of Israel, he replied: “Yes, of course.” How can Jewish idealists stand with a group that has sworn to exterminate us?

More from the Covenant: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” Note: the enemy is not Israel, it’s “the Jews.” Hamas itself makes clear what others continue to obfuscate: That to be for Hamas is to be against the Jews. For years, those of us who’ve advocated for Palestinians’ right to self-determination and statehood were always careful to distinguish their just cause from the goals of terrorist organizations like Hamas. Sadly, that distinction has been blurred as Hamas works to normalize its barbaric brand of resistance, and proPalestinian demonstrators and others rush to genuflect before the killers.

Meanwhile, the post war future is a big fat question mark. Israel has no discernible end game. All we know is Netanyahu’s extreme right wing government is determined to to control security in the Gaza Strip while abjuring the responsibilities of reoccupation. At the end of the hostilities, Mahmoud Abbas, the deeply unpopular octogenarian president of the infamously corrupt Palestinian Authority (who is currently in the 18th year of his four year term), is unlikely to be deemed a worthy steward to rebuild and govern Gaza. In the absence of a “white knight” hiding in the wings, were elections ever again to be held in the West Bank, it’s a sad but safe bet that, regardless of its abysmal disregard for the well being of its own people, Hamas would win.

Palestinian women cheering Hamas today need to wrap their brains around what their lives would be like tomorrow if the militants succeed in establishing an Islamist Caliphate in Gaza and the West Bank and imposing sharia law on all its citizens. The imams would control what women wear, whether they can attend school, travel, or work outside the home, and who they can marry. Violators could get stoned or killed. Men would control female freedom and reproductive rights. Honor killings and violence against women would be tolerated. In short, Palestine would become Iran.

If you know people who’ve been brandishing one of those antisemitic pro-Hamas signs in the misguided belief that it conveys their support for Palestinian freedom, ask them if they themselves would be willing to be governed by militant Islamic fundamentalists whose ideology is larded with misogyny, Jew-hatred, homophobia, and male supremacy and whose leaders are capable of beheading men, shooting defenseless women, raping girls, and burning babies to a crisp so charred that there’s no DNA left to identify them. Given those facts, the sign below “By Any Means Necessary,” strikes me as as terrifying harbinger of more horror to come.

* This critique must not be misread as negation of the Palestinian cause. I’ve been advocating for Palestinian statehood and protesting the Occupation for more than 30 years. Today, I’m belaboring the details of the terrorists’ cruelty not to eclipse the extreme suffering of Palestinians at the hands of Israel but to underscore the lack of outrage or compassion for Jewish suffering at the hands of Hamas.

A GLIMMER OF HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

*When you feel overwhelmed by despair, take a look at “An Israeli-Palestinian Conversation on Pain, Hope, and a New Political Vision.” This recorded webinar, hosted by A Land for All, amplifies the group’s joint support for a confederation of two peoples in two states sharing one homeland.

Since I won’t be posting another Newsletter this month, please accept my warmest wishes for a light-filled Hanukkah, merry Christmas, joyful Kwanzaa, and happy New Year. And if you’re a believer, please pray for peace!