The Silence of Feminists Groups Over October 7th is Deafening

The Silence of Feminists Groups Over October 7th is Deafening

Considering the horrors committed against Israeli women, you would think more women’s groups would speak out.

Nicole Lampert writes at Unherd:

MeToo unless you’re a Jew

The events of October 7 do not compare to the Holocaust, but a similar reluctance to consider both its primary victims remains. We see it in the defaced posters of kidnapped Israelis by people who claim they are “propaganda”, in the antisemitic disinformation peddled online, and in the weekly pro-Palestine demonstrations that fail to call out Hamas’s terrorism. But perhaps most peculiarly, we also see it in the silence of organisations and activist groups dedicated to fighting for women’s safety.

After Hamas terrorists set about murdering, raping and abducting as many women as they could, one might have expected widespread condemnation from the West’s feminist groups. After all, Hamas had provided enough evidence of its crimes — within hours, they were posting footage of abducted young women in bloodied trousers being paraded around Gaza. Even beforehand, its feminist credentials were hardly glowing: it mandates the hijab, has made it illegal to travel without a male guardian, and refused to ban physical or sexual abuse within the family.

The response among the majority of groups committed to ending violence against women and girls (VAWG) was threefold: to keep quiet, to disbelieve the victims, or to insinuate they deserved their fate. In the words of 140 American “prominent feminist scholars”, to stand in solidarity with Israeli women is to give in to “colonial feminism”.

Here in the UK, this approach is perhaps best embodied in the work of Sisters Uncut, a charity that boasts its own “Feministo” committed to “taking direct action for domestic violence services”. Until this month, the activists’ work has generally taken the form of media-savvy stunts: dyeing the water of Trafalgar Square’s fountains red, setting off rape alarms outside police stations, occupying the roofs of council buildings. Yet all paled in comparison to the demonstration it organised earlier this month: a call for Israel to put down its weapons that ultimately shut down London’s Liverpool Street Station.

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