Rape is not resistance

I didn’t want to have to write another post about this, but it seems to be necessary.

I’d like to begin with Chanel Miller, who is an author. Miller came to public attention as the anonymous sexual assault victim of Brock Turner at Stanford University. In her memoir Know My Name, she writes:

“The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote recently, but particularly this week. The investigations into the sexual violence committed by Hamas during the October 7th massacre are ongoing, but more details were revealed in the last few days, and the details are unthinkable.

I will warn you that there are some descriptions to follow that are disturbing. But I will also note that as disturbing as the descriptions are, there is a greater disturbance, and that is the world’s silence. To the world, including UN Women and most all sexual assault and women’s advocacy groups around the globe, it would appear (to borrow Miller’s paraphrasing) that the pain of Israeli women is not more valuable than Hamas’s potential. Indeed, the women’s movement at large has decided that rape is now an act of resistance if it involves destabilizing and eradicating the state of Israel. For that cause, any amount of rape is acceptable because – as the saying goes – by any means possible.

Here is one testimonial that I have quoted from the press conference on sexual violence that took place this past Tuesday:

“I saw the terrorists bending her down, raping her and simply passing her on to the next. She was alive when they raped her. She was on her feet and bleeding from her back. He pulled her hair. He shot her in the head while raping her, didn't even lift his pants. They cut her breast and played with it on the street. They held up someone’s head as a show of strength, like a woman walking with a bag.”

As these additional horrific details emerge from the October 7 attacks, including further details of gang rapes, mutilations, sexual tortures and ultimate killings of women and little girls, the utter lack of response from the women's community, domestic violence organizations and sexual assault activists is unforgivable. Some of the savagery is unimaginable. Women were gang raped at the music festival next to dead bodies of their friends. Women were raped in front of their spouses in the presence of children in their own bedrooms. A pregnant woman's belly was sliced open. Little girls were found with their pants pulled down, and gunshots to the head in the rooms in which they were growing up. These horrendous acts are all elements of genocide.

And yet, silence. On Twitter aka X today, I found myself shrieking, red with rage. “You can publicly show advocacy for everyone else but not for Jews,” I wrote. “Even if you recognize the atrocities you are still too afraid to stand up for Jews. Value us. We deserve your screams. Scream with us.” How can we call our fellow women sisters any more, when our rapes either don’t matter to them, or they continue to cast doubt as to whether they happened at all, which - to me - is an even worse act of self-sabotage. That right there is ideological suicide. How can you call yourself a feminist and turn away from this, justify this, swallow this?

Below is part of one report that I read today. I have worked alongside survivors for years, but I have never read anything like the following eyewitness account:

Ladies of the international realm, let me ask you: What is the purpose of hiding these atrocities? Is it perhaps the case that the feminists of the world would rather hide them for the greater good of eradicating the Jews? Is that what’s at the heart of this? Because pray do tell me what happens when the Caliphate takes over the West and every woman, Jew or not, is fair game for the jihadists? Will that also be righteous resistance?

Before these new harrowing details emerged, I wrote an open letter some weeks ago. It was actually intended initially as a personal letter to one feminist who was expressing deplorable antisemitic rhetoric online. And yet it was clear to me that there was no conversation to be had there, so instead I published the letter as one addressing all white women, and I put it on Instagram. It was widely shared, and I wound up making an appearance on Sky News to discuss it.

I will re-share it here tonight:

Dear white feminists:

On October 7th, our lives changed beyond recognition. I will preface this by telling you that among all the various hats I wear the main one I wear, that I have worn proudly my entire life, is that I am a Jew. Because I am a Jew and a woman, I am also a feminist. We are born matriarchs.

On October 7th, there was a genocide in Southern Israel and over 1400 people were not just murdered but butchered in unimaginable ways. Women raped so violently their pelvises broke. Babies kidnapped. Elderly holocaust survivors killed and/or taken hostage. One baby was burned alive in an oven while the baby’s mother was being tortured in the same home, smelling the flesh of her newborn on fire. Entire kibbutzim were virtually wiped out. Is that ethnic cleansing? Or does it not count because Jews don’t count? There is absolutely no justification and no “context” for these acts of extreme violence. These are crimes against humanity. And now we find ourselves attempting to get our men, women and children back, and we’re told that our actions are wrong.

Your silence on these matters has made me question the purpose of your advocacy. I believe in free speech. You all have the freedom to say whatever you want. You, much like many other people who have jobs to do and expertise in specific fields, don’t seem to be using your platforms for feminism right now. Instead you’re using them to spread disinformation about a topic that doesn’t affect you, and that we Jews, and yes Zionist Jews (the vast majority of Jews), are expert in. “Free Palestine” seems to have become by and large the sole focus of all of your work. Many of you have driven your readers to raise money for “Gaza relief”, but do you know that Hamas – a terrorist regime – intercepts every little aid supply that finds its way into Gaza?

I’d like to point a few things as someone who knows exactly who they are and what they are talking about.

1/ There will be no ceasefire until Gaza is free from Hamas, and all 240+ of our hostages returned. To suggest any other course of action is “moral” is dishonest.

2/ There is not a single international law that Israel has broken in a defensive war that sets out to disarm and destroy Hamas; a terror regime who have built their entire society above a bunker of terror. It’s easy to make false allegations about war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and requires far more space and detail to unpick those bad faith accusations; accusations made with the impact of outrageous and irresponsibly used slogans. All of the accusations are in bad faith. I can refute anything you want to accuse Israel of.

However I’ve come to learn that many of you prefer to label Jews “trolls” and block us. Or you defer to your pick-me Jews who bend over backwards to accommodate your worldview, instead of ours. Burden of proof is on you to prove me wrong.

3/ There is no occupation. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005. Since then it has been controlled by Hamas - and the Palestinians have been subjugated by the autocracy of an Iranian-funded ISIS-style outpost. Hamas don’t care about Palestinians. In fact they hate Jews far more than they care for their own. Israel cares more about the Palestinians than Hamas. Ask the Palestinians who live within Israel’s borders. I can send some your way if you’d like them to tell you about their support of the IDF’s mission at this time. The support by Israeli Arabs for this war is an overwhelming majority.

4/ Israel is not a colonialist project. It is the indigenous homeland of the Jews who have had a constant presence in the land for thousands of years. The Jews can trace their indigenous rights back farther than any other people on earth. If anyone colonised Israel, it was every single nation who ruled it between Jewish majorities: from the Hellenistic Greeks to the Ottoman Empire to the British who ruled the Mandate of Palestine before 1948.

5/ Antisemitism is one word. No hyphen, as many of you spell it. It is defined by Jews. Nobody else. As white women, would you be comfortable to talk over Black people defining racial micro-aggressions; would you be comfortable if a straight person defined homophobia for you; would you think it appropriate if an SA survivor was told she was not experiencing misogyny as she was being gaslit and victim-shamed? No you wouldn’t. Why do you feel comfortable doing this to Jews?

Your advocacy IS antisemitic. You spread libel about the Jewish state. The only Jewish country in existence. And you call for a Free Palestine; from the river to the sea. Which is itself a racist and genocidal chant, demanding the ethnic cleansing of Jews. Antisemitism is a trick of the mind and it is akin to a mental disease. It is the original conspiracy theory. I can unpick this for you if you’re willing to trust an expert. I can also show you the historic ties between Palestinian Nationalism and Nazism. I can demonstrate to you how Hamas via their sloganeering and propaganda and their tragic and selfish appropriating of every single social justice cause has been an intentional and genius tactic to pick up where Goebbels left off. You are falling into the trap.

I see your ensnarement every time I have to watch my peers, my friends, my family be attacked in the most obscene way with the most ridiculous assertions. All of you point to the dead children of Gaza, and demand to know many Palestinian babies we want to kill! How many will be enough for us, personally. Do you see Jews and believe the age old trope that we are Christ killers? It sure seems that way, as you gobble up figures and “facts” disseminated to the worldwide media by Hamas; a worldwide media that was ready to accept that Israel bombed a hospital only a few weeks ago, and later had to apologize for their fatal error. We saw you show not an ounce of concern for the Jewish children slaughtered. You asked to see proof of their beheadings. You ask for no such proof from terrorists.

I want to inform you that Zionism is - again - a concept defined by Jews for Jews. Zionism is a simple belief in Jewish survival. It is the right for Jewish people to self-determine in our homeland. Do you care about our indigenous rights, or only everyone else’s? As feminists I’m sure the parallels between feminism and Zionism would be of interest to you. Those parallels are extraordinary and stunning. And the DARVO tactics used against Israel, Zionists and Jews by people spouting antizionist rhetoric and who victim-blame and gaslight with the ferocity and volume that you’ve all displayed are - once again - a frightening parallel.

The October 7 massacre was the most atrocious day of Jewish experience since the Holocaust. You feminist influencers are spreading Hamas propaganda that in itself will help to enable and drive up antisemitism all over the world, and further endanger not just Israel’s efforts to thwart Hamas, but the West’s efforts against Islamic fundamentalism.

I am a Zionist. A proud Jew. A survivor who continues to survive. There is nothing remotely depraved about my fight to persevere over terror. Join us, or go to hell.

In an attempt to make a more organized fight back against this silence, this week Israel launched a campaign titled #MeTooUnlessUrAJew and you can sign the letter here, which I have already done: https://www.metoo-unlessurajew.com/

We heard this week that one of the hostages in Gaza gave birth. A child has been born in the tunnels of terror. It is difficult to conceive how this fact in itself has not sent shockwaves of horror throughout the ether, and – again – especially throughout feminist spaces. The whole work of sexual assault communities is to secure connections between survivors, for it is survivors who understand the most what one another have endured. What is it about these Israeli/Jewish women that other survivors cannot empathize with? Why have feminists committed the cardinal sin of believing that there was more value to Hamas’s potential to destroy Israel on October 7th than there was to the safety and sanctity of the women who were put through unspeakable atrocities on that same day? I’d like to know if they have an answer beyond what we suspect: Jew hatred; a lack of ability to see a Jew as a victim; the dehumanization of Jews to such a degree that there is no capacity for empathy at all.

I fear there is no other answer. You’re not my sisters any more.

I’ll end on another quote from Chanel Miller:

“We don’t fight for our own happy endings. We fight to say you can’t. We fight for accountability. We fight to establish precedent. We fight because we pray we’ll be the last ones to feel this kind of pain.”

On Shabbat, Jewish women welcome in the day of rest by lighting candles in our homes. Jewish women are the cornerstone of Jewish life. Jewish women are the throughline. Without Jewish women, there would be no light left. There would be no Jews. We must scream it until they’re forced to see the desecration of our mothers, our sisters, our daughters. We must scream so that not a single Jewish woman has to feel this pain again.