In an article on the Unherd portal, journalist Nicole Lampert criticized the silence of feminists in the face of Hamas’ attacks on Jewish women and revealed a rescuer’s testimony about violations committed with cruelty.
The English title, which refers to the “MeToo” movement that went viral in 2017, is a provocative synthesis whose rhyme is lost in translation: “MeToo, unless you are a Jew” (“MeToo, unless you are a Jew” ).
Nicole began the text by recalling the BBC’s reluctance to report that Jews were the main victims of the German Nazis when a concentration camp (BergenBelsen) was liberated in 1945. She then pointed to a “similar reticence” about the October 7, 2023 massacre, leading to denial:
“We see it in the posters of kidnapped Israelis that are defaced by people who claim they are ‘propaganda,’ in the antiSemitic disinformation spread online, and in the weekly proPalestinian demonstrations that fail to denounce Hamas terrorism .” But perhaps what’s strangest is the silence from organizations and activist groups dedicated to fighting for women’s safety.
After Hamas terrorists began murdering, raping and kidnapping as many women as possible, one would expect widespread condemnation from feminist groups in the West. “Finally, Hamas had provided enough evidence of its crimes within hours it published images of kidnapped young women in bloody pants parading through Gaza.”
Nicole refers to the case of 19yearold student Naama Levy, the hostage with stained pants ridiculed in Brazil by Sayid Marcos Tenório, a PCdoB extremist. Another highprofile case was that of 23yearold German DJ and tattoo artist Shani Louk, who appeared halfnaked in the back of a pickup truck in Gaza in which terrorists were parading. Weeks later, Israel located part of her skull and concluded that she had been decapitated.
“Even before that, her feminist credentials didn’t shine: [o Hamas] mandated the wearing of the hijab, made traveling without a male guardian illegal and refused to ban physical or sexual abuse within the family.
The reaction of most groups working to end violence against women and girls [VAWG, na sigla em inglês] It was threefold: silence, not believing the victims, or suggesting that they deserved their fate. In the words of 140 American “prominent feminist scholars,” solidarity with Israeli women means giving in to “colonial feminism.”
Here in the UK, this approach is perhaps most clearly expressed in the work of Sisters Uncut, a charity that prides itself on being a “feminist” and works to “take direct action on domestic violence services.” Until this month, activists’ work generally took the form of media stunts: turning the water in Trafalgar Square fountains red, raising rape alarms outside police stations and occupying the rooftops of city buildings. However, it all paled in comparison to the demonstration they organized earlier this month: a call for Israel to lay down its arms, which ultimately led to the closure of Liverpool Street station in London.
The charity later released a 600word statement with references to “apartheid” and “genocide” as well as sincedebunked reports that Israeli forces had bombed AlAhli Hospital in Gaza. However, there was no mention of the 239 kidnapped Israelis, around 100 of whom are believed to be women, and the October 7 sexual assaults. When journalist Hadley Freeman pointed out that this was not particularly feminist, the group responded by claiming that Hamas’s reports of sexual assault amounted to an “Islamophobic and racist reframing of sexual violence.” At the end of his rambling statement, he concluded: “No people would ever accept being murdered, humiliated, dispossessed, targeted by racial discrimination, oppressed, purified, exiled and colonized without resisting.”
Other feminist groups have fallen into a similar victimblaming stance. Southall Black Sisters, another charity working to end violence against women, at least lamented the loss of life on both sides, but blamed it on the Israeli government’s “declaration of war on Gaza.” Elsewhere, Women for Women UK, which specializes in supporting “female war survivors” and describes itself as a “nonpartisan organisation”, has decided to raise money just for Palestinian women. Even Women’s Place UK, once considered an outlier for its bold campaign for womenonly spaces, decided to call for an “immediate ceasefire” without mentioning sexual violence.
In fact, Jewish Women’s Aid is the only VAWG charity in the UK to have reported Hamas sexual violence. “Such acts have lasting impacts on survivors and damaging psychological impacts on women, particularly women who are victims of sexual violence,” it said in a statement. “The public silence of many organizations in the UK domestic/sexual abuse sector further impacts the isolation and fear our clients face.”
For a British Jew from an antiVAWG group who has been active in the sector for 20 years, the silence from other organizations was to be expected: “I’ve seen this become a real thing in the last few years where ideas be imported.” from America: If you are white, you will always be the oppressor. If you work for one of these charities you are used to a victimperpetrator narrative, which is usually true in the context of domestic violence but not when it comes to geopolitics.”
She describes how her staff were told during mandatory training at the last charity she worked for that Jews do not experience racism. “Incredibly, they used World War II as an example of racism, but antiblack racism because of the way West Indian people were treated.”
For those whose daughters were kidnapped by Hamas, the sense of betrayal is palpable. “It’s unbelievable that groups like the Red Cross and UN Women are doing nothing to help our people,” Keren Sharf Shem, whose 21yearold FrenchIsraeli daughter Mia was kidnapped at the Nova music festival, told me. “It is right that the people of Gaza receive humanitarian aid, but we deserve the same… From a message that Mia sent to a friend, I know that she was shot in the leg.” She also has an illness and the hostage video shows her after arm surgery. That was weeks ago I don’t know if she’s still alive. And there are other sick people, as well as babies and a pregnant woman. A lot of people seem to have forgotten them.’
To remedy this situation, Israeli feminists this week introduced the hashtag #MeToo_Unless_Ur_A_Jew, a campaign calling on the UN Women’s group to focus on genderbased violence against Israeli women. “UN Women turns a blind eye to Hamas’ atrocious war crimes by remaining silent,” they said.
On the same line, Claire Waxman, London’s first victims’ commissioner, wrote to Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on VAWG, asking why the organization had remained silent. Waxman responded to me that Alsalem claimed the evidence was “not strong” enough to warrant testimony. Pointing out that November 25 is the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls, an incredulous Waxman says: “How can we talk about eliminating violence against women and girls when we implicitly say that it is Is it acceptable to rape Jewish women?”
To counter this narrative, the Civilian Commission on the October 7 Crimes Against Hamas Women and Children was also formed this week and is currently collecting testimonies about Hamas’s atrocities, from victim reports and eyewitness accounts to images taken by Hamas itself were published. Many rape victims are dead or kidnapped; others are too traumatized to speak. But the story that is now emerging is unbearable in its horror a story of gang rape of women and children, of women’s corpses being cut open during or after sexual assaults, and of genital mutilation.
Nachman Dyksztejna, a UkrainianIsraeli, is one of those whose testimony testifies to these horrors. As a volunteer first responder for an organization called Zaka, he was sent to several massacre sites, including the Nova festival site and several kibbutzim. To avoid a repeat of the trauma, Zaka recorded his statement along with psychological support and sent me a written translation. Zaka also provided photos to support his descriptions. (The editors of this publication also saw them.)
Dyksztejna’s statement reproduced in the next two paragraphs is among the most shocking I have ever read and can be ignored if necessary:
“In Kibbutz Be’eri, I witnessed the bodies of two women with their hands and legs tied to a bed. One of the bodies we found was sexually terrorized by having a knife inserted into her vagina and all of her internal organs removed. After brutally raping these women, Hamas blew up the house above them, which is why we found them under a pile of stones.
The minishelters that had been broken into, scattered from the Nova party site to Highway 34, were full of women. Her clothes were torn at the top, but her buttocks were completely bare. Heaps of women, corpses lying like that. When you looked closer at their heads, you could see that each one had a single shot directly into the brain.’”
At the end of the article, Nicole recalled the 1945 episode when war correspondent Richard Dimbleby who threatened to resign from the BBC in the event of censorship and managed to secure a deal to publish part of the report collapsed several times during his reporting Belsen experienced what he later described as a “nightmare.”
“But he knew he had to witness the horror just as Israelis today feel they have no choice but to report what they saw. However, is that enough if videos created by the perpetrators themselves are not considered “valid” evidence? For a long time, the mantra of feminist organizations has been: “Believe her.” However, as last month showed, this only goes so far and becomes meaningless when you live in Israel.”
The antagonist notes that the situation in Brazil is not very different, since the feminist movement has also been exploited by the left, which, under the leadership of Lula, only advocates for women when the initiative is consistent with its politicalideological agenda. In other words, mess with one, mess with all, except if one is Jewish. Or on the right, of course.
Islamic antiSemitism and the complicit far left