From Bari Weiss' Why are feminists silent on rape and murder? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFVXFXZ9xGA&t=555s):
These terrorists, driven by an extreme Islamist ideology, were opposed to the civilization that these girls believed
was their birthright. The right to be educated, the right to be independent, the right to chart
their own destinies. And so they kidnapped them. When the world heard the news of this
faraway story, people were outraged and empathetic. The first lady
of the United States saw it on the news. Those could be my daughters, she thought, and compelled by
what I imagine was a combination of maternal instinct and a sense of duty to speak out against evil,
she took to Twitter and demanded “Bring back our girls.” Within
days, women around the world, leaders in Washington, and celebrities in Hollywood
followed suit. They knew that they had an audience. They knew that they had platforms,
and they wanted to do everything they could to call attention to this atrocity. What I’m describing
was the righteous outrage in the West in response to the kidnapping and sexual slavery
of 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria when they were kidnapped by the Islamist
militant organization Boko Haram in April 2014. Michelle Obama,
Oprah, Malala Yousafzai, Alicia Keys, Angelina Jolie,
Kim Kardashian, and the rest of the civilized world saw a story of good versus evil,
and so they spoke out about it. The situation could not have been clearer, nor
could the moral imperative for those with power to do something about it. And power they had.
President Obama wound up deploying American troops to assist in the search for the schoolgirls in Nigeria.
Nearly ten years later, on October 7, 2023, terrorists
driven by an extremist Islamist ideology kidnapped another group of teenage girls
thousands of miles away. These men brutalized and abducted the girls
and many others, including soldiers, innocent men, women, the elderly, children,
and even babies. All told, there were over 240 of them.
The terrorists took these people, some of whom were still in their pajamas, into tunnels
deep underground. This wasn’t Boko Haram and it wasn’t in Nigeria.
It was Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the ruling Islamist factions
in the Gaza Strip. And the people taken were Israelis. In this case,
there were no viral hashtag campaigns. There were no clear and urgent statements
from female leaders, the kinds of feminists that so many young girls look up to and have come
to rely on for their information about the world. No Michelle Obama. No Malala.
No Emma Watson. No Greta Thunberg. No America Ferrera. And I could go on
and on and on. There has been no relentless rallying cry from our prominent women’s
organizations. Instead, there has been silence. Silence
from the leaders of the #MeToo movement. Silence from the celebrities who spoke at the Women’s
March and in Time’s Up. Silence from those who denounced pay gaps
and Harvey Weinstein and Trump’s “Grab them by the pussy” comment and rape culture
more generally. Silence from people who oppose Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Silence, save one weak statement 55 days after October 7 from UN Women,
a group whose mission is to, quote, “create an environment in which every woman and girl
can exercise her human rights.” When I saw the list of women’s
rights organizations who have said nothing, I nearly choked.
Where is the solidarity for women in this country and in this world to stand up for our mothers,
our sisters, and our daughters? Silence for two months after October 7
from the National Organization for Women, the largest feminist activist organization
in the United States. And when they finally did muster out a statement, they didn’t even mention
Hamas. Silence from the International Committee of the Red Cross,
who is supposed to be an independent and neutral organization, to, quote, “ensure
humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of war and armed violence”
and to promote the laws that protect victims of war. Silence
from almost every organization you would expect to care about these women and these hostages, organizations who are chartered to actually do this work to protect these hostages
and to make a difference. Daily, many of these people in these groups call for a
cease-fire in Gaza, but they are silent about the hostages.
Why do they cry for a cease-fire and not insist on freeing the hostages?
The very thing that could actually end the war? There are 136 hostages still
being held by Hamas in Gaza right this moment. Some of those people
are dead. Two of them are babies. About 20 of them
are young women. And it has been 100 days since they disappeared
beneath the earth’s surface in Gaza. In those 100 days,
thanks to those hostages who have been released, and thanks to the intrepid work of journalists in Israel
and across the world, we have learned a great deal about what the feminists of the world
are choosing largely to ignore. They are ignoring hostages who have been seriously
wounded, shot or with dismembered limbs, who are without medical care.
They are ignoring hostages who don’t have enough food and water. They are ignoring hostages
who are being beaten and tortured. They are ignoring hostages who have been sitting for
100 days in the pits of hell, as if all of that wouldn’t
be bad enough. But what they are also ignoring is the ongoing subjugation of those
some 20 remaining women. And that is not hyperbole or hysteria or speculation
or claims made by politicians to make a political point or advance the aims of the broader war.
It is firsthand testimony that is coming out of the mouths of women
who were there and who saw what was happening with their own eyes. One released
hostage, 17-year-old Agam Goldstein-Almog, told The Free Press
that about 50 days into her captivity, she met some of these young women in the tunnels,
some of whom still had bloody gunshot wounds that had been left untreated, and one of whom
had a dismembered limb. They told Agam that they had been sexually abused.
Here is what Agam told us. “I heard from them accounts of terrifying
and grotesque sexual abuse,” she said, “often at gunpoint.”
“They told me that when they were sad and cried, their captors would take advantage
of their helplessness even more and stroke and caress them and then shove and grab
intimate parts of their bodies. They were treated,” Agam told us, “like playthings.” Chen
Goldstein-Almog, Agam’s mother, who was held hostage with her daughter, told
The New York Times that she, too, met women in the tunnels who said they were sexually abused.
In recounting a conversation she had with these hostages, Chen told Israeli media
that Hamas, quote, “simply put a gun to their heads and did what they wanted
to them at gunpoint.” Twenty-one-year-old Mia Shen, who was released
after 54 days in captivity, told Israeli media that before she was taken to Gaza,
she was, quote, “groped on her upper body by her first kidnapper.” It was only when he realized
that her arm was severed, she said, that he stopped.
When she got to Gaza, she said she feared death and she feared rape.
She said she thinks the only reason she wasn’t raped in captivity is because her captor’s
wife and children were present in the home the whole time. Did he ever do something
like that? No.
Only because his wife was outside the door. If we were there alone, something was bound to happen
Aviva Siegal, 64 years old, was held in Gaza for more than 50 days.
Her husband is still in captivity. She testified before a Knesset committee
that she witnessed a woman being tortured and another who showed signs that her captor had violated her.
It’s not
just the released hostages giving these testimonies. One of the doctors who treated the released hostages
reported that ten of the people who were freed, including men, were sexually abused
in captivity. Another doctor said that among the 30 female hostages that he treated
between the ages of 12 to 48, many suffered sexual assault during captivity.
Another doctor said that many of the released female hostages showed signs of PTSD
and said that the patients are, quote, “deeply traumatized by extremely serious
sexual assaults.” None of this should come as a surprise,
because the entire world saw what Hamas did on October 7 aboveground
in broad daylight, proudly captured in their own photographs and videos
for the entire world to see. The extent of the rape and sexual violence
by Hamas on October 7 has been well documented in pictures,
in videos, in eyewitness accounts, in testimony from rescue teams and medics,
in testimony from pathologists, and from people who prepared Jewish bodies for burial,
according to Jewish law. A New York Times investigation last month—the
haunting must-read piece is called “Screams Without Words”—reported
that medics found more than 30 bodies of women and girls with their clothes torn off
and with signs of sexual abuse. They reviewed photographs of one woman’s
corpse with, quote, “dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.”
They also reviewed a video provided by the Israeli military, quote, “showing two dead
Israeli soldiers at a base near Gaza who appeared to have been shot directly in their vaginas.”
One witness, a 24-year-old woman named Sapir, who survived the Nova Festival on October 7,
spoke to the Times about what she saw that day. And this next part is hard for me to read,
and it may be hard for you to listen to, but I think it’s important for me to read it. Quote: “The first victim
she said she saw was a young woman with copper-colored hair, blood running down her back,
pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over.
Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife
into her back.” She said she then watched another woman, quote, ‘shredded into pieces.’
While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off
her breast. One continues to rape her and the other throws her breasts to someone else
and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the ground.
She said the men sliced her face and then the woman fell out of view.
Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads
of three more women.” Another witness at Nova, Raz Cohen
told the Times, and later CNN, of a gang rape he witnessed at the festival on October 7.
00:14:12:01 - 00:15:04:12 It was like a half-circle,
and the girl was in the middle of the circle. And after they
pulled the cloths off the girl,
they started to—one of them started to
rape her. And then—it was something like
forty seconds, and then after
he raped her, he take a knife
and he kill her, murder her. And after he did it,
he continue to rape the dead body. In countless IDF testimonies,
soldiers and medics and volunteers have testified to what they found in the homes of the kibbutzim
near Gaza. One rescue officer testified that when he entered the home
of one of the communities attacked, he found a 14- or 15-year-old girl who had been raped
and then killed, shot in the head in her bedroom next to her sister.
Some first responders testified that they couldn’t even tell if the bodies they found
were men or women. That’s how badly these people were mutilated. 00:15:51:20 - 00:15:59:15 I saw in front of my eyes
a woman laying. She was naked.
She had nails and different objects
in her female organs.
Her body was brutal in a way that we could not identify her.
Others who work for the military morgue testified that they saw, quote, “women with bloody underwear,
with broken bones, broken legs, and broken pelvises.” As the Times
investigation points out, the true number of women assaulted on October 7 will never be known.
And that’s because some of the bodies were burned so badly that they weren’t bodies in the end at all.
And it’s also because Jewish religious ritual dictates that bodies be buried as quickly as possible,
usually the day after death. And, of course, there was the absolute chaos of the days following the attack,
when terrorists were still roaming free in southern Israel and where Israeli medics and volunteers
were simply unable to keep up with the death toll and the destruction. At the Nova Festival site, to choose
just one example, bodies were hauled away by the truckload, more than 360 of them
at that particular site. Now, imagine right now if one of these 18-
or 19-year-olds being held by Hamas was your daughter.
Imagine if the world—imagine if other mothers and daughters and women
did not scream on your behalf. That silence alone would be unimaginable.
But then imagine if some of them didn’t just not speak up for you, but instead they berated you
or suggested that your child somehow deserved it. That’s exactly
what happened to the mother of one teenage girl who currently remains in captivity.
Last month in New York City, a group of anti-Israel protesters harassed Dr.
Ayelet Levy-Shachar, the mother of a 19-year-old girl, Naama,
who was taken hostage on October 7. “Shame on you,” they yelled at the grieving
mother. Ayelet’s 19-year-old daughter
Naama Levy was taken hostage by Hamas in a now-infamous video. Her hands were bound,
her ankles were cut, her pants were soaked in blood, and she is stolen away by screaming terrorists
with automatic weapons, spirited away into the back of a black jeep.
Or take how the Red Cross responded to the family of Doron Steinbrecher, a 30-year-old woman
being held by Hamas in Gaza without her medication. The family told Jake Tapper
that when they begged the Red Cross for help, the Red Cross actually told the family,
you should focus your concerns on Gazans. 00:18:55:15 - 00:19:16:14 My mom had a few minutes with
the Red Cross, and she told them my sister needs to get her medicine.
And they told her that we should care more about the
people on the other side and less about
our beloved ones. Or take just this week, when a San Francisco man who lost five family members
at Kibbutz Be’eri, including two who were kidnapped, shared his testimony
at a city council meeting. He was met with boos and jeers and pig noises
from anti-Israel activists. And again,
just last week, when an Israeli woman in New York City went over to a group of anti-Israel protesters
and tried to talk to them—my friend is being held hostage by Hamas, she said. One of the female
protesters responded, Go cry at home, bitch.
And then, maybe worst of all, there are the women who are questioning or denying that
any of this happened at all. Now, it’s important to note that there are also a lot of men denying
the atrocities of October 7 and the ongoing atrocities: The Grayzone’s Max
Blumenthal, the journalist Aaron Maté, the journalist Ali Abuminah, Owen Jones
from The Guardian. But the thing I cannot wrap my head around is how a staggering number
of these deniers and the people ripping down the posters of the hostages, are women themselves.
Women like Briahna Joy Gray, a political commentator at The Hill, host of the show Rising,
and most notably, Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign national press secretary.
She also happens to have a law degree from Harvard. Over and over again, Gray has simply refused
to accept that Hamas raped Israeli women. Why? Because the,
quote, “Zionists,” she says, “were relying on men as witnesses,” and because,
as she put it, “Israel didn’t collect rape kits on October 7.”
In case that seems hard to believe, here’s the whole tweet for you. “Zionists are asking
that we believe the uncorroborated eyewitness account of men who describe alleged
rape victims in odd, fetishistic terms. Shame on Israel for not seriously investigating
claims of rape and collecting rape kits.” Next, she added, “It was fishy
that no female victims have offered their testimony.” As the feminist
Jill Filipovic put it perfectly: “Yes, it is generally the case that if you kill
your victims, they can’t testify against you.” I’d add that it’s hard to give testimony
when you’re held underground at gunpoint in a tunnel by a terrorist.
More recently, in the face of overwhelming evidence, including The New York Times investigation,
an investigation that did include female eyewitnesses, Gray argued that she simply has skepticism
that is rooted in the timing of what she calls “the resurgence of these claims.” 00:22:28:18 - 00:22:38:18 And this is subjective, I’m
not saying I have any evidence of this, but it felt coordinated and out of nowhere and perhaps in response
to clearly dwindling public support. If I hadn’t told you that these words were coming
out of the mouth of a former Bernie Sanders campaign secretary, I’d venture to guess that you would have
thought they were coming out of the mouth of someone like Alex Jones. This is a person, Gray is,
who tweeted in 2018 about Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual assault allegations that, quote, “The burden
is on Kavanaugh to rebut it.” I could go on about the hypocrisy
of Briahna Joy Gray. But the thing is, this isn’t just an instance of a single morally blind person.
In November, Samantha Pearson, then director of a sexual assault center
at Canada’s Alberta University, denied that acts of rape had taken place on October
7, calling them “unverified accusations.” Last week,
when Democratic politician Matt Dorsey asked the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Committee
to include language of Hamas’s mass sexual violence in a cease-fire resolution
it had passed, he was met with shouts of “liar” from the crowd. 00:23:43:05 - 00:23:55:05 In according
to a two-month investigation by The New York Times, quote, “showing a pattern of rape, mutilation, and extreme
brutality against women,” and quote. . .
In another instance from last week, when a woman was confronted on the street and asked
why was she tearing down the posters, raising awareness of Hamas’s use of rape
as a weapon of war, she responded, because they have been proven false. 00:24:10:10 - 00:24:19:12 Excuse me.
Why’d you just tear down signs of women who went through sexual assault in Israel? Um, yeah, because they have been proven
false. They’ve been proven false? Yes. Now, perhaps you’re listening to this right now
and you wonder if Israel is prosecuting its war against Hamas in the right way.
Perhaps you’re listening to this and thinking too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.
Perhaps you’re thinking Palestinians should have their own state, or maybe you’re thinking Israel has historically been
unjust in its treatment of the Palestinians. Maybe you’re listening and thinking about a thousand
other things, a thousand other things about Israeli policy or about Bibi or about settlements
or about Hamas or about U.S. aid or about fears of an ever-growing war.
All of those are fair positions. All of those are fair questions. All of those are
things worthy of debate. But when you are asking things like why didn’t they use rape
kits on dead women raped and shot in the head by terrorists on October 7,
you sound a little bit like a 911 truther. 00:25:16:20 - 00:25:28:14 It was almost like they ignored it because they wanted it
to happen. Oh, come off it, Jesse. No, not “oh, come off it.” Every—wait a minute.
Every war fought starts with a false flag operation. Or like a Sandy Hook denier. 00:25:30:14 - 00:25:36:08
The official story of Sandy Hook has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. 00:25:36:08 - 00:25:40:15
So don’t ever think the globalists that have hijacked this country wouldn’t stage something like this. Or like—
00:25:42:14 - 00:25:58:10 Why did Hitler want to gas the Jews? He didn’t. The gas chamber
they show you in Auschwitz is as genuine as the fairy castle in Orlando. Rather like Disneyland.
And Auschwitz has become the kingpin—the linchpin—of the Holocaust industry.
I’ve been asking myself for weeks now, where does all of this come from? There’s no single answer.
Perhaps it’s politics, the growing trend of young women and not young men moving leftward.
And if you’re on the hard left, you’ve been immersed now for at least a decade in the belief that the world is divided
plainly in two: the oppressor and the oppressed. And Israel is the ultimate oppressor.
And likely everything in your world—your school, your social media feed, the celebrities you admire—reflects
that worldview back to you. Or perhaps it’s fear. Fear of speaking out on issues
that are perceived as controversial. Fear of being tarred as choosing sides. Fear of being tarred
as choosing the wrong side. Or perhaps it’s because facing the reality of this situation
is actually too difficult to bear. Or perhaps it’s because the victims in
this case are Israelis and Jews. As my friend Batya Ungar-Sargon has noted:
“For years, certain people demanded we replace due process with ‘Believe all women.’
These same people, when presented with evidence of the mass rape of Israeli women,
now demand ‘context.’ Believe all women became don’t believe the confessions of rapists—if
their victims are Jews.” Whatever the reason for anyone,
especially for women, to remain silent or to downplay or to deny such
atrocities is an assault not just on the victims, not just on their families,
not just on Israelis, and not just on Jews. It is an assault
on truth itself. Look for a second at the faces of these girls.
Liri Albag, age 18. Agam Berger, age 19.
Daniela Gilboa, age 19. Karina Ariev, age 19.
These are four of the remaining young Israeli women still in Hamas captivity.
This horrifying video was taken on the very first day of the war.
They have now been there for 100. Look at these four women’s faces
and think about what they have endured. Last month, State Department
spokesman Matthew Miller said that one of the reasons Hamas doesn’t want to release
the young female hostages is they don’t want these women to be able to talk about what happened to them
during their time in custody. Everyone knows exactly what he means
by that. There have been a few notable exceptions, of course, to the silence.
The musician Pink, Sheryl Sandberg, Regina Spektor, Mayim Bialik,
Amy Schumer, Jessica Seinfeld. But they have been so notable because they have been
so rare. And most of the prominent famous women who have spoken out are Jewish.
Everyone I just named is. Listen to what Naama Levy’s father told the New York Post
about his 17-year-old still being held by Hamas in Gaza. “My daughter believed Michelle Obama
to be someone who not only cared about global women, but also someone with a really good heart.
Why has she and all these other famous women Naama looked up to, and all of the global
human rights organizations she believed in, stayed silent about what has happened to my Naama?”
Naama’s mother told The Free Press last month that the remaining female hostages are “not
bargaining chips to be debated by diplomats. They are daughters, and one of them is mine.
My primal scream should be the scream of mothers everywhere.”
It has been 100 days. It is time to release the hostages.
Bring them home. Bring every single one of them home. Bring back our girls.
