About a week ago I called attention to how Western feminists have largely ignored the violence inflicted on women by Hamas (rape, killing of pregnant women, parading the bodies of naked women in Gaza, etc.), and added this cartoon by Guy Morad.
In this case you can’t accuse Israel in a “both sides do it” scenario because IDF soldiers simply don’t rape Palestinian women.
One of the organizations that has resolutely ignored Hamas’s gender-based violence is, of course, affiliated with the anti-Israel United Nations: its organization UN Women, whose mission is stated below:
UN Women is the global champion for gender equality, working to develop and uphold standards and create an environment in which every woman and girl can exercise her human rights and live up to her full potential. We are trusted partners for advocates and decision-makers from all walks of life, and a leader in the effort to achieve gender equality.
UN Women regularly tweets and posts on their Twitter and Instagram pages about gender-based violence in many countries. Here, for example, is a presentation of Palestinian female deaths in Gaza, as well as Palestinian women who have been displaced from their homes by war or have become widows. This, of course, is the result of Israel defending itself against Hamas’s massacre of October 7, but all UN Women has to say is this:
Following the 7 October 2023 horrific attack by Hamas on Israel and the ensuing intense bombardment on Gaza by Israel, UN Women has worked to analyze the differentiated impact on women, men, boys, and girls, to ensure adequate responses to their needs.
There is nothing about Israeli women who were widowed, killed, or lost their children. There is nothing about the “bombardment” being a self-defense move by the IDF in a territory where civilians are used as human shields. In fact, UN Women has not called out the gender-based violence inflicted by Hamas on October 7, though of course it would have done so had that violence occurred in countries other than Israel.
As you can read in this Jerusalem Post report below (click to read), UN Women almost decried what Hamas did, but then, with the flimsiest of excuses, retracted its condemnation:
Get a load of these excerpts (indented):
Nearly 50 days after Hamas’ attack on Israel left 1,200 dead, and after weeks of criticism over its silence about allegations of sexual violence during the attack, the women’s rights group UN Women issued a statement condemning the terror group on Friday.
Then it deleted the post.
Here’s that first post, which is really hard to find on the internet (it’s in a tweet by news anchor Stella Escobedo). This must have been a screen capture during the brief time when UN Women had a spine:
“We condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on October 7 and continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” read the initial statement, posted on UN Women’s Instagram page. It was soon replaced with a statement that dropped the condemnation of Hamas and only called for the release of the hostages.
Here’s the replacement statement, straight from the Instagram site:
Why did they do that? Priorities, my dear readers:
Reached for comment, UN Women told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Instagram post had been scheduled in advance and was deleted because the message in it no longer reflected where the organization wanted to put its main focus.
“In any social media team managing multiple campaigns and during a very busy time like the one we are now with 16 Days of Activism, mistakes can occur,” a representative for UN Women said in a statement sent to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
In particular, said the spokeswoman, Inés Esteban González, the release of some hostages over the weekend as part of a temporary truce changed the organization’s priorities.
If you believe that, I have some land in Florida I want to sell you. Why couldn’t they leave the first one up and then add the hostage-release one? You know why: UN Women doesn’t count Israeli women.
But there has been pushback:
Word spread quickly among Jewish women activists and Israelis, reigniting their contention that UN Women — an official arm of the United Nations focused on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment — holds a double standard when it comes to gender-based violence against Israeli women. Some of the critics — including Sheryl Sandberg, a former top Meta executive — have lobbied openly on the topic. Many have used the hashtag “#MeToo_UNless_UR_A_Jew.”
Sheryl Sandberg’s powerful article about Hamas’s sexual violence, published on CNN, is called “Something we can all agree on“.
After an initial statement on Oct. 13 condemning the attacks on civilians in Israel, all of UN Women’s public comments about the war and its impact on women had centered only on Palestinians. Last week, Sima Bahous, the group’s executive director, called for an extension of the current temporary truce into a permanent ceasefire and for the release of all hostages.
The National Council for Jewish Women, which had previously criticized UN Women’s silence on sexual violence against Israeli women, said the group’s second statement last week was inadequate.
“The delayed issuance of a statement that fails to explicitly address the severity of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel — such as the brutal murder of over 1,200 people in Israel, torture, and rape of women, as well as the targeting of civilians and families — is equally reprehensible,” the statement said. “Immediate and unequivocal acknowledgment of these atrocities is imperative, given the blatant violation of international law.”
From another article in the Jerusalem Post, a statement from the sister of kidnapped hostage Shani Goren. According to the latest tabulation of hostages, Goren is still held captive by Hamas.
If you want to read more about feminists’ shameful turning of their heads away from what Hamas did, read this article in Tablet (click to read for free).
A short extract:
Now, despite seeing Hamas’ rape cult, not one gender studies department has defended even one victimized woman. Feminists have long taught us to believe the accuser and not blame the victim. For years, progressives insisted, in academic papers, on T-shirts, even on coffee mugs, that when fighting oppression, “silence is consent,” or even that “silence is violence.” On Oct. 7, the violated women shouted, shrieked, cried, begged, rape after rape, cut after cut, fighting off these assaults with their voices and their bare hands as best each could. Some hostages may still be struggling. By contrast, violating every feminist principle I’ve ever read and respected, today’s feminist movement is violently, silently, consenting to this mass crime against women and against the victims from three-dozen different countries. Some even doubt the testimonials—and the staggering, bloody, heartbreaking evidence of stripped women paraded through Gaza’s streets. Robbing someone of their story is a secondary offense—but nevertheless inexcusable.
If justice is indivisible, these women deserve justice—and empathy too—whether or not you like Israel or abhor it and its policies. If rape culture is never OK, all civilized people should repudiate so many Palestinians’ and progressives’ delight in spreading these videos and cheering these crimes. In their silence, most leading feminists became complicit, aiding and abetting this mass attempt to dehumanize women just because they’re Jews—or happened to be on the Gaza border that day.
This shameful behavior by UN women, and by other feminist organizations, is an instance of what I call MacPherson’s Law, which goes something like this:
“Whenever two progressive principles clash, the one that loses is the one that involves women.”
In this case the clashing principles are that raping and killing women constitutes inexcusable gender-based violence, versus the principle that those committing gender-based violence are in fact oppressed people of color. It doesn’t matter that in this case the “oppressed people of color” were Hamas butchers. . .
Apparently “By any means necessary” means just that. If the dual desire to strive for the elimination of the state of Israel while enjoying the exhilaration of dehumanizing Jewish people (in this case, Jewish women) requires a completely hideous double standard, well then, by any means necessary these antisemites will blithely uphold their double standard.
In simpler terms — as Jerry says right up top — if its part of the UN it’s anti-Israel. That’s as much as one needs to know.
So if the females turn themselves into males they could escape the gender based violence because only males commit gender based violence.
Makes sense, UN – thanks for that solution.
BTW UN (and “Sexuality is linked to power”-UNESCO): can you cite some of the literature that shows the discovery of “gender”?
Asking for a friend. The revolution is looking good so far, though – well done!
The UN is (mostly) broken. The US shouldn’t be funding the UN; specifically the US shouldn’t be funding the WHO and multiple (other) agencies straddling human rights/women’s rights/national-security.
The UN too has been taken hostage. Russia and China are major players influencing votes/agenda.
General de Gaulle was quoted as saying that “the UN is the place where you can take the temperature of the world”. I’m not sure of the author, but the remark is apt.
And it’s obvious which sort of thermometer you should use.
(Hint: it’s the one that tastes bad.)
Gah!
Beat me to it!
This is very sad indeed. The UN as a whole is an organization that the world desperately needs to work — and when it does work, it’s indispensable. Withdrawing from it, or defunding it as punishment, only intensifies isolation, reduces the influences of responsible states and thus increases that of Russia and China, and makes conflict more likely. I’m not quite sure why you single out the WHO specifically — the organization that globally eradicated smallpox, has almost done the same for polio, and coordinated the worldwide response to Covid, it seems to me is one of the better-functioning UN agencies.
The WHO, via Chapter 26 of its ICD (International Classification of diseases) sanctioned Traditional Medicine (TM) as “scientific”. TM, specifically TCM, uses the body parts of numerous endangered and critically endangered animals in its snake-oil potions. Among these are pangolin scales, ~100,000 pangolins are killed every year (at the high end) for TCM; that’s 1 pangolin every 5 minutes. Rhino, leopard, panther, lion, tiger, bat, sea horse – are among the many iconic creatures killed in the thousands for this rubbish.
Add to this the very real potential of setting the stage for zoonoses by encouraging the handling of pathogen heavy animals like bat and pangolin. Note** I am not suggesting that COVID-19 was the result of a spillover, rather, that the WHO in its eagerness to please China has set itself up to underwrite pandemics. The irony.
China will employ the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) to amplify the WHO’s blessing. You’ll see clinics springing up all over Africa and South America (home to earth’s last remaining iconic animals).
There’s a point at which we have to admit when something is broken beyond repair/reform. No doubt the WHO does some good work, but, the cost of corruption within the UN/WHO is not worth the participation.
Sources:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01726-1
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-health-organization-gives-the-nod-to-traditional-chinese-medicine-bad-idea/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2020/05/04/did-the-whos-endorsement-of-tcm-contribute-to-the-covid-19-pandemic/?sh=483536e011c0
Jews Don’t Count.
UN Women have utterly lost sight of their mission. They marked the Lesbian Day of Visibility earlier this year by celebrating straight men who identify as women: https://twitter.com/UN_Women/status/1711048869637697685
Indeed this post was made while the bodies of the raped, tortured Israeli women were still being discovered. Absolutely disgraceful
Intersectionality is demonstrating that women only merit consideration if they have a second attribute like color or trans, but even then rank below third-world groups like Muslims because of Islamophobia. What price equality now?
Yup. I’m horrified.
There was not a word about the October 7 rampage from any department of Gender Studies because Hamas’ gender-based violence against Israeli women is outside the realm of Critical Gender Studies.
This academic discipline is free of colonial, Eurocentric features like logical consistency.
Although the latter principle is still required in the operations of university maintenance and construction staffs, academic department’s are free to discard it altogether in the academy’s continuing program of Decolonialization and Diversity.
Not sure I saw a link to this above, but it’s about 1 minute:
CNN’s @biannagolodryga
asks @UN_Women
representative @sarah_hendriks
:
“Is there a reason you cannot specifically call out Hamas and the mounting evidence now over 7 weeks about the atrocities committed Oct 7th, because that’s the crux of the issue here, it’s not just condemning sexual violence against women in general, but specifically what ocurred on October 7th, perpetrated by Hamas.”
https://twitter.com/Ostrov_A/status/1729862458284662881
:
Appalling. Those in charge of UN Women really should hang their heads in shame.
Maybe they would if they could actually acknowledge their hypocrisy.
Their bubble of self righteousness seems to be Teflon coated.
Thank you for this great post. Indeed, antisemitism and anti-Israel hostility come ahead of standing with women.
I have seen no evidence if this, but I did read a report that some of the hostages report having been held by UNHCR staff in Gaza.
Unproven, as I mentioned, but I would not be surprised if there were quite a bit of overlap between Hamas, NGOs, and UN organizations.
It is still astounding to me how woke capture of institutions can lead to them working directly opposite to their basic mission.
I don’t know if this is the right place but I’m still trying to process this. One of Caroline Glick’s interview guests, who had helped prepare the bodies for burial from 7 and 8 Oct., referred to the memorial website she and other volunteers created:
https://nachamuami.com/
(At the moment, it doesn’t seem to be working.)
I still just don’t know what to say, scrolling through the hundreds of photographs. So many women. So many children. So many soldiers. So many young female soldiers died in those first hours. Is this why the UN can’t respect them, because they were strong women with guns who ran toward danger despite being surprised and overwhelmed? And one EMT who stayed with the wounded in her clinic until the terrorists reached her.
For my wife and me, our grief is as if people in our own family had died.
At Remembrance Day observances in Canada, along with “In Flanders Fields”, someone always reads this segment from “For the Fallen” by Laurence Binyon (1914):
. . .they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
That’s the best I can do but it’s not nearly enough.