I was raped at 27. I experienced 10 years of domestic violence. I had two abortions and several miscarriages before becoming a mother at almost 40 years old. I discovered feminist issues through the body. Since then, any deliberate attack targeting the feminine first hits me through the flesh. When I discovered the fate of the women and their babies on October 7 in Israel, before I could even think, I physically collapsed.
4 years ago, I ran away in the middle of the night with my baby. Staying with my parents, I read renowned feminists, attended associations to benefit from sisterhood, necessary in my chaos. I am a writer. I finally made a book about this upheaval, 125 and thousands to find out who these women were who were dying from men’s violence and why. Its publication turned my life upside down. The societal issues behind the figures made me obliged for ever. Since then, I have created 125 and afterwhere we help women and their children every day.
Since October 7, however, my actions and my identity coexist with difficulty.
Because there you go, my name is Sarah Barukh. I am Jewish. And for 5 weeks, I have been experiencing a heartbreak that I did not expect.
The silence of the feminist community
In the feminist community, after October 7, there is silence. I’m stunned. Then comes the electroshock. On October 26, We allthe main association supporting women, posts a call to cease fire on its Instagram account, writing this:
We will always condemn colonization and its post-colonial effects: acculturation, domination, humiliation, interference, ethnic cleansing.
We will always condemn killings, terrorism (whether state or not), genocides and war crimes.(…)
We will always take a stand on the side of the victims, the minoritized and oppressed peoplesthen figures appear on the situation of women in Gaza with a flag of support for Palestine and finally a general page on rape in times of war.
I went back to October 7, nothing about what women in Israel had suffered.
On October 31, on its Instagram account, La Fondation des femmes posted a portrait in tribute to Mona Chollet, a renowned writer who had just published several openly anti-Zionist columns. The Foundation maintains this post even after the writer’s tweet calling not to go to the demonstration against anti-Semitism.
Nothing about female victims in Israel.
For the past month, most new generation feminist media and influencers have adopted the same reading framework: women displaced in Gaza, living under bombs, sometimes pregnant and seeing their babies die.
Nothing about female victims in Israel.
Finally, the silence spoke
So with others, we question this partiality. We must of course talk about women in Gaza, but why not talk about women on the other side of the border? Noting the suffering of some, which results from unprecedented barbarity, is not the negation of the suffering of others. On the other hand, selecting suffering, fueling comparison, even confrontation, is a political choice. Faced with our letters, little or no feedback, reactions justified by fear of consequences or worse, the so-called lack of evidence on the Israeli side. Finally, the silence spoke. All this time he was an answer. These feminists prefer to give only one point of view: what they call the voice of oppressed and so-called racialized minorities.
When on the networks, I comment on their posts calling for voices of peace, for more nuance and complexity to try to understand what is happening and above all, not to stir up hatred towards the Jews here, I am insulted and calling them a “white feminist”, a bourgeois colonialist. Me, the daughter of Tunisian, Russian and Polish exiles, survivors of the Holocaust, born in a city!
It actually seems clear to me that intersectionality, the convergence of struggles, does not include the Jewish minority, at least Jewish women who do not share this worldview. It’s all of us, or almost*. #metoounlessyouareajew.
Let’s get along well. I am devastated to helplessly watch what is happening before our eyes. The war despairs me. All wars.
I am overcome every morning by devastating grief at the images of Gaza. In my eyes, there are no more serious deaths among children.
I could develop my disgust in lines but that is not the point of my indignation which can be summed up in one observation: too many feminists refused to denounce and mourn the mass femicide perpetrated by Hamas in Israel on 10/7/23.
What is the goal ? A desire for revenge? After that of women against men, it is now so-called racialized women against “white feminists”, in particular “Zionists”?
Reaching the motherhood of the nation
It is now proven that the hundreds of women attacked received a double punishment on October 7. Executioners taken prisoner confessed to the training they had received to torture women and children, and rape them alive and then dead. The objective was to reach the motherhood of the nation, to defile, to traumatize to prevent any personal and symbolic fertility.
The Israeli authorities, in the presence of journalists from around the world, described and showed the attacks on this femininity with serial rapes (up to 30 times for some), one woman was found quartered, another was so abused that her pelvis was fractured, a pregnant woman was disemboweled and her baby still attached killed while she was alive, little girls were raped and drained of blood after mutilation of limbs, women were shot dead in the middle of rape, their tormentors then cut out their breasts to play with.
And all of this was filmed live and posted on the Internet, sometimes even calling on families to witness the rape and murder of their children.
And all this was proclaimed loud and clear in the unbearable enjoyment of the aggressors and their civilian sympathizers returning home.
I don’t understand where the hesitation lies. Or rather if, unfortunately, Jewish Sarah understands very well.
However, it seems to me that we, humanist feminists, have an obligation to denounce this terrorism which is certainly religious but just as masculinist. Just read about the fate of women in radical Islam and observe what is happening in Iran, Afghanistan and everywhere else where fanaticism has won.
The coherence of our commitments obliges us to recognize that Hamas raped women because they were women, humiliated them, made them particularly suffer in order to reach men and the Nation, destroyed their children, enjoyed these tortures. , laughed about it, damaged their physical integrity through appalling mutilations, filmed these tortures, published them on the internet and sent them directly to the families so that they could helplessly witness these atrocities. Beyond death there is obscenity, the crime of objectification, submission and sadism because they were women and they were their children, all used as weapons of war.
I remember, last year, many celebrities spoke out to denounce the fate reserved for women in Iran under the dictatorship of the ayatollahs and its deadly repressions. In a video with hundreds of thousands of views, celebrities cut off a lock of hair in support of those who are not allowed to show theirs. Iranian women are the first to defend Israel since 7/10. They identified the threat similarity without hesitation. Why is it so difficult for so many feminists in France?
For me, feminism has only one guideline: women for peace and peace for women.
* 125 being the average official number of feminicides in France. **The Traumatic Memory and Victimology association. ***#name found by Annabelle Show
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