Why don’t Middle-Eastern women matter?

The well-known “MeToo” movement, was created in 2006 by female activist, Tarana Burke, who sought to offer support and solidarity to survivors of sexual violence. Once the hashtag was added on by actress Alyssa Milano, in 2017, the effort took off on social media, causing years of silence to be broken, resulting in the discovery of many shocking tales of sexual abuse.

Most notably was the disgraceful story of film mogul Harvey Weinstein, but the movement didn’t solely focus on the notorious escapades of Hollywood. It veered off into corporations, learning institutions and just about every arena of life.

What made it unique was the supposed empathy, shared by women for their counterparts who suffered the worst ravages of this kind of humiliating anguish, which remain long after the heinous act is committed. And while many of these cases have occurred in Western countries, which purport to be more civilized, those numbers most likely never approach the innumerable incidents of these types, which go on in the Middle East, where women are so often devalued.

Sadly, the dignity of women, in this part of the world, has not been championed, commensurate to its Western counterpart, and, in the case of October 7th, that was evident as the disturbing reports of sexual weaponization were actually doubted or not believed at all. Consequently, the silence was deafening, especially by the same women whose camaraderie and commitment, one to another, was the impetus for a global sisterhood in tackling this evil.

But for those who may have been skeptical, refusing to believe that “freedom fighters” (the euphemized name for Hamas terrorists) were capable of such despicable acts, the verdict is now in. A comprehensive report on the subject of October 7th, relating to these charges, has now been published. The “Dinah Project,” taken from the Biblical name Dinah, the daughter of Jacob the patriarch, whose story of rape is recorded in Genesis 34, goes into great detail to reveal what took place on that fated Saturday morning and thereafter.

Led by Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari of Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University, the Dinah project “presents extensive evidence that Hamas systematically and widely used sexual violence as a weapon during the murderous terror attack, relying upon new testimonies from hostages who returned from Gaza, victims of sexual violence, eyewitnesses, mental health professionals and rescue workers,” it can no longer be denied that the worst imaginable crimes were perpetrated upon women.

But even before this report was made public, many women’s organizations distanced themselves from these claims, preferring to act as if the reports by Israeli women could not be credible. One of those groups was the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. This body which should not have hesitated to roundly condemn the accounts as they were being disclosed but, instead, chose not to recognize the mass rape of Israeli women which took place at the massacre.

Likewise, feminist organizations, which would have been expected to sound the alarm, not only remained silent, but one activist, “Samantha Pearson, Director of the University of Alberta’s sexual violence center, actually disputed the Hamas rapes.” Of course, given that footage existed in real-time, filmed on body cameras, which included bloodied rape victims, with ripped clothes, it might have been better to reserve judgment so as not to appear so ignorant. 

The refusal to condemn what should have been shouted from the rooftops, gave way to the “MeToo Unless You’re a Jew” campaign which revealed the hypocrisy of these women’s groups.  Rather than stand in solidarity with Israeli women, they chose to side with what was seen as a politically expedient move. This is not surprising since many supporters of these advocacy groups are devotees of Woke ideology as well as Palestinian supporters.

So, at a time when suffering and dehumanized women were crying out to be believed, they were disgracefully abandoned by the same women who merely pretended to care about all women but wouldn’t, unless the ethnicity of those women aligned with a certain profile. Sadly, these didn’t. 

But now that the mask is off, let’s no longer pretend. It may have taken a while for all of the findings to come in, but now that they have, the real shame is not on the victims but rather on those who ignored, scoffed or rebuffed the painful admissions of ghastly sexual assaults, endured by Middle-Eastern women, in this case from Israel.

But they are not the only ones. Iranian women have suffered great oppression over the last 46 years as a maniacal Shia Islamic regime hijacked the country, causing women to be in complete subjugation, with no equal rights, declaring that their heads had to be completely covered with a hijab. It is not as if we haven’t heard about their suffering. The late Mahsa Amini, a courageous Iranian activist exposed so much of the struggles of women from her country and what happens to those who dare to challenge the system. 

Why haven’t women’s advocacy groups come out in full force, condemning their horrific treatment, which has sometimes resulted in their deaths, demanding that the Iranian government be sanctioned and held to accountability for their barbaric actions against women in their society. Ironically, most of these women are not Jewish, since the Jewish population of Iran is less than 10,000. 

Is it just the women of Western countries who deserve to be heard and considered? Why shouldn’t Iranian women be supported, by those who claim to seek justice and value freedom for all genders? Yet, they are not. It makes us wonder if this “Me Too” movement is just another phenomenon of the performance activism world in which we live, virtue signaling that the rights and treatment of women are sacred while, in fact, the women of the Middle East are largely set aside and left to languish without pity or advocacy intervention.

It's a sad day when groups, which were established to bring hope and comfort to female victims are nowhere to be found. For them, the intersectionality of raped Israeli women by terrorists who they sympathetically hail as heroes prevents them from being the bold voices which they once promised to be.

The lesson learned is that no one should look to these organizations for solutions, because they have proven that as much as they claim to care, the suffering of Middle-Eastern women doesn’t really matter to them.