Silence of the Feminist Lambs: Not a Word on Hamas Horrors

by Phyllis Chesler

In 2005, I published a book titled The Death of Feminism. At the time, I was focused on how Western feminists had become obsessed more with the alleged “occupation” of a country that has never existed — Palestine — than with the real occupation of women’s bodies in Gaza and on the West Bank, who were being forced into hijab, niqab, and child and arranged marriages, or who were being honor killed by their families for minor or imagined infractions. This form of femicide is primarily a Muslim-on-Muslim crime both in the West and in Muslim countries but, to a lesser extent, also takes place among Hindus in India, and, less frequently, among Sikhs. Honor killing is likely a tribal custom that religious leaders have failed to abolish, I wrote, one in which women also collaborate.

Both Stalinized and Palestinianized feminists and rabid Islamists denounced me as an “Islamophobe” for prioritizing the rights of women of color over and above the rights of the men (and women) of color who were terrorizing and even killing them. I was also condemned as a “Zionist” for questioning the sacredness of Palestinian victimhood.

Thus, I may have been among a handful of people not surprised by the feminist silence on Hamas’ Oct. 7 pogrom-on-steroids. It does not ease my sorrow that so many others, including the worldwide media and professoriate, human rights groups, and the United Nations, are also actively engaging in Oct. 7 denialism, as well as in relentless and vicious blood libels against the Jewish state, every single day.

By the late afternoon of Oct. 7, I was a cognitive warrior on fire. Between Oct. 11 and Jan. 25, I had published 24 articles on the subject and been interviewed about it 10 times.

Most second-wave feminists have died, suffered strokes, or are struggling with either dementia or cancer. Many are disabled. They are no longer “dancing in the streets.” But some of my long-time allies still attend conferences, march, sign petitions, write articles, and speak out.

These are the feminist allies who did not respond to the articles that I sent them about their shameful, even unbearable, silence. Perhaps they felt that Israel deserved whatever it got but were too embarrassed to say that to me. Instead, they said nothing.

Only one such feminist ally responded by sending me articles by Masha Gessen and Judith Butler. She suggested that reading their ideas about the moral superiority of vulnerable Jewish Diaspora life and the advantages of dissolving the Jewish state would “open my mind to the truth.” She also sent me an article that blamed Benjamin Netanyahu — and only Netanyahu — for the failure of a “two state solution — the only fair solution.”

I immediately sent her my critique of Butler and Gessen; I sent her Bassem Eid’s fact-based piece in Newsweek. Eid summarizes the long history of Arab rejection of the offers for a Palestinian state, first proffered by the British, then by the UN, and, finally, by Israel at least six times. Thus far, she has not responded.

Another long-time feminist (a friend, not merely an ally) is adamant that Israel is “committing genocide” and is an “apartheid, colonial, occupying state.” I told her that we cannot discuss Israel ever again. But now our conversations are thinned, brittle. There is no way we can discuss Oct. 7 without endangering our suddenly fragile friendship.

Why are my views so different? Here’s one reason.

Most Western pro-Palestinian feminists have never lived in a Muslim country or moved in Muslim circles, as I have — and still do. When I was young and oh-so-foolish, I traveled to Kabul with my Westernized Afghan husband, whom I had met at college. Once we landed, an airport official smoothly, officiously, removed my American passport; I never saw it again. I found myself trapped in the 10th century with no way back to the future.

I was unexpectedly held in captivity. I had to live with my mother-in-law, who was one of three wives and the mother of six of her polygamous husband’s 21 children. She tried to convert me to Islam every day. I learned a great deal about living in an Islamic, theocratic state where both infidels and Shiia (Hazara) Muslims were despised, servants routinely mistreated, and women held in contempt.

I wrote about this in An American Bride in Kabul. I read almost every book about the country, every memoir written by Afghans and by foreigners who visited Muslim countries. I researched the history of the Jews of Afghanistan and found a chilling, personal connection to their story. It won the National Jewish Book Award for 2013.

Unlike me, most feminists had absolutely no knowledge of Islamic gender and religious apartheid; of Islamic imperialism, Islamic colonialism, or Islamic conversion via the sword; no fact-based understanding that Muslims practiced anti-black slavery and sex-slavery.

Unlike me, few had ever visited or spent time in Israel, although some had. In either event, so many had been successfully indoctrinated to believe that Israel was the worst country on earth.

Perhaps, unlike me, most feminists had not attended Hebrew School in Boro Park from the time they were 5 years old until they turned 14. And few had been members of radical, left-wing Zionist groups as I had — groups they probably would have respected.

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I was also not surprised by the feminist silence for another reason.

In the very early 1970s, I experienced antisemitism among leftist and lesbian feminists. It was not political. I was told that Jews like me were too pushy, too smart, too sexy and were taking over the movement. Such views sent me straight to Israel. A small group that included Lilith magazine founder Aviva Cantor Zuckoff, Cheryl Moch, and me held a press conference on the subject; for years, we tried to interest leading Jewish feminists in joining us to discuss this. At the time, neither Andrea Dworkin nor Letty Cottin Pogrebin was interested in such a discussion.

In the mid-1970s, I tried to get feminist signatures for petitions against the UN’s resolution that Zionism equals racism. Some signed, but many feminists refused to do so. I explained that anti-Zionism equals racism. I got nowhere with the feminist Marxists or with others who hated Jews for more personal reasons. I also began working with Israeli feminists in Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv and taking American journalists to Israel in the hope that they’d modify or expand their views. And they did.

In 1979, I was hired by the United Nations to organize a feminist conference in Oslo, to take place right before the UN conference on women in Copenhagen. Lilith interviewed me under a pseudonym about the pre-Durban-like psychological pogrom that Copenhagen turned out to be. Like other women who’ve worked at the UN, I, too, was sexually harassed and then assaulted by my employer there, the late Dr. Davidson Nicol, an under-secretary general and the executive director of the UN Institute for Training and Research.

I had invited my ally and dear friend, Robin Morgan, to the Oslo conference as Gloria Steinem’s last–minute replacement. She refused to support me in confronting Davidson (he had sexually harassed other women in Oslo); Robin justified her refusal to do so on the basis of his skin color — black — a concern that trumped her supposed commitment to sexual harassment, rape, sisterhood, and friendship.

Robin said, “It would look bad if a white feminist accused a black man of rape.” This concern was not shared by many of the Black African women who attended the conference. As the late Motlalepula Chabaku said, “Let’s confront this dirty dog.”

Upon returning to New York, Robin badmouthed me as a Zionist and/or as a “paranoid” Zionist. She did so in order to cover up her planned involvement with Nicol on behalf of Ms. magazine. Nicol allowed her to write the “Introduction to the Proceedings” of the conference that I and my assistant, Dr. Barbara Joans, had organized — and she “borrowed” the very best feminists whom we had found for her anthology Sisterhood Is Global. She also “appropriated” these same women who became key players in Ms. magazine’s global network.

This was a pity. I would have given Robin my rolodex if she’d only asked. I do not “do” anthologies as she does. However, had she supported me, Robin might not have had the kind of access to the UN that she wanted.

I could not sue Nicol — he had diplomatic immunity. In any event, I wanted feminist justice behind closed doors. I did not want Nicol to go to his grave believing he could divide the likes of us. I asked Gloria for her help. She agreed. We held a meeting in Gloria’s apartment. Promises were made, but they were never kept. Robin never publicly acknowledged what she had done. No one ever confronted Nicol. I had invited Charlotte Bunch and Letty to this private meeting. Letty told me that “if Robin had done this to her, she would have killed her.”

At the time, my close friend Andrea Dworkin read my extensive narrative, sighed, and said she believed that he had raped me — but she also believed that Robin was truly concerned that it would make “feminism” look bad if a white feminist were to accuse a black man of rape.

That was Andrea. She always knew which side her bread was buttered on and whom she absolutely could not afford to offend.

Nearly 40 years later, in 2018, I wrote about all this in A Politically Incorrect Feminist.

In 1981, I convened a panel on feminism and antisemitism at the National Women’s Studies Association’s Annual meeting that took place in Storrs, Connecticut. I turned the tapes over to Letty Cottin Pogrebin, who then wrote an article on this subject for Ms. magazine, which in turn led to a chapter in her 1991 book Deborah, Golda, and Me.

Eleven years after Oslo, both Robin and Gloria supported Anita Hill when she made her allegations against Justice Clarence Thomas. To them, that was an acceptably feminist option because both the accuser and the accused were black. More importantly, Hill was a liberal feminist, and Thomas was a conservative.

Thus, I understood, long ago, that leading feminists could and would sacrifice some of their basic principles for other principles, and/or for personal, political, or financial gain. Feminists are human beings, as close to the apes as to the angels. They are also political animals. Some are dangerously flawed human beings.

There is also something that has not been said about the Oct. 7 feminist silence, something that professor Amy Elman and I have been discussing.

Long ago, some feminists (the “abolitionists”) strongly opposed pornography; others felt that censoring it would harm their own lesbian sexual rights or their heterosexual sexual rights outside of marriage. Some feminists opposed sadistic violence toward prostituted women. Others either enjoyed it or were willing to live with it. Pornography, however, has gotten more sadistic. It has influenced teenagers to dress like “hoes” and celebrities to appear half-naked, crawling around the stage like erotically crazed animals, even as they are accompanied by male partners dressed in tuxedos.

In my view, what ISIS and Hamas did was influenced by the most violent pornography. Feminists should have been the first to recognize this.

Instead, they not only remained silent for months — they have never linked what Hamas or ISIS did to the influence of pornography. Let’s remember that the Navy Seals who assassinated Osama bin Laden also found a tremendous stash of pornography that has never been made available. Bin Laden was a man who kept his four wives in burqas, even when they went swimming in their own private pool. (READ MORE: Bin Laden’s Letter Praised by TikTok)

However, feminist abolitionists who are still active but have remained silent have been taught to hate Israel and view Hamas as a “resistance” movement. They lack the courage to uphold their own unpopular analysis of pornography, lest it be used to support Israel.

Once Hamas/Iran unleashed the horror of Oct. 7, I understood that the world would never be the same — at least not for Israelis, and not for Jews who care about Israeli and Jewish survival. I also understood that Oct. 7 advanced World War III between the Judeo-Christian West and those who yearn for a global Caliphate.

By Oct. 8, my friend and ally Mandy Sanghera, a British-Indian Sikh activist, and I had taken to social media. (I’d worked with Mandy before in our 2021 rescue of 398 women from Afghanistan and in other honor-based violence projects). We were up in arms about Hamas’ pogrom/massacre — and about the collective feminist silence.

Mandy posted a piece on her WordPress blog titled “Yet Again, Sexual Violence is a Weapon of War, This Time in Israel. What Are We Going To Do About It?” By Oct. 11, I had published a piece at Jewish News Service about the “women-hating women who support Hamas,” which was also reposted widely.

Mandy and I kept talking and writing. For the first time in her career, she began experiencing blowback for her “too”-pro-Israel views. Mandy was being warned, bullied, and de-friended.

The non-feminist media, Jewish media, and journalists all weighed in. Liel Leibowitz at Tablet on Oct. 8; Monica Osborne at Newsweek on Oct. 10.

Also on Oct. 8, the press team at the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), a conservative group, issued a statement titled “Unprovoked Terror Attack by Hamas On Israel, Israel Responds: It’s War.”

Senior policy fellow Dr. Meaghan Mobbs denounced the “barbaric targeting of women and girls [as] vile and deserv[ing of] the world’s contempt.” Senior fellow Dr. Qanta Ahmed described Oct. 7 as “heinous acts of Islamist jihadists backed by Iran [that] imperils all nations working for peace with Israel.”

The IWF published 10 such articles between Oct. 8, 2023, and Jan. 1, 2024.

On Oct. 10, Joe Biden’s White House weighed in. The president described what Hamas did as “evil,” but mass media outlets continued to insist that “such reports [about rape] were unsubstantiated.”

By Oct. 11, the left-wing newspaper Forward claimed that Tablet’s details consisted of “murky” “allegations” that “have not been substantiated” and dismissed or defamed Leibowitz as a “right-wing” journalist.

With one exception, left-liberal feminists maintained their silence.

On Oct. 12, the radical feminist group Women’s Declaration International USA, whose views I share, published a statement in which it declared: “Like many, we watched in horror as Hamas invaded southern Israel, raping Jewish women and girls, murdering innocent civilians, and taking (civilians) hostage…. We are disgusted to see reports of Americans championing the cause of Hamas.”

On Oct. 13, Mandy and I published a piece at New English Review titled “Rape as a Weapon of War, This Time in Israel. Why are Feminist Silent?,” which was translated into Polish and picked up widely.

I sent all my articles to Gloria Steinem, with a note asking her to “help.” She responded at once and said she would “ask the Feminist Majority folks [who publish Ms.] if they have responded.” It took Ms. magazine two months before it published anything, and when it did, the article left everything to be desired.

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As I was writing about Oct. 7, I was being inundated by the sights and sounds of protesters on my screens and in my city. They were marching for Hamas! The sight of Jewish blood had thrilled them and unleashed their murderousness.

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