Who Pays the Price for Men's Wars?
(an important, disturbing, thought-provoking read)
Who Pays the Price for Men’s Wars?
11/2/2023 by Jill Filipovic
The people who are least responsible for this war—women, children, innocents of all kinds—are bearing the heaviest burdens of this war.
A family from the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Oct. 30, 2023. (Mohammed Abed / AFP via Getty Images)
This story originally appeared on Jill.substack.com, a newsletter from journalist, lawyer and author Jill Filipovic.
Like so many millions of people around the world, I’m watching the devastating war in Palestine, in the aftermath of the devastating attack on Israeli civilians, with heartbreak and horror. And I’ve been getting so many messages asking, “Where are the feminists?” Some of these messages come from people pointing out atrocities committed by Hamas against innocent women, men, children and babies in Israel; others come from people demanding more attention be paid to the Palestinian women who can’t birth safely, who are killed while pregnant, whose children are dying in their arms. Western feminists are accused of “consenting to Hamas’ rape culture” and also of telling Palestinian women, “Your suffering does not matter.”
The very existence of women’s suffering is also being called into question. With Twitter now under the control of an alt-right megalomaniac, disinformation and misinformation are rife, and it’s appallingly easy to write off as falsity or propaganda information that conflicts with your views, and take on only the information (and sometimes falsities and propaganda) that comports with them. I’m a journalist, and I’ve had a hard time sorting out what has been substantiated, what has been disproven, and what still exists in the in-between as investigations continue and forensics teams make their way through the aftermath of horrific terrorist attacks, and as a brutal and bloody war continues apace and horrors mount by the minute.
So where are the feminists? This particular feminist is on the side of women. I’m on the side of the women and girls who were raped and murdered by Hamas terrorists, and who endured torture that is now, disturbingly, being denied or diminished or hand-waved away. I’m on the side of the women who are going into labor in Gaza and can’t get basic care, who may pay for pregnancy with their lives, whose children may die before they fully enter the world, whose lives are written off as collateral damage. I’m on the side of the women who are terrified of what is happening to their kidnapped children, or whose families were burned alive, or whose babies were killed by grown men in unfathomable acts of inhumanity, or who believed they were safe from centuries-old hatreds and are now being told with terrifying clarity that they are not.
. . . . .
Friends and family members attend the funeral of Shiraz Tamam on Oct. 17, 2023 in Holon, Israel. (Leon Neal / Getty Images)
. . . . . .
That the mounting evidence shows that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women does not negate the suffering of Palestinian women in this war, and certainly does not justify it. That the policies of the state of Israel mean that Palestinian women have suffered so badly and for so long does not negate the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists, and certainly does not justify them. I am 100 percent positive that a number of people will reject what I’m saying here as some sort of “both-sides” equivocating. But I’m not trying to do math or weight scales. No one has to diminish one suffering to elevate another. I’m not writing to solve an equation, let alone a conflict. I am writing to say that it is the people who are least responsible for this war—women, children, innocents of all kinds—are bearing the heaviest burdens of this war. This is not a new observation. But in a moment of widespread denial, when so many people seem convinced that their guys on their side would never do horrible things or that mentioning one horror papers over another, it is among the most important to keep at the front of our minds.
https://msmagazine.com/2023/11/02/israel-gaza-men-violence-women/
= new reply since forum marked as read
