The Jewish lesbian feminist writer Muriel Rukeyser once asked, “What would happen if a woman told the truth about her life?” Her answer, “The world would split apart.” Buckle up. We’re in for some uncomfortable truth-telling.
Like many of you I am deeply and viscerally upset by the contents of the recent official Israeli government report of the rapes and sexual abuse committed by Hamas in the attacks of October 7th. I have been following the news avidly ever since those attacks, and since the Dinah Commission first released its findings. The reports of feminist and leftist human rights groups and the UN dismissing and denying the evidence of one of the most heinous pogroms against Jewish people tells us where we and they really stand.
Sadly, many Israeli government IDF and intelligence officials who dismissed the reports of female IDF border guards warning of increased Hamas training activities in close proximity to Gaza border communities and kibbutzim just before October 7th have quietly retired from service and left the scene. They will not likely be held accountable. The Israeli government continues to postpone a full accounting of the failures leading to the October 7th attacks on political or national security grounds etc. Their corruption is notorious. They have now dissolved the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) pending elections in the fall.
Like many Jewish women, I am furious. Our menfolk were unable to protect us from the massacres and sexual tortures of October 7th and thereafter. Our menfolk have rarely been able to protect Jewish women adequately, in Israel and in the Diaspora. Jewish history and Holocaust history are replete with evidence of pogroms and attacks including the most heinous sexual violence against Jewish women and children. We are at risk. Our male led Jewish institutions and leaders have never adequately protected us. They count up hate crimes and complain about them but do not prevent them.
In Canada, Jewish and LGBTQ women remain at highest risk of terrorist attacks, including recent arrests in Toronto in December of suspects linked to ISIS threatening to abduct Jewish women as sexual slaves. They were released back into the community on bail. These are not ‘lone nuts’ as our intelligence agencies and government officials like to proclaim. They are linked to existing ideological movements of radical Islamist groups, some listed as terrorist entities in Canada, and are present in Canada, in our Canadian cities.
Can you blame us for worrying? I am grateful that groups such as Canadian Women Against Antisemitism (CWAA) mobilized women and arranged for self-defense courses for women in Toronto and Montreal shortly after these attacks, but this is a piecemeal response. I myself took a women’s self-defense class, Wen-Do, after being threatened at knifepoint in downtown Toronto in 1986. The most important skills are vigilance and awareness and learning to avoid and escape threatening situations. This is an ongoing challenge.
We live in a culture that glorifies the sexual exploitation of women, that celebrates pornography and the physical degradation of women, where even our female pop music stars are expected to gyrate like burlesque stars nearly naked, in revealing clothing to sell records and concert tickets and gain celebrity. It’s a sick society. The female artists I most admire never did that, and never would. And neither would I.
Violence against women and sexual violence as war tactics have been in existence since ancient times, and are even documented in the Torah. It is disturbing to me and many Jewish women that our religious leaders have for so long ignored or taught uncritically the Torah’s teachings about the story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob who was raped when she was merely traveling about meeting with the women of the land.
It is even more sickening to think about the Torah teaching that if a Jewish woman was raped, that she would be expected to marry her rapist. What woman on earth would choose such a fate? What loving parent would order such a fate for their daughter?
The Torah’s teachings on the fate of a foreign woman caught as a war captive (i.e. kidnapped) by a Jewish soldier was presented as ostensibly progressive by ordering the soldier not to touch her and to allow her to mourn her family for a year before marrying her and providing her with all the rights and benefits of married life. Again, what woman would want to marry her kidnapper?
Similarly, the emphasis in ancient patriarchal Jewish society on the status of women as chattel, to be regarded as the property of their fathers and husbands, with undue emphasis on their virginal status on marriage (with no such concerns for the men) raises troubling questions. I understand that in that time and place there were reasonable concerns about legitimacy and familial entitlements and blood lines, but enough is enough. The phallocracy and compulsory heterosexuality are OVER.
If we look carefully at Israeli society we will see a disturbing correlation between the fundamentalist bearded Jewish patriarchs oppressing Jewish women and LGBTQ people and the fundamentalist bearded Islamist patriarchs and terrorists oppressing Jewish women and LGBTQ people and Jews at large. Does anyone else notice the similarities?
At the same time, as Pride Season approaches in June and the summer months, we have uptown Jewish organizations urging vulnerable LGBTQ Jews in support of Israel (who are facing unprecedented risks of hate crimes and sexual violence from both the extreme right and far left as well as proto-terrorist mobs and actual terrorist suspects in Toronto) to go ‘march for Israel’ in local Pride parades, flashing their rainbow flags and t-shirts, or to try to sell Israel’s LGBTQ rights and tourism in ways that have no real credibility in leftist communities. Tell the Israeli Tourism and Marketing Ministry. Please.
I’ve got news for you. Pride Day is EVERY Day, regardless of whether or not our government leaders choose to fund local Pride Festivals that are dwindling in support and attendance and losing sponsors, perhaps because of their past extreme politics. I am proudly LGBTQ and feminist and have nothing in common with most of these people. I have no need or desire to march or dance with them ever again. Their anti-Israel politics and mob riot tactics and extreme gender performances and promiscuity have nothing to do with me, and never really did.
LGBTQ folks and thoughtful feminist women are NOT a tourist attraction to be exploited in the way our show business and porn industries exploit women. I will be staying away from Pride as a statement of my own self respect and safety consciousness. And so should you. Our human rights remain in legal effect, internationally, and will outlive us all. So there.
As my dear father (who supported my LGBTQ human rights work) once taught me, “People respect you when you know who you are and never pretend to be anything but that.” That’s self-respect, and that’s what Pride really means. I don’t have to dress in rainbow gear or march with antisemites or put myself or others at risk to celebrate that. And neither do you.
Remember kids, Pride Day is EVERY Day. Guide yourselves accordingly. Happy Pride Season.
Joanne Cohen is a writer, human rights advocate and legal scholar in Canada whose work is internationally published and whose legal advocacy on same sex rights has enjoyed international impact on religious and social practice even in Israel. She has been an ardent and published pro-Israel advocate for more than 30 years and has presented regularly on human rights issues and advocacy strategies to academic, community, live media, and synagogue audiences.
