Death of the sisterhood on 7 October

I wait and watch for the release of each hostage from Gaza, and cannot help the sobs that escape from deep inside me.

Like Jews all over the world, the fate of those kidnapped on 7 October 2023 has consumed my psychic and emotional energy for so long. I’ve whispered their names in prayers, they are familiar on my tongue. Those Bibas babies’ faces appear in my dreams.

As young women like Arbel Yehud are paraded through marauding hordes of masked Hamas terrorists, my relief tussles with my outrage.

I’m grateful for everyone who returns alive.

But I know that not a single feminist organisation will speak out about the human rights violations they have endured, even in the godawful circumstances of their release.

When I was the age of some of these young women hostages, I became a women’s rights advocate in South Africa.

I set up Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre to end violence against women in 1997. I sat on a law commission to draft new domestic-violence legislation, and was part of the focus group that worded the clause in the South African Bill of Rights enshrining every person’s right to freedom from violence.

Violence, poverty, and denial of education are some of the root causes of women’s inequality. But of these, it is violence that knows no privilege or grants any exemptions – it cuts across all divides. During my years in the field, I saw women from every background walk through our doors.

Yet, this always held a strange optimism for me, because I believed that no matter our intersectionalities, women could stay connected to one other. Women know what it is to fear male violence, no matter our religion, status, or background.

I stood sentinel at the gates of this imaginary City of Joy – a real place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to which survivors come to rebuild their lives and a place I have always dreamed of visiting. I indentured my life to the “sisterhood” and lived in its timeshare, unapologetically, fiercely, all my life. My religion was feminism. My community other women.

There has never been a woman or child who falls outside of this line of safety for me.

I trusted this as a sacred path, believing that it was in these spaces of commonality, that women’s leadership would emerge to challenge the existing power structures.

I’ve never been one to draw lines between Jewish and non-Jewish sister allies.

But this changed on 7 October 2023.

One needs courage to learn the details of what was wrought on Jewish bodies in the terrorist attack by Hamas. A carnage so deeply misogynist, international feminist organisations could have rallied a universal revolution. Imagine the power of all women pulling together in a primal roar!

We waited.

Surely women’s organisations would condemn, demand justice, be our voice?

For eight weeks, not a single international women’s organisation spoke up.

Michelle Obama didn’t beseech, “Bring back our girls”, as she did in 2016 when Boko Haram stole girls in Nigeria.

It was a cold, hard dawning.

My “feminist comrades” turned their backs on Israeli women, on Jewish women, on me.

Their silence wasn’t the only betrayal.

There were “feminists” who denied the sexual violence of that dark day.

It has been a shock to realise that there’s no sisterhood that includes Jewish suffering.

Besides the horror of 7 October, I’ve been navigating a secondary traumatisation described by psychologist Jennifer Freyd in 1994 as “institutional betrayal”, in which wrongdoing is perpetrated by an institution, in this case, my feminist homeland.

When someone we trust or rely upon for support or survival doesn’t prevent our suffering or refuses to offer a supportive response to wrongdoing, we experience a new layer of suffering. If abusive behaviour is normalised, covered up, or victims are punished – which happens routinely in the military, universities, the legal, and healthcare systems – the trauma of the initial violence is compounded. This undermines the ability of survivors to recover.

Many of the women – and men – who were raped on 7 October didn’t survive, so it’s those of us left to witness their violation who are the “survivors”.

I’ve tried my best to understand why women’s organisations abandoned us.

Is it mistrust of the credibility of the victims? Are Jewish women’s accounts of what happened so unbelievable, even in the face of footage and witness testimony? The foundational principle of feminism is that victims are to be believed, unless of course you deem it all “Israel Defense Forces [IDF] propaganda”.

Or perhaps the atrocities are diminished by the “context”, namely seen as part of a “liberation struggle” by Hamas? In all other contexts, international women’s organisations have always denounced rape as a legitimate form of resistance. But perhaps an exception can be made when it happens to Jews.

Maybe these organisations are simply unable to include Israeli and Jewish women in the narrative of what they are fighting for. Mutilated breasts, bloodied vaginas, and torn open pregnant stomachs of Jewish women have been deemed part of the “patriarchal oppressive colonial state of Israel” and the power of the IDF. Such bodies cannot be “victims”.

Jewish pain has been erased and silenced. Our injuries cancelled.

Finally, on 1 December 2023, UN Women issued a statement, after much pressure from Israeli groups.

But the timing after such a telling lapse exposed the deep subterranean antisemitism that sits like a virus at the heart of this septic, partisan form of feminism.

Because they failed us, they have failed all women.

I’ve run from the hypocrisy, complicities, and cowardice of these corrupted institutions.

Now, I turn my heart to embrace the immense dignity and strength of the young hostages returned home. They have tough times ahead. They have been to hell and back. But they have survived, without the support of international women’s organisations speaking up for their release and freedom.

A wise friend in the United States – an African American human rights activist and political commentator – reminded me, “We need you calm and centred in the wisdom and strength of the Jewish people, especially the wisdom and strength of Jewish women.”

And so, I look to the Jewish community for new feminist role models and see warriors like Elica le Bon, Noa Tishby, Eve Barlow, Einat Wilf, Sheryl Sandberg, and of course, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, who despite having lost her son, remains poised, dignified, and filled with grace.

If I had a single wish, I’d beg G-d to reverse it all, and bring Hersh home to her, tired and dirty after a music festival in the desert instead of maimed and tortured with a bullet to the back of his head.

I want to believe that a new feminism will emerge from the Israeli campaign MeTooUNlessURaJew and WeToo, built on the ruins of this betrayal, inviting women from all backgrounds and religions to be part of something better.

Over the past 16 months, I have taken solace from the brilliant and fearless activist Assita Kanko, a member of the European Parliament and a secular Muslim; Nova Peris OAM, the indigenous Australian athlete and former politician; and Erin Molan, the former television presenter for Sky News Australia.

They have given me hope that someday I’ll be part of a new sisterhood.

The great Jewish feminist, Andrea Dworkin, said, “Women intend to save themselves when sacrificing some women, but only the freedom of all women protects any woman.”

• Joanne Fedler is an author and writing mentor. Her 15th book, “The Whale’s Last Song” will be published in South Africa in March 2025. You can find her on Substack at https://joannefedler.substack.com/ or www.joannefedler.com