The day the feminist movement failed us

In 2019, South Africa women faced a harsh reality. News surfaced of Uyinene Mrwetyana, a University of Cape Town student, who was raped and murdered at a post office. This tragedy highlighted the huge epidemic of gender-based violence (GBV) in South Africa. Our instinct was to protest and express our support for victims of GBV. We headed to the streets, and cried out. It was a reckoning. We had had enough of the GBV.

We often refer to Habonim as a microcosm of society, and just like the rest of South Africa, our movement educated our chaverim on GBV.

We’re not the first to comment on the lack of condemnation by the media and international organisations of the Israeli women taken hostage on 7 October. We, like others, are unsettled and disappointed by the silence of the world against the GBV experienced by innocent Israeli women.

In feminist movements throughout our life, whether it relates to Mrwetyana or the #MeToo movement, we’ve been told to believe the victim. Imagine our shock that on 7 October, not only were the victims villainised, but their perpetrators were praised.

On that horrific day, we were watching our worst nightmare unfold on social media – young girls our age being taken away in vans with men. We all knew what that meant for those girls, and yet when we looked to the world for support, it just shouted back at us.

Comments flooded the social media posts supporting Hamas, celebrating a naked body being paraded around Gaza. The new reality became: believe the victim, unless they’re Israeli.

After the initial shock and trauma, we were left with extreme disappointment. Disappointment in the groups that led GBV protests to Parliament and endorsed the #MeToo movement. Disappointment that the very movements built on supporting and uplifting women had standards about which women they supported. This disappointment culminated in an abandonment by the feminist movement. Ultimately, we sensed that even the most liberal spaces fell short of acknowledging the violence against Israeli women. It made us question whether as young Zionist women we would be granted the same protection and support as other women.

There should be nothing hard about condemning rape, but the world is finding it difficult to condemn rape on the basis that the victims are Israeli and Jewish. How can the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women not explicitly condemn Hamas for its acts of violence against women? The UN, which is supposed to protect people, doesn’t think that Israeli women are worthy of its protection.

Already it has become difficult to be a South African Jew. However, considering how little the government does to tackle GBV here, it stings so much more seeing the endorsement of it in Israel.

The lack of condemnation is an attack on all women, and it cannot be accepted. October 7 was a brutal day for many. We’re so heartbroken to see communities ravaged and hostages taken.

We have focused on GBV to shed light on such an atrocious element of the attacks. We want to support the victims, and ensure that they receive the justice and support they so desperately need. We hope the hostages return home, and all this pain comes to an end soon.

• Lula Pencharz is Habonim Dror mazkira klalit. Ava Cohen is Habonim Dror sganit mazkira.