We have all seen and read far too much of the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians, particularly women and girls. There can be no doubt any longer that these acts were planned, intended to unfold as they did, and done deliberately to intimidate and terrorize the Israeli population by taking the attack to levels of atrocity hitherto unknown even in the savage history of the region.

There has been an appropriate amount of media coverage of all this, by which I mean the issue has (appropriately) overwhelmingly dominated the news cycle since October 7, 2023. Nobody can claim they weren't aware of these atrocities unless they have spent the last month in a Himalayan monastery or living under a flat rock. So, where is the international feminist community on all this? 

If one could summarize the response, it would be this:

Tablet columnist Gil Troy has some thoughts on the matter.

Nevertheless, more than three weeks later (after Oct 7th), the feminist community remains silent. In May 2021, within days of Israel counterattacking in self-defense against yet another Hamas bombardment, over 120 gender studies departments denounced the Jewish state. Declaring that “justice is indivisible,” they proclaimed that our work is “committed to an inclusive feminist vision,” as per the National Women’s Studies Association’s 2015 Solidarity Statement, “that contests violations of civil rights and international human rights law.” The call was so popular, the Palestinian Feminist Collective asked for patience. “Please note, due to the overwhelming response we are only uploading names twice a day. Please be patient as we are stretched to capacity.”

I won't go into the utter uselessness of "Gender Studies" departments in our university systems, or the useless degrees they confer; they are part and parcel of the entire Ethnic Underwater Dog-Polishing Studies degree system that has converted much of American academia into a farce and a con game. But if one were to look for a dictionary definition of "hypocrisy," one need look no further than the response of those Women's Studies, Gender Studies, and feminist groups to the mass rape, murder, and abuse of Israeli women:

Now, despite seeing Hamas’ rape cult, not one gender studies department has defended even one victimized woman. Feminists have long taught us to believe the accuser and not blame the victim. For years, progressives insisted, in academic papers, on T-shirts, even on coffee mugs, that when fighting oppression, “silence is consent,” or even that “silence is violence.” On Oct. 7, the violated women shouted, shrieked, cried, begged, rape after rape, cut after cut, fighting off these assaults with their voices and their bare hands as best each could. Some hostages may still be struggling. By contrast, violating every feminist principle I’ve ever read and respected, today’s feminist movement is violently, silently, consenting to this mass crime against women and against the victims from three-dozen different countries. Some even doubt the testimonials—and the staggering, bloody, heartbreaking evidence of stripped women paraded through Gaza’s streets. Robbing someone of their story is a secondary offense—but nevertheless inexcusable.

And why? That's simple: They have politics, but no principles. It's all about The Side.

If you understand principles, real, authentic, ethical principles, you know this: They apply in all circumstances. If raping and beheading an innocent young German woman is wrong, it is wrong no matter who commits the act. If it is wrong to storm an airport looking to attack members of a certain religious grouping, none of whom have any involvement with events happening thousands of miles away, then it is wrong no matter who the attackers or victims are. If hundreds of Israeli militants had stormed into Gaza and raped and murdered Gazan women, they would have been just as horrifically guilty of atrocity as the Hamas terrorists that attacked Israel, because that's how principles work.

Too many on the Left, however, have politics, but no principles.

Feminists, the ones who have been so strangely quiet on this issue, clearly are not operating under anything within shouting distance of an ethical principle. The Left, of which the radical feminist community is a subset, has always been against Israel. They cannot endorse Hamas, so they remain silent, and in so doing, do a grave injustice to the victimized Israeli women because, like it or not, agree with it or not, the feminist movement has a considerable international voice, should they choose to exercise it.

But they don't. And that's very revealing. The Left is anti-Israel and always has been, to the degree that they can overlook the mass rape and murder of innocent women.

We see this all too often from the Left. The left-dominated legacy media gave us non-stop coverage of the Lewiston mass shooting and the aftermath; that was of course a legitimate major story and deserved coverage. But meanwhile these mass shootings (in Democrat-dominated cities with strict gun-control laws) since Lewiston have gone largely unreported. They don't fit the narrative, so they are largely ignored.

Gil Troy concludes:

We could be cutesy and call this callousness toward Jews—and silence about Palestinian patriarchy and honor killings—“blocked at the intersectionalism.” Alas, there’s an older, better, term for such invisibility, such heartlessness, such dehumanization of Jewish women, and such vitriolic bigotry. It’s called antisemitism.

There is the element of antisemitism in it, of course. But a big part of it is this: Politics, not principles.