A picture belies a thousand words of propaganda
Like millions of Jewish women around the world, I spent last Sunday obsessively flicking between screens, searching for news of the release of the first of our 98 remaining hostages, held for over 470 days in the terror tunnels and UN facilities of Gaza.
We knew they would be women. Three young women who have experienced things we cannot bear to imagine and may never know.
We considered myriad scenarios. Would they be alive? (We remembered the return of abducted soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in coffins from Hezbollah in 2008.) Would they be drugged with clonazepam so they’d look happy and carefree, like the first round of hostages Hamas released in November 2023? Would they be pregnant? Would they be physically whole? (Emily Damari wasn’t – Hamas blew off two fingers of her left hand when they stormed her kibbutz, Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023.)
I’ve visited that kibbutz three times now – twice before October 7 and once since, to see with my own eyes the carnage wrought there and embrace Chen, the peacenik guide I’d met before but was now a shell of herself, having lost her aunt (incinerated in her home), her dear friend (shot in Chen’s front yard), and her belief that peace will ever be possible.
We struggled with the devil’s bargain Israel had made: 33 of its people exchanged for 1,904 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Kfir Bibas, an infant 9 months old when abducted on one side of the ledger; Mohammed Abu Warda, responsible for the murder of 45 Israelis in two horrific bus bombings in 1996 on the other. In 1996 I lived in Israel, with a 9-month-old baby myself. We were too afraid to take buses.
We know that Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was swapped in 2011 for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, one of whom was Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7. This is a Faustian bargain inked in blood.
Watching the scene unfold in Gaza City’s Saraya Square I felt myself falling into a vortex of cognitive dissonance. A happy, excited crowd, such as one might see at a fairground, holding flags and cellphones. Well-dressed, well-fed fans, held back by hundreds of burly Hamas terrorists, most wielding heavy weapons, some with cameras to film the spectacle.
Very few women in the crowd. Hundreds and hundreds of men, all clamouring to get a glimpse of the three young women as they arrived in a van. Again the cognitive dissonance as I thought of Roman amphitheatres, Christians and lions – in the West Bank there’s actually a Palestinian terrorist group called Lion’s Den, funded by Hamas too.
The overwhelming toxic masculinity of the scene suggested that the women might be devoured by that crowd as they emerged from the van. And I wondered if UN Women or any other international feminist group was watching. If they might break their silence and their obsession with microagressions at corporate watercoolers to comment on the undeniable misogynistic macroagression of this monstrous tableau.
But the women were not devoured, they were ‘protected’ by the very terrorists who 15 months ago had massacred, raped and mutilated their friends, family and neighbours. And for 15 months since have committed G-d knows what other acts against them. The irony.
These monster protectors handed the women over to the Red Cross. Handed them ‘gift bags’ as if they were guests departing a 471-day horror-themed birthday party. In the gift bags ‘certificates’ of release which the Red Cross duly signed as if these were legitimate documents. The same utterly morally bankrupt Red Cross who abandoned Jews in the Holocaust has abandoned them in this war too. The only contact any of the hostages have had with them has been when Red Cross staff have acted as Uber drivers on the trip from Hamas to the IDF.
What has stayed with me and with millions of other Jewish women I know, is the look of blood-chilling terror on the face of 31-year-old Israeli veterinary nurse Doron Steinbrecher as she is pawed or steered through a baying crowd of Palestinian civilians by a balaclaved, sunglass-wrapped symbol of Jew hatred and West hatred and woman hatred. It’s the picture that belies a thousand words of propaganda and recycled anti-Jewish blood libels. Doron in this moment – and for the past 15 months – is a lamb who was one of the few to narrowly avert the slaughter.
I haven’t yet seen a comment about this extraordinary image from UN Women or any other group who purports to care about violence against women, including sexual violence in conflict. But there is still time. Of the 59 hostages still to be ‘released’ (I don’t know what word to use for the additional 36 who we already know will not come home alive) 10 are also young women and 2 are infants. This deal is supposed to run through 42 days…that’s a lot of chances to raise your voice.
Jewish women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and in my country, Australia, Eva Cox and Bettina Cass pioneered the feminist moment. We have been allies from the beginning. We are here with open arms and open ears waiting to hear our non-Jewish sisters say that our lives matter too.