You haven’t come a long way, baby.
This seems to be the new theme for many Jewish women around the world, especially in Israel. For them, this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8th commemorated anything but the 2024 hashtag #InvestInWomen.
As women around the globe celebrated the social, economic and cultural achievements of women, Jewish women are thrown back into the stone age of women’s rights as they witness the world’s silence on the Hamas sexual violence against their own.
One organization after another drags its feet in condemning the brutal rapes and sexual mutilation of Jewish women by Hamas on October 7th. Most just ignore it.
On the day before International Women’s Day, it took an arrest to focus attention on one organization intentionally shutting its eyes to the human rights abuses that is at the core of its mission to defend.
Former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind was handcuffed in the lobby of Amnesty International USA headquarters on October 7th after protesting the organization’s silence on Hamas sexual violence against Jewish women. The police were called in after Hikind refused to leave the premises until he could personally deliver the Moral Hypocrisy Award to an Amnesty International representative.
I was asked to speak to the mainly dozens of Jewish women activists who stood with Hikind in front of the organization’s Midtown office. The following were my remarks:
“We are standing in front of Amnesty International on the day before International Women’s Day. If you go to the Amnesty International website, the first thing you see at the top of their page is a call to action in bold letters – a call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the declaration that ‘Israel must end its occupation of Palestine to stop fueling apartheid and systemic human rights violations.’
I would have thought that on this day, the headline might be a call to action to demand that Iran free the thousands of women still incarcerated in Iranian prisons after being arrested by the Morality Police for simple transgressions like protesting the mandatory wearing of the hijab.
Or a call to action to halt female genital mutilation of Muslim girls in sub-Sahara Africa or forced marriages in Syria or honor killings in Muslim countries like Iraq. Or closer to home – an end to the child sex trafficking of girls brought over the American southern border by cartels.
Amnesty International claims that ‘women’s rights are human rights’, which they are.
But when I typed in ‘Hamas rapes in Israel’ on their website’s search bar, all that came up were the words ‘Sorry we didn’t find any results’.
On October 7th, hundreds of Jewish women in Israel were brutally murdered, raped and mutilated by Hamas. But apparently Jewish women’s rights are not human rights according to Amnesty International.
If you look up the definition of ‘amnesty’ in the dictionary, it means ‘a pardon for a wrongdoing or the willingness to overlook something.’
This is what Amnesty International is doing today. It is pardoning terrorists for the brutal murder, rape and hostage-taking of Jews. Worse, they are willfully conflating the perpetrators with the victims.
Sadly, Amnesty International is not the only culprit. The United Nations, the mainstream media, universities and schools, leftist leaders in the Democratic Party are all promoting this Nazi-style propaganda. Antisemitism is now in vogue and Jewish blood is cheap.
Just last Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris, arguably the most powerful woman in America today, and perhaps in the world, demanded an ‘immediate ceasefire’ in Gaza – which we all know to be a euphemism for victory for terrorists and an existential danger for Israel. And she blamed Israel for the ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ in Gaza rather than blame Hamas, which instigated this war and uses their own people as human shields.
Here at home, Jewish teachers at a New York City public school are getting emails that read, ‘All Jews need to be exterminated. Their doors kicked in the middle of the night. A bullet put in each of their heads.’
We are approaching the holiday of Purim. Queen Esther, a true heroine, although reluctant at first, rose to the occasion and saved the Jewish people from annihilation. The Jewish people are being threatened again – both in Israel and in America. We must call out the truth – and call it out as loudly as we can – because nothing less than our own lives is at stake.”