The Validity of the Witness
The Validity of the Witness
Opinion piece published in Weekendavisen. 25 March 2024. By Augusta Atla
LINK: https://www.weekendavisen.dk/2024-12/opinion/vidnets-validitet
How did my fellow feminists become the standard-bearers for anti-Semitism in Denmark?
I still don't understand why the feminists are so silent since October 7, 2023. Where are the MeToo outcries about Hamas’ sexual assaults? Where is the Danish Women's Association? Where is the Danish Women's Council? Where is Museum KØN? And where are the big demonstrations for women's rights regardless of ethnicity?
I consider myself a hardcore feminist and I never thought I would have to fight against my own. Since the 7th of October I have been going through shock upon shock. The first was the massacre by Hamas itself, the terrorist organization's murder of civilians and rape of Israeli women. Hamas, who wants an Islamic kingdom where Jews do not exist.
The next shock that knocked me over was when Western feminists and women's activists now suddenly were also the standard-bearers of anti-Semitism.
The United Nations organization UN Women, which aims to combat discrimination against women and girls, took two months to condemn Hamas' rapes. Only on December 2nd 2023 did a post appear on social media: "We emphasize that all Israeli women, Palestinian women and everyone else have the right to a life in safety and free from violence."
In January 2024, an employee at Museum KØN, Cecil Marie Schou Pallesen, made a post on Instagram in which she called TV 2's coverage uncritical when an Israeli female witness and hostage, 21-year-old Mia Schem, was given speaking time to talk about his experience in Hamas custody. And when the chief director of the Women's Council Camilla Gregersen was confronted with Pallesen's post, she replied to X:
"It makes no sense to criticize our member's professionalism and discredit her workplace. It's going to sound like you disagree that she can be employed at @konmuseum if she doesn't share your position 100%. You must be able to go to work safely!'
But doesn't Gregersen overlook the fact that by doubting the MeToo witness - and the victim - you are actually incompetent as a women's rights champion and employee at Museum KØN? I guess the whole idea of being a feminist is to take female witnesses seriously. And had they disbelieved a Palestinian victim? I doubt it.
The association KVINFO's event for Women's Day on March 8 was interrupted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and the Danish prime minister had to leave the event. However, lawyer and debater Natasha Al-Hariri was allowed to give her speech, which revolved around the Palestinian women's struggle, but, mind you, did not contain the words "Israeli" or "Jew" and did not condemn Hamas' sexual abuse.
Of course, Palestinian women also deserve rights, but do they get that in the kingdom of Hamas? And how can Palestinian women talk about peace when at the same time they have not yet given up hope for getting back the land of Israel’s boarders since 1967? Al-Hariri talked about a key in the family that belonged to a house in Haifa...
In an article in Politiken on March 14, 2024, which was written by, among others, KVINFO (Danish women org.) employee Anja Uglebjerg, under the title: "Danish media should rediscover their critical sense in the debate about Hamas and sexual violence" you could read a cruel undermining of the (Israeli ) female witnesses and victims. But doesn't the witness in (extremely gross) MeToo cases apply to Israelis?
Naturally, one must be critical of both Hamas's and Israel's propaganda, but in the Politiken article, all Israeli sources are presented as falsum. This is not just being critical, it is the classic face of anti-Semitism: dismissing everything that comes from Israel or from Jews.
How and why discredit the witnesses and victims who have spoken in public? We have several surviving witnesses to the October 7th massacre during the music festival in Re'im. We have witnesses to the abuses of women in Hamas custody. But why don't we believe them?
Unlike the Nazis, who carefully tried to hide the evil in the concentration camps, Hamas not only recorded their massacres with GoPro cameras, they even proudly published their footage. For that same reason we have video clips of dead female bodies being brutally handled and dragged along the ground.
One of the hostages who died in Hamas captivity was Vivian Silver, founder of the grassroots movement ‘Women Wage Peace’, who for a decade has worked and demonstrated for peace and for a two-state solution and, for example, helped Palestinian women across the border from Gaza to receive cancer treatment.
Perhaps this new anti-Semitism of the feminists is fueled by their guru (and my ex-guru) Judith Butler, who claims that Hamas is waging a freedom struggle. But what kind of Palestine is being fought for if it is to be under the rule of Hamas? Is it women's rights fight to support a deeply women-oppressive ideology? Are rapes and sexual assaults part of the feminists' freedom fight?
I myself am a feminist with a clear political position on the left. I believe, however, that the ideology stands in the way of an understanding of actual history. The ideological analysis that emphasizes the relationship between the exploiter and the exploited, the colonialist and the colonized, the oppressor and the victim – an analysis that tries to compress history into a familiar pattern – helps muddy the analysis of power relations in the Middle East and takes no regard for the actual story. Just as it provides absolutely no solution for Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel came into being in 1948 after the extermination and deportations of Europe's Jews. Is it imperialism to flee, be deported and fight for a country given by the UN? The left needs to look at the factual history and stop viewing it through a distorted ideological lens. Antisemitism is back, it runs like fire through petrol and must not be neglected, normalized or silenced, not even in Denmark. And especially not by us feminists!
A recent speech by the American journalist, author and editor Bari Weiss expressed exactly what I feel after October 7, 2023: How on earth can well-educated feminists and women, who know everything about the MeToo principle about the validity of the witness, deny the Israelis that right and even revive the most hideous aspect of Europe's history: anti-Semitism?
LINK: https://www.weekendavisen.dk/2024-12/opinion/vidnets-validitet