One of the Greatest Travesties Against Women, by Women

Some so-called "feminists" have become so entrenched in their own confirmation bias — that reason, research, or even a smidge of empathy for someone outside their bubble has become impossible.

Some feminists have been telling us to “believe all women” — except, apparently, when they are Israeli and Jewish. (photo: Mélodie Descoubes/Unsplash)

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What are the signs that a society or a group of individuals has become radicalised?

Behavioural traits often include spending an increasing amounts of time talking to people with extreme views; changing a style of dress or personal appearance (like keffiyehs and extremist t-shirts); and they will often lose interest in friends and activities that are not associated with the extremist ideology, group, or cause.

Sounds familiar?

Today’s polarisation and radicalisation can be explained through epistemic bubbles and echo chambers, which effectively cut of any opposing views or arguments through invisible algorithms, leading to a constant validation source of what can often be very dangerous ideas.

This would explain, but not justify, the abhorrent reaction from self-proclaimed feminists in reaction to the systematic violent rape and abuse of women in Israel on and following October 7th. The voracity of the war crimes committed on that day were of a level hard to comprehend, but there is no doubt that they happened.

People involved in collecting and identifying the bodies of those killed in the attack told of systematic signs of sexual assault, including broken pelvises, bruises, cuts, and tears, and that the victims ranged from children and teenagers to pensioners.¹

What they lacked in first-account testimony due to almost all of the victims being dead, gaps were filled in with witnesses, first responders, and of course the rapists’ own videos. One such survivor testified seeing Hamas fighters gang rape a woman and mutilate her, before the last of her attackers shot her in the head while he continued to rape her.

In the video, the woman known as “Witness S” mimes the attackers picking up and passing the victim from one to another. “She was alive,” the witness said. “She was bleeding from her back.” The witness went on to detail how the men cut off parts of the victim's body during the assault:

“They sliced her breast and threw it on the street. They were playing with it. The victim was passed to another man in uniform. He penetrated her, and shot her in the head before he finished. He didn’t even pick up his pants; he shoots and ejaculates.”

Even the United Nations — who is no friend of Israel — begrudgingly had to admit in a report that: “There are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence — including rape and gang-rape — occurred across multiple locations of Israel and the Gaza periphery during the attacks on 7 October 2023.”²

It’s hard to fathom that any woman, any human in fact — let alone one proclaiming to have the interests of women as their manifesto — could be so dismissive, even outright aggressive to the plight of Israeli women. But here we are.

Israeli attorney Moran Gaz recently discussed in an interview how difficult it has been to prosecute any of the sexual crimes that took place on October 7th. Due to the sheer numbers of victims, Gaz explained:

“The biggest challenge is evidence. Linking specific crimes to specific suspects, across dozens of crime scenes involving hundreds of suspects and thousands of offenses, is nearly impossible. Standard rules of evidence don’t fit this situation. There are no organized chains of evidence, and there’s no one to verify the videos you want to present in court.”³

The staggering scope of the slaughter of October 7th meant that it was difficult to the even identify the vast number of bodies, let alone perform extensive autopsies on them. As is also common in war, collection of physical evidence is hindered by ongoing combat and a large, chaotic crime scene — and, in this case, by Jewish burial traditions.

Most of the victims of the atrocities were dead, and those who survived are so traumatised that they have been so far unwilling to deal with the second-hand trauma of coming forward to be re-victimised. And who could blame them, with feminists worldwide ready to pounce?

Despite the mountains of evidence and reports to the contrary, feminist influencers hoards of other “progressives” repeatedly distorted, misquoted, or simply denied the words of both the victims, first responders, the United Nations, and Moran Gaz, with self-righteous smug indignation.

In response to Gaz’s interview, Australian feminist activist Clementine Ford gleefully reposted a story claiming: “No rape allegations filed in October 7th case, Israeli prosecutor admits.”

Ford’s comment? “And there it is,” she wrote on social media.

How smart and victorious you must feel, Clementine Ford, so self-righteous and smug in your confidence to shove it to those Israeli women. Did your feminist senses start tingling with joy when you typed in that ripper statement?

Except she is wrong. Women were raped, abused, and mutilated. But instead what we have is so-called feminists’ repugnant prevarication and denial of some of the most horrific degradation and sexual violence perpetrated against women in modern times. Take a bow, feminist warriors!

And of course, the clips that these so-called feminists repost are factually incorrect. If they had bothered to listen, they would have gleaned that it’s very difficult to get testimony from dead witnesses. And near impossible to identity rapists from a neighbouring region when the governing power of the region is a violent, terrorist group which sees the rape of innocent women as “resistance.”

But these so-called feminists either don’t care about the truth, or they have become so entrenched in their own confirmation bias — that reason, research, or even a smidge of empathy for someone outside their bubble has become impossible.

Constance Hall is another Australian woman who has built a successful platform on the back of feminism. Yet Hall too has fallen victim to extremist propaganda rife on social media. Hall proudly reposted an Instagram post which stated, “The October 7 Mass Rape has been proven to be a hoax after 15 months.”

Unfortunately Hall too failed to read past the catchy headline. It never stated any such thing. What it did say is that it’s hard to file an allegation if you can’t identity the perpetrator. And where should they file the said allegations? With the Palestinian Authority? With Hamas?

I guess not all women who wear feminist tees are actually feminists.

Magdalena Wojcieszak, a professor of communication at the University of California, when discussing the dangers of radicalisation from echo chambers, explained:

“It makes you more extreme or polarized. It reinforces your attitudes. It also reinforces your sense of belonging to this group, and it reinforces your negativity and hostility toward other groups. You think you’re the legitimate one, the good one, the virtuous one. The others are evil.”

Propaganda through social media is being used as tool to demonise and victimise the victims, and influencers are the conduits used to spread the hate and lies.

So what responsibility do these “influencers” — with hundreds of thousands of followers — have to tell the truth? Clementine Ford a few days ago posted an image of a child ‘amputee’ with the caption “Videos like these are why I cannot tolerate Zionist whining about their right to be shown compassion” — except the video had nothing to do with Gaza, and even less to do with Zionists. This beautiful child is from Brazil and was born without his limbs.

I cannot think of anything more reprehensible than misappropriating an image of a child — without any source checking — to use as ammunition to disparage a group of people that have suffered an unimaginable tragedy.

Should there be repercussions when influencers post lies and untruths to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of followers? At what point do we acknowledge the harm to society that these falsehoods undoubtedly cause.

I hope that in time, like the evolution of legacy media, we will progress to a more accountable publishing model on social media. We cannot confuse free speech with hate speech. Having a large audience should come with great responsibility, or at the very least, source verification.

Right now, it’s a free-for-all. A veritable sh*t-show. In an era where we have access to more information than we ever had, concentration spans are at an all-time low. Young consumers are more likely to get their news and information sources from TikTok and Instagram, in 30 seconds bites or less, than anywhere else.

So, how do we avoid becoming a victim to our own echo chamber?

Social media algorithms are designed to maximise engagement, so extremism is baked into the system. Unsurprisingly, this keeps us locked in distorted bubbles, resulting in polarisation on a societal level.

But there is a simple fix.

Ironically, it’s not that difficult. Critically analyse what you read, and verify from multiple sources; you can’t believe everything you see or read on social media.

When something is presented to you, ask yourself these three questions:

• Who is behind the information?

• What is the evidence?

• What do other sources say?

And maybe, just maybe, you will stop yourself from falling into a deep pit of hypocrisy with your self-aggrandising, baseless, and reckless posts that vilify and denigrate the exact same group of female victims that you profess to stand for.

Just a thought.

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1. “Israel Gaza: Hamas raped and mutilated women on 7 October, BBC hears.” BBC.

2. “Reasonable Grounds to Believe Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Occurred in Israel During 7 October Attacks, Senior UN Official Tells Security Council.” United Nations.

3. “.אם אתה עצור של 7 באוקטובר מבחינתי אין לך זכות לחיות” Ynet News.