Believe All Women #MeToo Unless You Are A Jew
Among other things, the commission is aiming to obtain recognition in the international arena that the acts committed by Hamas against women and children come under the definition of crimes against humanity. To achieve this, they hoped to awaken from their torpor the womenâs organizations associated with the United Nations, but the results have been disappointing. Most of their disappointment is directed at the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and UN Women. âThese are organizations that have an important declarative role,â Elkayam-Levy says. âThey are supposed to be the first pipeline from which information flows concerning human rights violations against women and children.â
These bodies were slow, however, to relate to the events in the western Negev, and the statements they ultimately published are frustrating to Elkayam-Levy, to say the least. âAll kinds of vague statements are beginning to come out,â she notes, âcalling upon both sides to âshow restraint,â and simply making October 7 vanish from the timeline. A parallel universe. The terrible betrayal we have felt has developed into a feeling that we are now the victims of wild incitement directed at us. At very early stages of the war, those organizations began running campaigns about the genocide Israel is carrying out in Gaza. I am very uncomfortable saying this, but those organizations have shown themselves to be antisemitic bodies.
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Last Thursday, early in the morning, Elkayam-Levy found herself in an unusual situation, at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Two European prime ministers were visiting Israel, Pedro SĂĄnchez from Spain and Alexander De Croo from Belgium. They gathered with their entourages in the hotelâs conference room to receive a briefing from the head of the Israeli Civil Commission.
Elkayam-Levy decided to put aside the âhorror speechâ â the gut-wrenching descriptions of crimes that she listed at the Harvard conference â and focused on the effort to recruit the foreign leaders to constructive cooperation. It wasnât a debate, but an event in which Elkayam-Levy was the primary speaker, with the prime ministers listening. SĂĄnchez was mostly interested in her positions on national security and terrorism; De Croo wanted to know if she believes in peace and asked her if she also sees the suffering of Gaza residents. Elkayam-Levy noted that sheâs a longtime peace activist. The next day at Rafah Crossing, the two leaders would make pro-Palestinian speeches that would set off a diplomatic crisis with Israel. But Elkayam-Levy didnât concern herself with that. âEven if they expressed a position that was critical toward Israel, at no point did they deny the acts that targeted Israeli women, or stayed silent.â