The Diplomat
Half a thousand Jewish women last Friday sent a letter to the Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, demanding that the Palestinian flag not be used in the 8-M demonstrations on the occasion of International Women’s Day.
In their letter, the signatories point out that “raising the flag of Palestine, confusing it with Hamas, whose leaders have tortured, raped, mutilated and kidnapped women and girls” is “humiliating” the women and victims of last October 7, “even Palestinian women”.
Likewise, they ask the ministers of the Spanish Government to “condemn the terrorists” and send a message of “support to the women” victims of them, and emphasize that “silence” can be seen as acceptance of the facts, which they describe of “misogynistic and anti-Semitic massacre”.
Furthermore, the women who sign the text remember that “in Gaza the rights for women and the LGTBI community do not exist” and although they “regret the loss of lives of innocent Palestinian women and children” they assure that “one cannot talk about comparing situations.” “You cannot equate an unwanted death, in a space of war, with the premeditated murders of October 7, of extreme violence in times of peace and without any provocation,” they say.
On the other hand, on the 8th, several dozen people gathered in Plaza de Felipe II in Madrid to condemn the sexual violence practiced by Hamas.
Convened by the Forum of Relatives of Hostages and Missing Persons, in collaboration with six Jewish entities, the gatherings carried banners with photographs of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas and with texts denouncing the violations perpetrated by terrorists.
Along with the photographs, one could read texts that highlighted the atrocities committed against women and their display as trophies.
The president of the Movement Against Intolerance, Esteban Ibarra, was present at the demonstration, who said he felt “scandalized” by the lack of mention in the 8-M events of the women murdered in Israel in the attack on October 7, which he described of “terrorist massacre, which was also misogynistic and anti-Semitic.”
For his part, the Minister Counselor of the Israeli Embassy in Spain, Dan Poraz, denounced, in a brief speech, that the radical left remains silent “in the face of the systematic rape and sexual violence that Israeli women suffered in the Hamas massacre.” on October 7.
After reproaching the UN for taking five months to recognize these crimes, he indicated that last week the United Nations issued a report in which it stated that on October 7, Hamas systematically used rape and sexual abuse as an act of war. “Women were attacked, raped, mutilated and in most cases murdered,” he recalled.
«In addition to the pain of the barbarism itself, the silence of feminist organizations in the face of these events hurts and greatly angers. Premeditated silence that ranges from supranational organizations such as UN Women, the UN or the Red Cross, to that of governments and people in positions of power and social leadership and, which creates more pain and strangeness, of feminist groups that far from “to defend the rights of all women have decided to remain silent and become selective feminists,” she said.
