Why Does Australia in U.N. Back Iran on Women?

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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong are keeping quiet about the fact that  Australia voted to install the Islamic Government of Iran on the UN body determining policy on women’s rights, human rights, disarmament, and terrorism prevention. 

On 10th April, the Islamic Republic of Iran was nominated by the UN’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council to sit on the UN’s Committee for Program and Coordination. Other democracies that took part in this infamous decision are Canada, France, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, the UK, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and Finland.

Some of those democracies are now saying that they did not actually take part in a vote in favour. This is misleading. Iran was nominated by the Asian group. The democracies joined in the consensus to nominate Iran. They could have opposed the nomination. The U.S. was the only country to do so. They also could have proposed an alternative country to sit on the Committee instead of Iran as has been done in the past. https://x.com/HillelNeuer/status/2044589062435246579

Sexual Violence & Execution

The Islamic regime has institutionalised crimes against women as an integral part of Government policy. It has used sexual violence, mass rape, mutilation, incarceration, torture and execution against thousands of Iranian women. 

Maliheh Firouzeh, 32 (in the photo below) was just one of an estimated 45,000 Iranian protestors massacred by the Iranian regime this year on January 8-9. Her body was returned to her family with broken bones, burns, a severed leg, and an eye gouged out.  The regime claims it was a “suicide”.  https://x.com/LouFrance75/status/2040391434105397350

The UN itself has recognised that girls and women were raped in Iranian prisons before being executed, as far back as the 1980s. https://iranwire.com/en/society/60172/

And a UK Parliamentary inquiry in 2013 referred to the Iranian state’s “role in actively promoting sexual torture as a tool for political control.” https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmintdev/writev/934/m35.htm

Occasionally the resistance by Iranian women erupts onto international headlines, as happened in October 2022 following the murder of 22 year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. She was arrested for showing some hair despite wearing the compulsory hijab.This sparked the #WOMENLIFEFREEDOM protest movement. Countless women in Iran took to the streets, cut their hair, and burned their headscarves. Thousands were arrested and killed.

Pedophilia

Pedophilia is legal under the Islamic regime. Iranian law allows a girl or boy child to be married off at any age with the consent of the legal guardian and the sanction by the court. In Iran thousands of girls as young as 9 are married off to older men. This despite the fact that the international human rights system has identified any marriage before the age of 18 as forced marriage.

The Australian Government could not have been unaware of Iran’s record towards women when it voted to put Iran on this UN Committee. 

Terrorism

It certainly was aware of Iran’s record on terrorism. In addition to women’s rights and human rights, the Committee will also deal with terrorism prevention. PM Albanese officially designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a state sponsor of terrorism after it engaged in firebombing Melbourne’s Adass Israel synagogue. In 2025, Australia expelled the Iranian ambassador.

And now PM Albanese is making them responsible for UN terrorism prevention.

Please explain.

Restitution for Women’s Unpaid Work

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One of the most universally enduring forms of discrimination holds that women’s work has lesser monetary value than men’s work or indeed has no monetary value at all.

For centuries women have laboured in the home, with children, family and in the community without pay. Their work has never been included in the GDP or economic statistics. Quite the opposite. It has remained invisible because it is not considered a contribution to a nation’s economy. It is just something that women have to do. And because it is women doing this labour it devalues both the labour and the women performing it. The consequences of these practices have been to rob women of an income, and with it, independence, freedom, social status and even health and longevity.

But now we can quantify the value of women’s unpaid work.

Leonora Risse Associate Professor in Economics, University of Canberra has conducted  new research that puts a dollar value on what all this unpaid labour is worth to the economy. 

Here are some of the astonishing figures she revealed;

  1. Women’s unpaid labour is worth the equivalent of $427.3 billion per year. Men’s unpaid work amounts to $261 billion. 
  2. All this unpaid labour is worth about A$688 billion to the economy. That is equivalent to around one-third of GDP – and is mostly contributed by women.
  3. The average woman does $40,092 in unpaid labour a year.
  4. 55% of women’s labour contribution to the economy is in the form of unpaid work and care, compared with 31% of men’s.
  5. When women’s unpaid labour is included, women’s share of total labor in the Australian economy rose from 36.8% (when only formal, paid work is counted) to 50.5% when corrected for systemic distortions – including the devaluation of women’s work and the wage premium men earn across roles and industries.

Women hold up half the Australian economy, but they still remain invisible as an unpaid productive workforce.

Restitution for Older Women

Australian older women are now experiencing a national crisis as a direct result of this failure to recognise and remunerate women for their work. A third of Australian women are over 50. This is the demographic that is presently experiencing the greatest levels of unemployment, homelessness and poverty.

Decades of unpaid work, reduced time in the workforce due to caring work and part-time work together ensure that women age into poverty. Older women are the first to be fired and the last to be hired. There is rampant prejudice against hiring older women. Therefore they spend the longest periods on Jobseeker. Their superannuation is a fraction of that of their male peers and they usually cannot survive on it alone. 

Which brings us to the question of how are they to survive for the decade or two until they qualify for the pension or can access their super?

Now that Professor Risse has developed the methodology for quantifying women’s unpaid labour, we need to use these tools to tackle the crisis facing older women. These statistics need to be translated into Government policy.

I would argue that older women are entitled to financial restitution for their decades-long unpaid labour that benefited the economy.

Since women have contributed throughout their lives to the national economy then this contribution should be valued as wages withheld.

This monetary value could be recognised as a ‘shadow’ super and paid back to older women experiencing great hardship. 

Significantly, the same reasons for the Government giving pensions for women over 67, also apply for women over 50. That is, “recognition of contributions to society and a commitment to supporting vulnerable citizens” and “to stop older Australians from falling into poverty as they age and can no longer earn income”.

It could be one effective measure to avoid the escalating catastrophe already afflicting hundreds of thousands of Australian women who, despite a lifetime of work, are ageing into destitution.

Women’s Budget 2025

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If you read the Labor Government’s Women’s Budget Statement 2025 you would be forgiven for thinking that in Australia, women cease to exist once they pass menopause. This Budget, presented as part of the Federal Budget 2025-26, targets working women below the age of 50. There was little in it for women aged 50 plus, even though this demographic represents a third of the Australian female population. Astonishingly, they remain invisible to the Australian Government.

You may ask, why does this demographic need particular attention? Because after the age of 50, Australian women are more likely than any other demographic, to become impoverished. Statistically they already represent the largest and fastest growing cohort of homeless Australians. We are reaping the consequences of institutionalised economic and social discrimination against women.

This systemic discrimination forces women onto JobSeeker. Then age discrimination keeps them there. Older women are the first to be fired and unlikely to be rehired, which is why they form the majority of those long-term on JobSeeker.

In the Labor Government’s 2023 Budget, there was, for the first time, a nod of recognition that women aged 55+ on JobSeeker had little chance of finding work. Nevertheless, Treasurer Jim Chalmers chose to award them only $6 p.d. extra in their JobSeeker payment.

Presently, JobSeeker is just $56 a day which is only 43.5% of the minimum wage and around 38% below the poverty line. Linkage to the CPI continues to shrink the value of JobSeeker. There are no affordable rentals for someone on JobSeeker.

The Labor Government has failed dismally to provide adequate social housing and support for homeless older women.

And even though the cost of living and rent have never been higher, those on JobSeeker got no increase in the 2025 Budget.

Instead, the Government in election-mode, chose populist policies of handing out $150 energy relief and tax cuts.The tax cuts alone cost the Government $7.7 billion.

If the Government had really wanted to offer tangible relief to older women who have no home, no work and little food, they could have done so and saved money too. Had the Government increased JobSeeker by $200 per fortnight, it would have only cost them $5 billion – a saving of almost $3 billion. There would also have been a $71.8 million long-run investment-related benefit from an increase in JobSeeker to 90% of the age pension, according to the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee 2025 Report to Government.

The disproportionate number of older women dependent on JobSeeker constitutes only part of the magnitude of the crisis. There are hundreds of thousands of women facing destitution, homelessness, neglect and isolation due to lack of savings, super funds, or due to divorce or death of a partner. Women who have higher education, professions and skills who have  been part of the workforce for decades and also worked in the home, are now sleeping in cars and tents. 

On this scale, we are not talking about individual tragedies, but a significant social phenomenon.

Unquestionably, as women age, many enter a social and economic maelstrom. This is indeed a feminist issue. And  therefore it is disappointing that despite having a Women’s Budget ostensibly dedicated to women, this Budget fails to address this crisis. Finance Minister and Minister for Women, Katy Gallagher, overwhelmingly focuses on preventative action to improve the economic security of younger generations of women.

This is commendable, but not sufficient. 

It in no way absolves the Government from the obligation to tackle the cluster of issues that affect current generations of older women.

Susan Sontag - 'On Women'

On Women Ageing

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“For most women ageing means a humiliating process of gradual sexual disqualification.” Susan Sontag

I remember that as a young second wave feminist, we never gave a thought to being old. We can probably blame it on the arrogance of youth. The  incredulity that you will ever age. The feeling that you will live forever. We were soaring with strength and feeling invincible, fighting for the rights of women – for gender equality, the right to higher education, employment, control over our reproductive rights with contraception and abortion. These were all fundamental women’s rights and we were totally justified in fighting for them. They were issues that directly affected us. But we never really realised that they were primarily issues affecting younger women. We were essentially advocating for feminism for younger women. 

The issues that affected older women never even crossed our minds. And why would they? At the time, there was nothing approaching a feminist perspective on ageing. The ageism, the invisibility, the loss of value, the toxic combination of sexism and ageism that bars older women from the workforce, the homelessness, the poverty, and what Forbes describes as the “woefully understudied “ health issues specific to older women.  

Feminists in the late 20th century simply did not see older women. They were invisible to us, just as now that we are older, we have become invisible to the rest of society.

But there was one woman who did write about women ageing. It was Susan Sontag, a highly esteemed and controversial American essayist, critic, novelist and filmmaker. In 1972, when she herself was a beautiful and very cool young woman at the centre of  New York cultural and social circles, she had the intellectual depth to explore what happens to women as we age. With razor sharp insight and devastating language, she denounced the double standard facing women compared to men. 

Sontag’s writing is particularly relevant today because we are witnessing the consequences of this double standard of ageing. 

Below is an excerpt from her essay ‘The Double Standard of Ageing’ (1972)  re-published in the book ‘Susan Sontag – On Women’. 

‘The Double Standard of Ageing’

“It is particularly women who experience growing older (everything that comes before one is actually old) with such distaste and even shame.

The emotional privileges this society confers upon youth stirs up some anxiety about getting older in everybody. Getting older is less profoundly wounding for a man, for in addition to the propaganda for youth that puts both men and women on the defensive as they age, there is a double standard about ageing that denounces women with special severity. 

Thus, for most women ageing means a humiliating process of gradual sexual disqualification.

Since women are considered maximally eligible in early youth, after which their sexual value drops steadily, even young women feel themselves in a desperate race against the calendar. They are old as soon as they are not very young.

Ageing is much more a social judgement than a biological eventuality.

Ageing is a movable doom. It is a crisis that never exhausts itself, because the anxiety is never really used up.

Added on to the pressure felt by everybody in this society to look young as long as possible are the values of ‘femininity’, which specifically identify sexual attractiveness in women with youth. The desire to be the ‘right age’  has a special urgency for a woman it never has for a man. A much greater part of her self-esteem and pleasure in life is threatened when she ceases to be young.   Most men experience getting older with regret, apprehension. But most women experience it more painfully: with shame. 

For the normal changes that age inscribes on every human face, women are much more heavily penalised than men…In women this perfectly natural process is regarded as a humiliating defeat, while nobody finds anything remarkably unattractive in the equivalent physical changes in men. Men are “ allowed” to look older without sexual penalty. Good looks in a man is a bonus, not a psychological necessity for maintaining normal self-esteem.

The single standard of beauty for women dictates that they must go on having clear skin. Every wrinkle, every line, every grey hair is a defeat.

This is not to say there are no beautiful older women. But the standard of beauty in a woman of any age is how far she retains, or how she manages to simulate, the appearance of youth.

…Society allows no place in our imagination for a beautiful old woman who does look like an old woman…An older woman is, by definition, sexually repulsive – unless, in fact she doesn’t look old at all…

The double standard about ageing converts the life of women into an inexorable march towards a condition in which they are not just unattractive, but disgusting. ..

Ageing in a woman is a process of becoming obscene sexually, for the flabby bosom, wrinkled neck, spotted hands, thinning white hair, waistless torso, and veined legs of an old woman are felt to be obscene.…a withered repulsive crone. 

There is no equivalent nightmare about men.

..Men are not subject to the barely concealed revulsion expressed in this culture against the female body – except in its smooth, youthful, firm, odourless, blemish-free form.

Women have another option.They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful; to be ambitious for themselves, not merely in relation to men and children. 

They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society’s double standard about ageing. Instead of being girls, girls as long as possible, who then age humiliatingly into middle-aged women and then obscenely into old women, they can become women much earlier – and remain active adults, enjoying the long, erotic career of which women are capable, far longer. 

Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. 

Women should tell the truth.”

 

 

 

I Won’t Celebrate International Women’s Day 2024

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I have been a feminist all my adult life. In my personal and professional life I have campaigned to fight discrimination against women. A major proportion of my articles and documentaries have been about the inequalities and injustice women routinely face. I choose to be a feminist.

But now I won’t be celebrating International Women’s Day 2024 as I choose not to identify with international women’s organisations.

You see, I don’t believe you can ever ‘contextualize’ rape. I don’t believe you can ever ‘contextualize’ sexual atrocities. I don’t believe that ‘by any means’ can justify the sexual brutalisation of women. And yet this is precisely what has happened regarding the rape, sexual atrocities and massacre of Israeli girls and women by Hamas on October 7th.

Those that didn’t seek to ‘contextualise’ this sexual barbarism, sought to deny it. For the most part, there has been silence. U.N. Women has been most notable in its silence. No recognition that these crimes against Israeli women were perpetrated. No condemnation. Nor did any international women’s organisation issue any condemnation.

The evidence of sexual crimes has been documented and published since November 2023. 

But for months after 7 October, the UN ignored appeals from Israeli women’s organisations to investigate, and only recently sent a team. Now, 5 months after October 7th, a report to the U.N. Secretary-General by the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict has finally confirmed widespread sexual violence by Hamas.

“Overall, based on the totality of information gathered from multiple and independent sources at the different locations, there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred at several locations across the Gaza periphery, including in the form of rape and gang rape, during the 7 October 2023 attacks. Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, was also gathered.”

This report also confirmed that Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza for 150 days are being subjected to on-going sexual violence.

“With regards to the hostages, the mission team found clear and convincing information that some hostages taken to Gaza have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence and has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.”

Has there been a single feminist institution anywhere that has condemned this ongoing sexual torture of Israel women in captivity and demanded that Hamas release them?

Apart from Jewish demonstrations, has there been a single feminist organisation anywhere demonstrating for an end to the sexual violence against Israeli hostages and their release, as there were protests against the sexual enslavement of Yazidi women?

Brutal Consequences of Gender Pay Gap

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The long term consequences of the gender pay gap are brutal. There is a direct connection between unequal pay and the rapidly escalating numbers of women aged 50+ becoming impoverished and homeless in Australia. 

It has been 50 years since equal pay was enshrined in law in Australia, and yet the pay gap appears to be enshrined in practice. The statistics confirm this, year after year.

This year however, we are able to learn not only of the range of the gap, but which companies are perpetuating it. 

This year is the first time individual companies have been named and their pay disparities between men and women disclosed as part of WGEA’s annual Employer Census. The Labor government changed the law to enable this groundbreaking transparency.

“Men continue to outstrip women in the salary stakes, with men’s median annual salary $11,542 greater than women’s, according to newly released data for Australian private companies. It’s a gap of 14.5%, down from last year’s 15.4%.

When bonuses and overtime are added – common for high-paying jobs mostly held by men – the gap in total remuneration widens to $18,461, equivalent to 19 per cent and hardly budging from the previous year’s 19.8 per cent.”  https://www.indaily.com.au/opinion/2024/02/27/how-australias-gender-pay-gap-has-endured-50-years-after-equal-pay-laws

Naming and shaming is one way of exposing discrimination against women. It might strengthen the bargaining power of women to improve their pay. It could also apply pressure by channeling skilled female employees towards companies with better practices.

There are a number of factors that together entrench discrimination against women in the workforce. These include the concentration of women in low paid fields such as teaching and caring, time out of the workforce having children, part-time work due to caring for children or family members, and the prejudicial practices of advancing men over women to senior positions. These all need to be addressed. 

Unless they are, we will continue to have generations of working women ageing into poverty. This is why too many women in the workforce face a grim reality. They must be aware that despite leading exemplary lives dedicated to their work and their families, they are more likely than men to end up on society’s scrapheap.

 

Dr. Lowitja O’Donoghue: Against All Odds

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We need to take the time to reflect on the heroism of Dr. Lowitja O’Donoghue who passed away on 4 February aged 91.

Consider the odds against her.

She was stolen from her Aboriginal mother when she was only two years old in 1932.

Lowitja was stolen from her siblings and her extended family.

Her identity was stolen from her when she was forcibly placed in a mission home, her name anglicised.

Her heritage and her culture were stolen from her as she was prohibited from speaking her own language and removed from contact with her mother or with any Indigenous community.

Her agency was stolen from her as she was left alone and powerless.

Her education and prospects were stolen from her as she was trained for a life of servitude.

Her sense of self worth was stolen from her as she was repeatedly told by the matron of the home that she would never amount to anything.

And yet.

With extraordinary courage, she reclaimed her identity and her family, even though it was over 30 years before she could meet her mother and learn that she had named her Lowitja.

With extraordinary courage, she challenged racial discrimination to become, in her early twenties, the first Aboriginal trainee nurse at Royal Adelaide Hospital.

With extraordinary courage she fought not only for a better life for herself. This Yankunytjatjara woman spent the next 60 years fearlessly advocating for justice and equity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

Dr. Lowitja O’Donoghue became a formidable leader in the fight to achieve Indigenous rights and recognition, including the success of the 1967 Referendum. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating recalls that in 1993 Dr. O’Donoghue played a key role in drafting the Native Title legislation that arose from the High Court’s historic Mabo decision. As the founding chairperson of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) she assembled Aboriginal representatives to act as an advisory group. “ It was the first and only time the Aboriginal community of Australia was brought into the Commonwealth Cabinet Room for what became a deep and eight-month consultation in the design of the Native Title Act,” says Keating.

Kevin Rudd was another Prime Minister who sought her counsel in preparing his Apology to the Stolen Generation in 2008.

Dr. O’Donoghue kept on setting precedents and winning recognition as an Indigenous leader. She was the first Aboriginal person to address the United Nations General Assembly. She became the first Aboriginal woman to be made a member of the Order of Australia in 1977 and in 1984 she was named Australian of the Year.

Dr O’Donoghue also held two Honorary Fellows, nine Honorary Doctorates and a Professorial Fellow from various universities. 

In 1998 Dr O’Donoghue was declared a National Living Treasure.

Against impossible odds, Lowitja O’Donoghue took her place as a truly great Australian woman.

 

 

Why Is The Israel-Hamas War Different From Other Wars?

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The Israel-Hamas war that began on October 7, 2023 is a war different from other wars in the modern era. It is a war in which women are a strategic target.  It is a war spearheaded by sexual violence. Female casualties are not ‘collateral damage’, the unintended consequences of war. They were designated by Hamas as military and political objectives.

Since Hamas launched its assault on Israel on October 7, it has succeeded in winning multiple victories despite not winning any military victory.

Its victories stem from its use and abuse of women.

Israel’s losses stem in part from its failure to listen to women.

When Hamas, the Government of Gaza, launched its surprise attack on Israel, it did not intend to engage Israeli soldiers in combat. Instead, as Hamas documents at the scene of the massacre of 1200 Israelis reveal, there were detailed plans of where to attack Israeli civilians in their homes and at a music festival. Specific plans of attack for each village included the intentional targeting of women and children.

The objective of Hamas was not only to kill the maximum number of civilians, but also to unleash bestial sexual brutality against them. This mission can best be described as – ‘to dishonour and to provoke’. The well-disciplined and well-equiped army of the Hamas Government carried out premeditated and systematic mass rape, sexual atrocities, mutilation and murder of Israeli girls, young women and old women. 

Mick Ryan, a retired Australian general described some of the actual footage of the Hamas assault:

“Some smartphone clips came from the perpetrators of the October 7 attacks in Israel, who delighted in the footage, and others from victims documenting their last moments. It is the most horrifying thing I have ever watched. It includes subtitles but no commentary on scenes of murder, mutilation, and bestial cruelty.”

This type of warfare harks back to basic tribalism throughout history whereby one of the most compelling ways to defeat your enemy was to dishonour him by defiling and capturing his women. Still today in the Middle East, a man’s honour is fundamentally tied to his ability to protect and control his women. Honour killings are still a widespread occurrence. In Gaza under Hamas, Palestinian women have no legal protection against honour killings, as noted in a 2018 UN report.

Hamas celebrated its sexual victory over Israel and did not cover it up, as was the case with the sexual violence recently committed by Russians in Ukraine. For Hamas, sexual violence against Israeli women was not a shameful by-product of war, but instead, it was an integral part of their military and political strategy.

Victories on International Level

The assault on Israel on October 7 gave Hamas a victory on the international level in public opinion by establishing Hamas as the leader of the Palestinian people and by propelling the Palestinian issue into the headlines. 

Hamas correctly calculated that its attack on Israeli women would be hailed as a victory and not as a war crime. That is why Hamas used bodycams and phones to record their sexual atrocities as they performed them and uploaded them in real time to Telegram and other social media. Immediately, thousands of Gazans and tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian supporters around the world marched in celebration of the Hamas assault. The savagery of mass rape and sexual atrocities against Israeli women were ‘contextualized’ and lauded as acts of resistance. This was the case even before Israel launched its counter-attack. It was also before the back-pedalling and denial of the sexual violence by Hamas and its supporters. And despite it being one of the most documented mass atrocities in history, neither U.N. Women nor any other U.N. body has condemned the sexual violence against Israeli women as it is mandated to do in conflict-related sexual violence. Nor have the major international women’s rights organisations issued condemnations.

Hamas also correctly calculated that its assault would trigger a major Israeli military counter offensive against Hamas. And Hamas was fully prepared for the war it had provoked. It quickly retreated into the safety of its massive network of underground tunnels in Gaza, with the added protection of 250 Israeli hostages. Here too Hamas ensured that there were plenty of female hostages. They included mothers, one with a 10 month-old baby, little girls aged 2 and 5, and many old women in their eighties. Another unprecedented war crime. There are still 17 young women being held in the tunnels since October 7.  “Many girls experienced severe sexual abuse, they are injured – very, very serious and complex injuries that are not being treated,” said 17-year-old Agam Goldstein-Almog, who was released after 51 days in captivity. 

Hamas preparations for war

For over a decade, Hamas had spent billions of dollars building more than 500 kilometres of these underground tunnels. Much of this money was from Qatar and delivered regularly in suitcases with the full knowledge of PM Netanyahu. Netanyahu thought this would stymie Hamas as a military and political threat. But instead Hamas used this money and its vast financial empire to execute its long term plan for war. It built a sophisticated underground infrastructure that included its headquarters and weapons factories concealed below hospitals, schools and mosques. Most importantly, the tunnels were designed to provide protection for Hamas leaders and operatives.

Such lavish spending and meticulous preparation for war and the inevitable Israeli counteroffensive, could not have overlooked the danger to the Palestinian population in Gaza. But it would appear that Hamas, despite being the Government of Gaza since 2007, chose not to provide protection for Palestinian civilians.

It did not spend any of its billions to build bomb shelters or any other defence structures to protect them. And when the war started, Palestinian civilians were denied entry to the safety of the tunnels and left exposed, defenceless in the face of Israeli bombing and the crossfire of battle. 

When questioned about its failure to provide bomb shelters for the people in Gaza, Moussa Abu Marzouk, the Hamas deputy political leader acknowledged in an interview that “ the tunnels in Gaza were built to protect Hamas fighters and not civilians. Protecting Gaza civilians is the responsibility of the U.N. and Israel.” 

The vast majority of over 23,000 Palestinians killed so far in the war are women and children. 

It would not have been hard to predict that Hamas would seek to translate this terrible toll to its political advantage. Images of dead and injured Palestinian women and children flashed around the world and spurred protests. 

Another Hamas victory was achieved with the international condemnation of Israel and the world-wide upsurge in anti-Semitism.

These protests were then translated into political pressure on governments to call for a ceasefire at the U.N. A ceasefire would certainly save lives, and it would also rescue the Hamas leadership in Gaza.

Now Hamas has achieved another extraordinary victory as a consequence of its October 7 assault. It has succeeded in having Israel brought before the International Court of Justice accused of genocide. And yet it is the Hamas attack that has been described as a pogrom against the Jewish people, and over 200 legal experts argue that it meets the criteria of genocide.

The Spotters

Is there any basis for arguing that this sequence of developments could have been otherwise? 

Nothing would have deterred Hamas from executing its long planned attack. But perhaps Israel might have been better prepared had it listened to women.

There were 24 young Israeli women called the ‘Spotters’.

Spotters are the young female conscripts whose task it was to sit all day in front of their computers in their base on the Israel-Gaza border monitoring surveillance cameras in order to spot any unusual activity on the other side of the border. They were unarmed. They were amongst the first to be sexually abused and massacred by Hamas as it burst across the border on October 7. Of the 24 spotters at the base on that day, 15 of them were killed and 7 abducted as hostages. Only 2 escaped.

For months prior to October 7, these young women had been doing their job meticulously. They noticed military style preparations by Hamas near the border. They warned that an attack was being prepared and even surmised that it would be carried out on a Jewish holiday. They repeatedly sent the detailed information and warnings up the chain to their IDF superiors. But their information and warnings were dismissed with consummate male chauvinism. They were made to feel that they and their observations and opinions as young women in the army hierarchy were worthless. They were even told that unless they stopped bothering their superiors with these reports they would be court martialed.

The terrible tragedy is that had the IDF listened to these young women, the scale and the devastation of the Hamas assault might have been mitigated. And so too the consequences.

Press Conference of Families of Israeli Hostages on Day 59 of the War. "Time has run out for the hostages - they have no time left, no food and no air".

The Power of the People

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October 7th had a transformative impact on Israeli society. But it was probably not the impact that Hamas had intended when it launched its meticulously planned massacre of 1200 Israeli civilians and the taking of 240 hostages. A key element of the Hamas plan was the assault on Israeli women and girls. “The torture of women was weaponized to destroy communities, to destroy a people, to destroy a nation,” said Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the head of a nongovernmental commission investigating crimes of murder, rape, sexual atrocities, beheading and mutilation perpetrated by Hamas. 

But instead of destroying a nation, it unleashed a dramatic upsurge in ‘the power of the people’ civic activism and an intensification of solidarity amongst Israelis. 

In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, Israelis spoke out against the Government, the IDF and the intelligence agencies for abandoning them and not upholding their social contract to protect the people. They had failed to prevent the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. In the following weeks, the Government ministries seemed frozen and incapable of meeting the immediate challenges of the situation. 

In the vacuum left by the Israeli Government, civic groups, local government and tens of thousands of volunteers sprang up around the nation to take on the basic functions normally conducted by the central government, particularly in war time.

Ironically, it was those whom Hamas had calculated to be fragmenting Israeli society who were actually amongst the most effective in strengthening its solidarity. For example, the Brothers and Sisters in Arms and the women’s movement Bonot Alternativa (Building an Alternative). They had been the main organisers of demonstrations of over 250,000 Israelis each week for the 10 months prior to the war against the Netanyahu Government’s attempts to undermine Israel’s judiciary and democracy. 

After the Hamas massacre, these groups quickly pivoted and used their exceptional organisational skills and connections to set up the community services, supplies and support for Israelis whose lives and livelihoods were threatened and disrupted by the conflict. This included the hundreds of thousands of Israelis internally displaced from the northern and southern border regions under fire from Hamas and Hezbollah rockets and artillery. Civic groups even coalesced around soldiers in order to supply the logistics of the mobilisation.

#BRINGTHEMHOMENOW campaign

At same time, the survivors of October 7th and their families came together and forged themselves into a force to support each other and to campaign to free the hostages. They included Palestinian, Bedouin and Druze Israelis who had family members killed, taken hostage or both.

The surge in public support for these families grew into a phenomenon of ‘the power of the people’. This became evident in their ability to change the priorities of the Israeli Government. Following the Hamas assault, the Government had announced that it had two objectives in its counter-attack in Gaza: First, to remove Hamas as a military and political force from Gaza;  Second, to return the hostages. In that order.

But the relatives of the hostages knew very well, that the Government’s priorities could leave their family members captive interminably. And given that 18 of the hostages were aged over 65, and 22 under the age of 18, without access to medication, they might not survive. So the families launched the #BRINGTHEMHOMENOW campaign to reverse the order of the Israeli Government’s priorities. 

However, the deeply unpopular Netanyahu Government was not listening to them. It was preoccupied with its own survival.

So the families of the hostages tirelessly and heroically campaigned in Israel and around the world to raise awareness of the hostages. They set up ‘Hostage Square’ in central Tel Aviv as the focus of the #BringThem HomeNow campaign, held countless press appearances and rallied Israelis in long marches. Their campaign engaged the empathy and respect of most Israelis. Remarkably, the mounting public pressure forced Netanyahu to finally agree to meet with them and to announce that returning the hostages would now become the Government’s first priority. 

During the seven day truce, 110 Israeli hostages were released. However 17 women and children and 119 men remain in captivity. The truce agreement stipulated that all women and children would be freed first. Hamas denied that it was still holding civilian women and children hostage, despite the evidence, and refused to release them. When Israel insisted on their release, Hamas responded by firing missiles from Gaza thereby ending the truce. President Joe Biden blamed Hamas’ refusal to release civilian female hostages for the end of the temporary cease-fire.

The end of the truce is a terrible blow to the families of the 136 hostages still being held by Hamas. But even those who have had their family members freed have nevertheless publicly committed themselves to continuing to pressure the Government to keep the release of hostages as its foremost priority.

 

  • Translation of the text in Hebrew in image above: Press Conference of the Families of the Hostages on Day 59 of the War.   ” Time has run out for the hostages – they have no time left, no food and no air.”

 

 

 

The Moral Clarity of Marcia Langton

by

Indigenous leader, Professor Marcia Langton, has expressed once again the moral clarity at the core of courageous leadership in her article on the Hamas-Israeli war. Published in The Australian on Wednesday November 15, she made some of the following points:

“ The loss of thousands of lives in Gaza is unjustifiable. I condemn Hamas. I am horrified and deeply saddened by the loss of lives in the Levant, the Israelis who were murdered and kidnapped by Hamas and the innocent Palestinians who are being used as human shields by Hamas.

As an Indigenous Australian, I can have little effect in stopping these horrors but it is necessary to be clear about a few matters.

“Blak sovereignty” advocates have entwined two extraordinary propositions – one that is simply untrue and one that is a moral outrage. First, they claim that “ Indigenous Australians feel solidarity with Palestinians.”

This is false; it is the view of a tiny few, if put in those words. Most of us are aware of the complexity and that there is very little comparable in our respective situations, other than our humanity.

Second, they refuse to condemn Hamas. I am aghast and embarrassed. They do not speak for me. I fear and loathe the possibility of further loss of life in this terrible crisis. I also fear that our multicultural society is being torn apart by people deluded about terrorism who have used their protests as a cover for anti-Semitism.

Our Jewish and Palestinian communities deserve respect and compassion. I do not support the violence we have seen In Australia recently as a result of this conflict.

Hamas are terrorists; Palestinian islamic Jihad are terrorists. The slogan “ Not all Palestinians are Hamas” denies the fact that innocent Palestinians are being used as human shields by these terrorists.

No legitimate Aboriginal leader will permit our movement to be associated with terrorists.

I grieve for the largest loss of Jewish life in a day since the Holocaust. I grieve for every Palestinian who has died since the conflict. I grieve for the Israeli families whose loved ones are held hostage by Hamas. I grieve for the displaced, starving and terrified Palestinians who have been displaced in Gaza. Let us not lose our humanity.”

Marcia Langton is chair of Australian Indigenous Studies, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the University of Melbourne.