Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

LARRY ELDER: The Feminist Movement Is Nowhere To Be Found After Hamas Brutalizes Jewish Women

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China’s Communist Party has detained an estimated 2 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Turkestan Muslims in a network of concentration or reeducation camps. In August, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, described as the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights advocacy group, put out a statement “calling on travel companies to stop selling trips to China’s Xinjiang region, where the Chinese government is conducting a campaign of genocide and mass internment against Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minority groups.”

That took a while.

Three years earlier, in a July 2020 article in The Guardian called “Why do Muslim States Stay Silent Over China’s Abuse of the Uighurs?: Nations that claim to be defenders of the faith offer no protest to the concentration camps,” British political commentator Nick Cohen wrote: “Today, they bend their knees and bite their tongues as China engages in unspeakable atrocities against the largely Muslim Uighur population of western China. One of the great crimes of the 21st century is being committed in front of our eyes, yet we don’t register it. … They use the idea of Muslim solidarity only when it suits them.”

Black Lives Matter portrayed George Floyd, a black man who died after being subdued by a white cop, as a blatant example of police anti-black “systemic racism.” Never mind that the lead prosecutor, a black man, said, “I wouldn’t call it [a hate crime] because hate crimes are crimes where there’s an explicit motive and of bias. We don’t have any evidence that [defendant] Derek Chauvin factored in George Floyd’s race as he did what he did.” Yet, Floyd’s death sparked four months of “civil rights” protests. The New York Times, in July 2020, wrote: “…about 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others in recent weeks. These figures would make the recent protests the largest movement in the country’s history…” Yet, this year in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend, 53 mostly black people were shot, including two toddlers, and 11 people fatally shot. And this does not include a victim stabbed to death. Black Lives Matter’s silence suggests black lives only matter when killed by non-black lives.

This brings us to the deafening silence by women’s rights/feminist groups over the murder of an estimated 1,200 Israelis, including the rape, mutilation and kidnapping of Israeli women and girls by Hamas, a State Department-designated terror organization. In April 2014, Boko Haram, another State Department-designated terror organization, kidnapped 276 Nigerian schoolgirls, aged 16 to 18 years old. First Lady Michelle Obama said, “This unconscionable act was committed by a terrorist group determined to keep these girls from getting an education — grown men attempting to snuff out the aspirations of young girls.” Yet, May Golan, Minister for the Advancement of the Status of Women in Israel, said she asked Obama to comment on Hamas’ brutality. Golan said, “Not a word. And we approached her…”

Where’s the outrage by Planned Parenthood? The Women’s March? National Organization of Women? Emily’s List? Two months after Hamas’ massacre, NOW released a statement with this headline, “NOW condemns the use of rape as a weapon of war.” No mention of Hamas. No mention of Israel.

Israeli survivors and first responders described the horror. A survivor said: “He didn’t pick up his pants. He shot her while inside her.” An Israeli medic said: “There was a liquid on her back that looked like semen. She was shot in the back of the head.” Another first responder witnessed “a naked woman with a sharp object stuck in the intimate area of her body.” A morgue worker said, “We saw many women with bloody underwear, with broken bones, broken legs, broken pelvises.”

Last week, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the Congressional Progressive Caucus chair, said: “It’s horrific, and I think that rape is horrific and sexual assault is horrific. I think that it happens in a war situation, terrorist organizations like Hamas, obviously, are using these as tools. However, we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians.”

She later walked this back, insisting she “unequivocally condemns Hamas’ use of rape and sexual violent as an act of war.”

It’s rather interesting seeing in the same statement the words “rape” and “balanced.”

Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. His latest book is “As Goes California.” To find out more about Elder, or become an “Elderado,” visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on Twitter @larryelder. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2023 LAURENCE A. ELDER

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