Watch Andria Spindel, Executive Director of CAEF, at the Havdalah Vigil for the hostages held by Hamas, marking 50 days in captivity. The event occurred on Saturday, November 25, 2023 at 7pm, in the Village of Yorkville Park, 115 Cumberland Street, Toronto.
Andria calls out the #metoo movement for ignoring Jewish/Israeli women's suffering on October 7, 2023, on behalf of Canadian Voices Supporting Israel.
The full text of the letter is below the video.
Friends, chavrim, members of the Jewish community and allies, this letter is written to all the Women’s Studies and Sexual Assault centers in Canada and will be sent to each of them. If you have any contacts, please assist us in getting it out.
Dear #MeToo Supporters,
This letter is directed to all Canadian Women’s Studies and Gender Studies Departments, all Women’s Clinics, Sexual Assault Centres, Battered Women’s Shelters, and others who proclaim that women who are harassed or abused are to be believed and supported, and their perpetrators brought to justice.
Today, November 25th, is The International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women. We wish to call your attention to the dramatic failure of all Canadian Women’s organizations that are mandated to support traumatized and brutalized women, and which failed to condemn in the harshest of terms, the brutality, and inhumanity, the sheer savagery inflicted on hundreds of women and girls in Israel on October 7th. Some of you may be generally caring and compassionate organizations, but you did more than fail, you contributed more pain to those women who were raped, bludgeoned, burnt alive, hacked to death, dismembered, humiliated, or taken hostage by the criminally-minded evil antisemitic Hamas terrorist entity. Your neglect and abandonment of Israeli women, is chilling; isolating and antisemitic. Ignoring the plight of Jewish women, when no others would be so ignored, and even contributing to lies about the events of October 7th, and abandoning the Jewish women in our very midst who are agonizing over the fate of their sisters, is antisemitc.
Make no mistake-the internationally-listed terrorist entity Hamas, that has governed unilaterally since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, was elected by a majority in Gaza; people chose to elect the party whose name stands for violence, and whose goal is the elimination of the Jewish state by violence.
The charter of Hamas which declares its purpose is to eradicate Israel, actually extends to ridding the world of Jews, and their plan to achieve this is by focusing the entire Palestinian Arab education system and religious indoctrination on their intent to “return to ‘Palestine’,“ murder Israelis and eliminate the nation of Israel. Israel is the only nation to face such an enemy, from many sides- all funded and fuelled by both Iran and Qatar, two flawed fundamentalist Islamo-fascist regimes.
Hamas leadership and all its warriors have demonstrated time and time again that they don’t desire co-existence, their goal is not an independent state with any borders but those “from the river to the sea”. Hamas’s religious fervour is soaked in blood. Hamas is anti-democracy, anti-liberty, anti-plurality, anti-minority rights, and is misogynistic in medieval fashion.
The women who were brutalized or slaughtered, or are being held hostage in Gaza are not all Jews but they were all assaulted in Israel. Therefore, the negligence displayed by the women’s movement is an affront directed at Israel, at Israeli women, at Jewish women. No less than an Ontario MPP and a city Counsellor from BC, and the Director of a university sexual assault center had the audacity to deny these horrific terrorist attacks on women even took place. The sheer gall, the ignorance, and the affront to human decency which they displayed should make all of us cringe. What does it say about Canadian society? About the failure of multiculturalism? About the thin veneer of solidarity with women from all backgrounds, when leadership from women’s organizations abandon Jewish women?
The International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women presumably means that all women world-wide deserve respect and recognition when claiming they were harmed, but with all of the evidence that Hamas itself posted about October 7th, Jewish women now suffer the double tragedy of neglect and indifference from those who should be demanding their freedom, and that justice be served.
Not only did Jewish women serve in the front lines of the women’s movement; they founded it. It was founded by Betty Friedan, brought to life by Gloria Steinem, enhanced by Phyllis Chesler and many many other Jewish women. Yet, we have seen that Jewish women have been kicked out of the movement, treated disgracefully by some current day leaders, and now it seems their plight has been eradicated from the #metoo movement.
This toxic antisemitism is shameful. Canadian Jewish men and women, are not abandoning our sisters, not forsaking any of the women, girls, boys, men, old or young, Jewish or non-Jewish, who are being held and victimized by Hamas and their supporters. We call out the silence which is complicity, the arrogance and bigotry of those who deny reality and ignore our pain.
The organizations which have abandoned us, need an overhaul, a moral overhaul, and a deep reflection on their purpose. We demand this be done immediately.
Signed,
Canadian Voices Supporting Israel