‘To all of the Queens, who are fighting alone, Baby, you’re not dancing on your own.’
When I thought about using this line from an Ava Max pop song for this piece, my first concern was, ‘I had better check if Ava Max is a Palestinian or Israeli supporter’.
Because it feels like that is what the world looks like now. You are either pro-Palestine and aggressively anti-Israel or pro-Israel and, well, not quite so sympathetic to the people of Gaza. There is no shade being thrown at supporters of either side – the point is just that: there are only two sides. You are either on one or you’re on the other – 140 characters’ worth of divisive research that determines where you stand, and, like in a superhero movie, whether you’re a hero or villain. But as Abha Maryada Banerjee refines the age old aphorism in her book about female leadership,
‘One Man’s Hero, Another Man’s Villain…
Sometimes in the same Man…’
And it is appropriate to quote from a book on female leadership because it is indeed we, females, who must lead the way in taking a different stand. To respectfully quote the perceptive summation by Israeli author Yuval Harari from his raw October 16th article in Time magazine online,
‘Most Israelis are psychologically incapable at this moment of empathizing with the Palestinians. The mind is filled to the brim with our own pain, and no space is left to even acknowledge the pain of others. Many of the people who tried to hold such a space… are dead or deeply traumatized. Most Palestinians are in an analogous situation — their minds too are so filled with pain, they cannot see our pain.’
For the rest of the world, and in particular those with the luxury of being far away enough from the overflowing pain of the region to be able to attend a protest (in support of either side) and then head off for a post-activism frozen latte, the need to expand this simplistic Good vs Evil paradigm becomes ever more pressing. On this International Women’s Day we need to bring ourselves to the considered place of being able to hold more than one sentiment at a time. We need to be able to feel both sadness over the plight of people subject to war conditions in Gaza and be able to acknowledge and raise an outcry that premeditated sexual terror was perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th.
It is a core principle of the fight against gender-based violence that society dare not close its eyes or ears to this abhorrent crime. This is especially so in the South African context, where gender-based violence and femicide levels are some of the highest in the world. The notion of bearing witness and believing the testimony of the victim is well established in the law of admissible evidence in sexual offences cases. The legislation has been developed to determine, among other issues, that the cautionary rule of evidence which requires a presiding judge to be wary of the reliability of the sole evidence of the victim, be worked out of our Law of Evidence in sexual offences cases.
We shout ‘Kwanele, Enough is Enough’, though, in whispers, wonder if #aminext, while our breweries drunkenly remind us of there being #noexcuse. We hesitate to wear the outfit of our choice, echoes of pervasive victim blaming in our media subconsciously affecting our clothing decisions. Subliminal messaging is not just skin deep. Load-shedding risks being a death sentence for some when street lights become unreliable guardians against lurking evil shadows.
As South African women, we know victimhood personally; we have walked a mile in those shoes, and if not us, we have walked it with a family member, friend, partner, teacher, student, employer, employee, lawyer, policewoman, soldier. Sexual violence, for all its shortcomings, does not discriminate.
Except when it comes to victims who are Jews in Israel, ‘not dancing on their own’ at a music festival. The international women’s rights organisations and gender justice advocates have left the Israeli victims of sexual terror by Hamas on October 7th ‘fighting alone’.
The reports of the official investigation into the sexual terrorism on October 7th carry the names ‘Screams Without Words’ (New York Times) and ‘Silent Cry’ (authored by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel [ARCCI], submitted to the United Nations on 21 February 2024). Of all the elements of the multiple facets of the terror experienced by the victims on October 7th that could have been chosen to encompass their horror in the titles of these investigations, the most chilling is surely the silence of the organised international women’s community.
The only thing that (albeit posthumously) can turn up the volume on those cries, the cries of women like us – wearing the shoes in which we have walked, the cries of women like those whose rights local gender justice organisations strive to protect – is for us to hear them and see them through our public witnessing of their being victims.
Harari’s prophetic concluding words reinforce the truth that the feelings of sorrow over the horrific details witnessed in the Silent Cry report are not mutually exclusive to feelings of sympathy for the people of Gaza. We can be bold enough to both stand with Palestine against Hamas and walk in the bloodied shoes of the Israeli victims of sexual terror and gender-based violence as a weapon of war. Harari wrote:
‘But outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all suffering humans, rather than lazily seeing only part of the terrible reality. It is the job of outsiders to help maintain a space for peace. We deposit this peaceful space with you, because we cannot hold it right now. Take good care of it for us, so that one day, when the pain begins to heal, both Israelis and Palestinians might inhabit that space.’
And, in case we forget, it’s worth asking, did Ava Max really make a statement on Insta within a day of the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas? Did she manage to hold that peaceful space to which Harari refers? Did Ava Max really post on her socials, ‘To excuse or justify war crimes strips both victims and perpetrators of their humanity. So don’t.’?
How about using those three minutes you might be tempted to spend googling whether or not Ava Max did or didn’t make a statement, and then remove the statement blah blah blah… to go and sign the online petition at https://www.metoo-unlessurajew.com/. How about you make an effort to hear that silent cry.
And, for the record, here is what Ava Max did post.
[Image: Nika Akin from Pixabay]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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