Women’s Declaration International USA (WDI USA) stands with women and girls as a sex class, globally.
Like many, we watched in horror as Hamas invaded southern Israel, raping Jewish women and girls, murdering innocent civilians, and taking women, men, and children hostage. Nothing justifies such atrocities. By Tuesday October 10, it was being reported that Hamas was killing Jewish babies, some of them by beheading. And now Israel has retaliated militarily in both Gaza and Lebanon (amidst reports of Hezbollah supporting the Hamas invasion).
We are disgusted to see reports of Americans championing the cause of Hamas. In the past couple of days, there have been countless “rallies” in Western cities, including New York, with people chanting “Gas the Jews!” and “Fuck the Jews!” In the words of investigative journalist Gerald Posner, “Under the guise of taking to the streets around the globe to show solidarity for Palestine, tens of thousands instead engaged in a frenzy of hatred about Jews and Israel.”
It is one thing to care about the people of Gaza, which we do; it is another thing entirely to support the rape, torture, and murder of innocent – and predominantly female – civilians and the boasting about it on social media. Having already paraded the broken, bloodied bodies of their women victims, Hamas is now threatening to broadcast the execution of innocent hostages on live television. You don’t have to support Israel’s military responses to acknowledge how gruesome and repugnant that is.
WDI USA held its second annual convention on September 15-17, 2023. One of the plenary sessions was titled “Intersectionality and Bridging the Gap.” That plenary session was the brainchild of WDI USA board member Lorraine Nowlin, who facilitated. The panelists were Saba Malik, Dr. Suzanne Forbes-Vierling, K. Yang, and WDI USA board members Kara Dansky and Lauren Levey. Our purpose was to discuss ways for women as a class to bridge gaps across ancestry, nationality, race, and religion, among other categories.
The discussion was lively, invigorating, and honest. Panelists did not hold back in acknowledging the realities of racism generally, anti-Black racism in particular, islamophobia, and antisemitism. Lauren Levey spoke eloquently about the outsized role played by Jewish women in second-wave feminist thought and activism. We spoke candidly about the ways in which men of all backgrounds exploit the history of white supremacy in the U.S. to foster mistrust and division among American women. We discussed these phenomena in society in general and in the women’s liberation movement in particular. Finally, we acknowledged the reality that men of any “tribe” will generally unite with other men to harm women and children, if given the chance, particularly in situations of war and political conflict.
WDI USA understands that women, by and large, don’t start wars. Throughout history, just about every military conflict has been a contest to determine which group of men is going to be in charge. Women and girls are always casualties of these contests.
We also understand that some women do support the men of their “tribe” over solidarity with women as a sex class. If they didn’t, men wouldn’t be able to get away with nearly as much as they do. If women can stand in solidarity with women and girls across differences, however, we can hold men accountable for their violence and reduce the harm that their wars cause.
That is what it means to WDI USA to bridge the gaps. As every panelist last month agreed: women must stand with each other as a sex class. We can (and should) acknowledge important differences among us in terms of skin color, culture, class, sexual orientation, and education level, and the differences in experience that stem from all of these. At the same time, our commonalities as women can bring us together to fight back against the injustices that are perpetrated against all of us, every day, on the basis of our sex. Women and girls in Israel and Gaza alike deserve no less.
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