Global silence and inaction in the face of gender-based violence by Hamas were condemned at the European Parliament this week, where a panel of experts warned that the denial and rationalization of the rape of Israeli women during the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attack last year legitimized gender-based violence as a weapon of war and enabled other regimes, such as Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government, to continue their oppression of women.

“If the world continues to turn a blind eye, we embolden these regimes and open the door to more atrocities,” said Dr. Charles Asher Small, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), which hosted the event.

“Antisemitism, as history shows, begins with Jews but never ends there. Today, the forces attacking Jewish people are the same ones oppressing women across the Middle East,” Small said.

The event, co-hosted by MEP Fulvio Martusciello and ISGAP, highlighted the deteriorating state of women’s rights in the region since the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault on Israel, and came one year after the attack, in which women were subjected to widespread sexual violence, including rape, torture, and mutilation.

Numerous eyewitness accounts, video evidence, and investigations by the United Nations confirmed that these acts were committed systematically, targeting women as part of the broader assault. Victims were found naked or partially clothed, and survivors have since provided harrowing testimonies of the brutal attacks, most recently last week, on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre.

Dr. Small and other panelists, including Claude Moniquet and Prof. Firouzeh Nahavandi, explored how extremism and political instability have compounded the suffering of women, who are often targeted both for their gender and their identity.

“The Oct. 7 attack was not just an assault on Israel but on the core values we claim to uphold — human rights, equality, and dignity,” Small said. He criticized the international community’s tepid response, noting, “The brutal murders and abductions of Israeli women by Hamas should have sparked global outrage, yet we faced silence, or worse, justifications disguised as resistance.”

The discussion also drew attention to the wider repression of women’s rights across the Middle East, with Qatar and Afghanistan cited as examples of regimes that suppress women’s freedoms while gaining international legitimacy. “Qatar funds radical movements while suppressing women’s rights,” Small noted, adding that the ongoing silence only emboldens such regimes.

“In Afghanistan, women can no longer speak publicly, let alone access education, and the world remains silent,” he said.

Manel Msalmi, president of the European Association for the Defense of Minorities, highlighted the “gendered nature of the violence” in the Oct. 7 attacks, stressing that women were specifically targeted for their gender with “unspeakable brutality designed to dehumanize and terrorize.” She urged the global community to respond with the urgency the atrocities demand.

“Whether in Iran, Afghanistan, or Gaza, women are systematically silenced, subjugated, and stripped of their most basic rights. It is disheartening that the international community has largely failed to respond with the urgency and outrage these atrocities demand,” Msalmi said.

“We cannot claim to stand for women’s rights, equality, or human dignity if we turn a blind eye to such barbarism,” she added.

The post At European Parliament, Urgent Call for Action on Women’s Rights a Year After Hamas Sexual Violence first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Is there no Jewish subject the New York Times can touch without somehow connecting it back to Israel-bashing?

The Sunday New York Times Magazine features a regular “letter of recommendation” column devoted usually to unreserved endorsements — baseball on the radio, Danish butter cookies. The latest one is about the Talmud. Actually, not quite about “the Talmud,” as the Times headline somewhat misleadingly puts it, but about the “Daily Dose of Talmud” emails published by My Jewish Learning, which are not bad, but which are something different from the full and complete text of Talmud itself, even in translation.

Anyone who expected the Times to treat the Talmud with the same unalloyed positivity and enthusiasm that it applies to cowboy boots, practicing the saxophone outdoors, or other “letter of recommendation” topics is in for a bit of a surprise, because the Times describes the Talmud as useful largely as medicine for the writer’s guilt about Israel’s “brutal” bombing campaign.

“In the days immediately following the attacks of Oct. 7, the Talmudic rabbis felt like a comforting reminder of Jewish resilience. But in the later weeks and months, as the horrors of Oct. 7 gave way to a brutal Israeli bombing campaign, my relationship to the Talmud began to curdle,” the Times article says. “I tried hard to disentangle Daf Yomi from the bombs, from my grief and anger at those who seemed to value retribution over the sanctity of human life and the pursuit of peace.”

The article goes on: “A year later, now, with much of Gaza in ruins and tens of thousands of people killed — tens of thousands of worlds destroyed — I’m still struggling with these questions. Most days, frankly, the only answer I have is to keep reading, to keep returning to the text no matter how angry or ashamed or grief-stricken I might be.”

I guess it’s somewhat reassuring that the Jewish Times writer feels personally connected enough to Israel to be “ashamed” by its actions, rather than entirely disconnected from it. And dealing by studying the Talmud, even a version of it mediated by emails, is better than protesting against Israel on campuses or in the streets.

Yet it takes a certain level of vanity and obtuseness for an American Jew, while Israeli soldiers are risking their lives in Gaza and Lebanon and while Israeli civilians are crowded in bomb shelters to protect against Iranian missile attacks, to be publicly handwringing in the New York Times about his feeling of being “ashamed” by “a brutal Israeli bombing campaign.” The idea that the campaign is about “retribution” rather than itself about the sanctity of life and the pursuit of peace is misleading and simpleminded.

The Times writer, Michael David Lukas, was last noticed in the New York Times back in 2018, publicly proclaiming himself a pork-eater, professing his “fondness for Bernie Sanders,” and denouncing Hanukkah as “an eight-night-long celebration of religious fundamentalism and violence.” At least it’s not just contemporary Israeli violence that bothers Lukas; he didn’t like it when the Maccabees defended Israel, either.

Lukas’s social media feed is full of retweets of non-Zionist and anti-Zionists writers and publications such as Peter Beinart and Jewish Currents and extreme anti-Israel activist groups such as If Not Now.

Leave it to the New York Times to let an article recommending the Talmud drift into an expression of vicarious shame for Israeli brutality. If I drafted such an article as an anti-New York Times parody, people would think it was over-the-top.

So often at the New York Times, in academia, or in mainstream book publishing, though, Israel-bashing is, for Jews, the required price of admission. Lukas, who not only writes for the Times but also teaches at San Francisco State University and is a book author, appears all too willing to perform the public role of American Jew ashamed of Israel. Maybe by the time he finishes the page-a-day cycle a few years from now he’ll wise up. Or maybe by then the Times editors will find some way to write about the Talmud without using it as a vehicle for more Israel-bashing.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

The post New York Times Finds a Way to Israel-Bash Even When Recommending the Talmud first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Amazon has come under fire for a second time this week, and the most recent controversy involves a Jewish activist who accused the e-commerce giant of having a “big, giant Jewish problem” for allegedly canceling her talk to company employees but allowing anti-Israel rapper Macklemore to address staffers.

The post Author Slams Amazon for Canceling Talk to Jewish Employees, Having Anti-Israel Rapper Macklemore Address Staffers first appeared on Algemeiner.com.