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Leading Academic Group Denounces National Women’s Studies Association for Silence on Hamas Atrocities Against Women
Maayan Zin embraces her daughters Ela Elyakim, 8, and Dafna Elyakim, 14, former Israeli hostages, shortly after their arrival in Israel on Nov. 26, after being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, at Hatzerim military base in Israel, in this handout picture released by the Zin family on Nov. 26, 2023. Photo: Zin Family/Handout via REUTERS
A group of feminists and scholars at US universities has issued a searing open letter censuring the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) for not condemning the rapes and other sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas terrorists during their deadly rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7.
The Section for Women Faculty of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), a nonprofit that advocates academic freedom and open exchange in higher education, noted in its letter that since the Palestinian terror group’s onslaught, the NWSA has issued two statements attacking Israel’s military response, neither of which mentioned Hamas’ female victims or the 240 people abducted as hostages to Gaza. Beyond the kidnappings, Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and injured thousands more.
NWSA’s silence, AEN argued, is a seismic moral failure.
“We are outraged by the NWSA’s abandonment of women and girls who have experienced horrible atrocities and by its utter refusal to acknowledge the plight of Israeli women and girls in either its recent programming or public statements,” said the letter, which was shared with The Algemeiner. “The two statements that the NWSA released on Oct. 11 and Oct. 31 condemn Israel’s military response to the Hamas massacre yet fail to denounce the brutality of Hamas terrorists, who were given orders to rape.”
It added that in refusing to condemn Hamas, NWSA alienated Jewish academics and students of women’s studies — a problem, the group explained, that goes back to 2015, when NWSA endorsed the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. The BDS movement seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward the Jewish state’s eventual elimination.
“We are deeply concerned that on account of this indefensible position, Jewish scholars and students are now thoroughly ostracized from the association, and by extension, from the discipline of Gender Studies,” the letter continued. “Jewish feminist engagement in the NWSA has been in decline for a number of years. The organization’s professional standing has truly been diminished by its antisemitism.”
Beyond the NWSA, women’s groups and sexual assault centers on university campuses and even within the United Nations have been noticeably silent on well documented cases of Hamas terrorists raping Israeli girls and women, as well as other acts of sexual violence, during their Oct. 7 onslaught.
On Friday, AEN executive director Miriam Elman stressed during a conversation with The Algemeiner that recognizing the traumas Israeli women endured does not exclude advocating for Palestinian women whom Hamas denies basic economic and political freedoms through its enforcement of Sharia law.
“You can show empathy for Palestinian women and girls — and please do — because they are oppressed through subjugation and honor killings,” Elman said. “Many in the section also want to say that they recognize that Palestinian women and girls are impacted by the war. You can do that and also recognize that Hamas systematically used rape as a weapon of war, condemn that, and call for the release women and girls who are still hostages Gaza.”
She added, “There are still young women in their 20s and early 30s still being held hostage. G-d knows what has happened to them since being taken into captivity. NWSA has released two statements that did not say one word about these atrocities.”
Feminist author Phyllis Chesler, a professor emerita of psychology and member of AEN’s Section for Women Faculty — called NWSA’s spurning of Jewish women “craven,” adding that “women’s studies has been more concerned with the alleged occupation of a country that never existed — Palestine — than with the real occupation of women’s bodies in Gaza and throughout the Arab world.”
Founded in 1977 with help from a grant awarded by the Ford Foundation, the National Women’s Studies Association is a professional academic society that claims to have over 300 members and institutional partnership with over 350 university academic departments. In recent years, its public statements have rarely addressed rising antisemitism in the US and across the world, doing so only after neo-Nazis marched through Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. The group has, however, issued statements in support of Asian Americans, African Americans, and Palestinians.
“Palestinian solidarity is a feminist issue,” NWSA said during Israel’s 2021 war with Hamas while alleging that Israel has “perpetrated” sex crimes against Palestinian women.
Anti-Israel bias in professional academic societies has increased in recent years. Within a year, both the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) and the American Anthropological Association (APA) endorsed the BDS movement, drawing criticism from scholars who condemned the decisions for being “shameful” and “profoundly destructive.”
The problem also exists in prestigious post-graduate academic programs, Elman told The Algemeiner. She noted that over 100 scholars organized by her group recently issued a second letter denouncing the Fulbright Program, as well as the Fulbright Association, for not issuing any statements denouncing Hamas’ atrocities on Oct. 7, despite Hamas abducting one of its alumni, Israeli academic Shoshan Haran, and murdering her husband, sister, and brother-in-law.
The doucment also denounced a separate letter signed by nearly 1,000 Millennial and Generation-Z Fulbright Scholars, all but one of whom participated in the program during the 21st century, that accused Israel of committing genocide and did not reference the Hamas atrocities.
“Haran was an accomplished alumnus of Fulbright, and you can’t say anything about her, you can’t speak out, you can’t say one sentence calling for her release? Their selectivity of empathy is unconscionable,” Elman said. Commenting on the tendency of young scholars to be virulently anti-Israel and to promote falsehoods about the Jewish state, she added, “It’s very concerning that all these young scholars are so morally confused.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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