A slew of recent articles accused the “MeToo crowd” of being hypocrites for not issuing a statement condemning the sexual crimes committed by Hamas on October 7. Attacking MeToo appears to be a disingenuous attempt by supporters of Israel’s government to distract from the horrors of the war in Gaza. As a target of this propaganda, I find it ironic that these writers choose to heap their opprobrium on other sexual assault survivors rather than on the perpetrators.
At the end of last year, an Israeli journalist texted me from the safe room in his family’s house. It was a link to MeToo unless you’re a Jew published on UnHerd (a right-wing current affairs site), which detailed a campaign by Israeli feminists to get UN Women to acknowledge the “October 7th terror attack by Hamas in Israel where hundreds of women were brutally murdered, many mutilated and raped, and 84 kidnapped and still held hostage, including girls.”
The journalist asked me what I thought about the piece and if anyone was talking about it. He clarified that by “anyone” he meant survivors in Hollywood.
Why was he asking me? I am (among very many other identities, all of which I prefer) a Harvey Weinstein survivor. Thus, I do feel it personally when MeToo is invoked, as it has been in a slew of recent articles accusing the “MeToo crowd” of being hypocrites for not issuing a unified, unequivocal statement in response to the Hamas atrocities.
One female journalist in the London Times wrote an excoriating rebuke of “the feminists who at the height of #MeToo threw men to the Twitter hounds for a lecherous pass” and yet remain silent on “Hamas rape.” Another female journalist in the Jerusalem Post went even further, concluding, “The fact that so many women have chosen to remain silent invalidates the #MeToo movement and is a stain on society. Shame on them all.”
On us all? It is hard to respond to such a broad condemnation when there is no clear consensus about who speaks for the #MeToo movement. Is it the survivors who tweeted #MeToo in response to Alyssa Milano? Is it Rose McGowan and her Rose Army? Is it Tarana Burke and the nonprofit, MeToo International, which she founded in the wake of the MeToo hashtag going viral? Is it the plethora of nonprofits, survivor support groups, and consulting businesses that sprang into existence after 2017? Or is it (as the naysayers have long maintained) wealthy, white actresses? Even though I don’t belong to any of these categories, it appears we are all swept up in the blame.
Of more concern is that sexual assault victims have been placed in the crosshairs of a pressure campaign in the first place. The millions of sexual assault victims who posted the hashtag #MeToo are not responsible for the rape of Israeli women. This all feels distressingly familiar—having to carry reprehension and shame for men’s crimes, just as we carried the reprehension and shame that should rightfully have belonged to our abusers.
Quite apart from the blanket judgements and what feels like a deeply unfair burden on sexual assault survivors, these criticisms of MeToo are patently disingenuous, wielded as they are by (largely right-wing) supporters of the Israeli government. If there is any doubt about the hypocrisy of these calls for sisterly solidarity, consider how many of these same conservatives have spent the past six years eager to hasten the demise of MeToo.
The MeToo_Unless_UR_A_Jew campaign claims to be a spontaneous, “grassroots, global campaign” and yet its language and focus are remarkably similar to official Israeli propaganda. Using its official X account on November 5, the Israeli government called on “all feminists” “to support all of the Israeli women who were raped, tortured, murdered and kidnapped by Hamas terrorists.” A week later, the Israeli foreign ministry launched a social media campaign under the hashtag #BelieveIsraeliWomen.
If the MeToo detractors are correct, and the movement is truly deserving of criticism for selective application of its principles, why did these critics not also come for us in the aftermath of conflict-related gender violence in Ukraine, or in Sudan, Tigray, Haiti…? (The list is disgustingly long—and that’s just 2023.) The obvious conclusion is that, to Israel’s most fervent supporters, MeToo is merely a convenient target in a cynical propaganda campaign.
(It’s also worth noting that since these MeToo critics are only just surfacing now, they are at least as guilty of the charges of racism, elitism, and complicit silence they level at MeToo. After all, they didn’t go to bat for the victims of sexual violence in these other conflicts—they only took to their pulpits when Israeli women were attacked.)
I want to be clear that I believe Hamas should be held accountable for their horrific crimes, including their attacks on women. Systemic and conflict-related sexual violence is anathema to me. In fact, I was honored to be asked to contribute to the Murad Code, a guide developed by the Institute for International Criminal Investigations at the Hague for interviewing survivors of this type of violence. I do not seek to minimize the horrendous impact of rape being used as a weapon of war. Nor am I animated by a need to protect the feelings of MeToo feminists. But I do object to the weaponization of MeToo by people with a specific bias and an agenda—in this case, to foment moral outrage as a distraction from the IDF’s morally indefensible actions in Gaza.
To those who seek to use #MeToo survivors as political capital, I say that we do not owe the world anything. We do not owe you our voices, our activism, our pain to be used in your cause. We do not owe you the emotional labor of explaining all this to you. If we choose to be public about our experiences, we are not then responsible for speaking for every woman, every sexual assault survivor, in every country.
If you are going to heap your vitriol on anyone for the shocking sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas, then let it be on the men who committed these atrocities. And as for the right-wing women commentators bashing the “MeToo crowd,” you might do well to take a step back and ponder this irony: it is you who are invalidating the movement, you who are eroding our gains, and ultimately, you who are ensuring that women continue to answer for the crimes of men.
Louise Godbold
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