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It's important to understand how abuse of women is a key part of how Hamas remains in power.
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN JANUARY 20, 2025 14:43 Updated: JANUARY 20, 2025 15:26
Hamas terrorists parade as they prepare to hand over hostages.
(photo credit: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters)
When Hamas prepared to release Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher on Sunday, they purposely choreographed the event.
Large numbers of armed Hamas members formed a line around a large parking lot in the back of a row of buildings. Hundreds of men came to watch. When it was time to bring the hostages out, they were brought in a Hamas vehicle that was parked two meters from a Red Cross SUV. The hostages were then taken out of the back seat of the Hamas vehicle, with the crowds pushing forward. These were tense moments when it looked like the women would be swarmed by the crowd.
Hamas could have controlled the crowd. They wanted it to be a sea of men surrounding the women. The images are stark, showing one of the hostages with a pink sweatshirt surrounded by the Hamas men in their green bandanas, and beyond them the crowd of men. It’s only men in the crowd. No women came to watch this spectacle, or perhaps were not permitted. This is about Hamas showing its power. It is about Hamas projecting power over Jewish women. It is about chauvinism that is integral to Hamas and movements that are similar.
The abuse of Israeli women
It’s important to understand how abuse of women is a key part of how Hamas remains in power. Hamas purposely targeted women for kidnapping on October 7. During the first hostage deal Hamas refused to release younger Israeli women. This is all calculated by Hamas to have the maximum pressure on Israel and maximum amount of abuse meted out.
On October 7, Hamas also dragged the body of Shani Louk, a victim of the Nova festival massacre, through Gaza. Her body was paraded on the back of a pickup while men sat on top of her cheering. As with January 20, male crowds came. On October 7, they came to spit on the corpse of Louk.
Islamist terror groups and their treatment of women
Most societies don’t have large groups of men who rush to spit on the dead body of a young woman. The Hamas society does. However, it’s not just in Gaza, it’s part of a worldview of supporters that back Hamas. For instance, similar extremist groups backed by Turkey in Syria have been known to kidnap women in Afrin and other areas. They target women, usually Kurdish and Yazidi minorities.
The same abusive scenes of October 7 can be seen in videos of armed terrorist groups that are rooted in Islamist extremism attacking Kurdish women in Syria. They also paraded the women in public and mock them. This is about targeting women for a special type of abuse.
Opposing Hamas is part of a larger story of opposing the network that backs Hamas and is at war with women’s rights everywhere, and is at war in the West with societies that have women’s rights. Where there is more backing for Hamas, women are less safe, less safe at night to walk home by themselves for instance, without gangs of men harassing them.
The October 7 attack has opened up a lot of wounds. One of the ways that the pro-Hamas crowd has sought to terrorize Israelis is by ripping down images of the hostages abroad. This behavior doesn’t only target the posters of women hostages. However, it is part of the broader attempt to erase images of the hostages. It is entwined with pro-Hamas commentary on social media that is often meant to denigrate the women hostages. For instance during the first hostage deal in November there were several high profile social media users, on the far-left and far-right, who posted about the women being released. Some of them took screenshots of the teenage girls who were released and tried to make it seem the women were attracted to the Hamas men who were releasing them. They spread sexual innuendo online directed at the hostages. This has been a constant theme among anti-Israel and pro-Hamas accounts.
Another aspect of the commentary is to make light of how the women are dressed or their hair. For instance, some accounts have sought to claim that the braiding of the women’s hair or other aspects of how they look, make it seem their time in captivity was joyful. This is a specific type of comment only directed at women hostages. It was not ever used to discuss the male hostages that Israel rescued.
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The most vile type of abuse that is directed at the women hostages comes from commentators who make jokes about sexual abuse. I won’t name the names of these commentators, but one can find them online. One of them said there was “disappointment” that the women had not come back to Israel pregnant. Another commentator wrote about “fantasies about daily rapes.” Ostensibly both commentators were claiming that Israeli society had been fantasizing about rapes and pregnancy, which they know is not true. They were purposely projecting this discussion onto the hostages, solely because the hostages are women. This is part of the attempt to sexualize the hostages rather than provide them dignity and listen to them. It is about men discussing women’s bodies with other men and making jokes about rape and pregnancy to get clicks.
From the way women were dragged into Gaza on October 7, one of them pulled from the back of a jeep by her hair, to the way Shani Louk’s body was treated, to the method of hostage releases and the way the commentators discuss women hostages, the entire spectacle has been a lesson in how chauvinism underpins the treatment and discussion about the hostages. Hamas is responsible for this. It should never have attacked Israel in the first place and taken women hostage. However, it is not just about Hamas, it is also about the reactions in the West and also how Hamas is connected to other extremist groups and their treatment of women.
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