You are not going to believe this Alan Dershowitz-Hamas story. Seriously.

If the people claiming to represent the interests of Jewish women are actually sexual predators, we are all in big trouble....

ICYMI, last week, thousands of pages of court documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case of sex trafficking of girls were unsealed, revealing names of some 150 famous people, potentially "clients" -- aka potential pedophiles and rapists. Names mentioned include Harvey Weinstein, Prince Andrew, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, Leslie Wexner, Steven Hawking, Michael Jackson, David Copperfield, and a whole bunch of others.

One name that stands out for being mentioned 137 times including a reference to his "tastes" for young girls.....is Alan Dershowitz.

Yes Alan Dershowitz. 137 times. With Jeffrey Epstein. And is this so surprising? Of course not. Dershowitz, the great Jewish legal mind of the 20th century with his litany of celebrity wins, has defended Jeffrey Epstein all along... and we can guess why. As I have pointed out often, the people most adamantly defending sexual predators are likely to be sexual predators themselves. This scenario has played itself out more times that I can count (I have many examples in my book, When Rabbis Abuse....). So of course this revelation about Dershowitz-the-Great-Epstein-Defender who is probably also One Of Them comes as no surprise, really.

But here's the kicker. Coming as this does in the wake of October 7. You'll never believe how Dershowitz responded to all this. Here's what he said on Hannity:

“I understand all the feminist groups and radicals who think this is the worst thing in the world—that anybody ever had any contact with Jeffrey Epstein—where are all those radical feminists when it comes to the Hamas rapes of young Jewish girls, sexual abuse, beheadings?”

You see how he did this? Like a slight of hand, switched up the whole story. The REAL bad guys are Hamas. Me? Little bitty old me? I'm one of the good guys! I'm there defending Israel in the world!! I did nothing wrong! THEY!! THEY HAMAS are the ones who did something wrong!!

And also by the way, the jab at feminists. Like, YOU SEE I TOLD YOU! THOSE FEMINISTS ARE THE WORST!! ME, ALAN DERSHOWITZ, I am the GREAT DEFENDER OF WOMEN! And Jews! Jewish women should count themselves lucky that they have me as their great defender!!

You see how he turned all that around? If nothing else, he is the rhetorical master. The expert at turning truths on their heads. No wonder he gets paid the big bucks. By the worst men on the planet.

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So, I have a couple of things to say about this.:

One is, not everyone claiming to care about sexual abuse on Oct 7 actually does. Let's face it. Some only care when the rapists are Palestinians and the victims are Jewish women. Like, it's about THOSE bad guys sullying "our women". They don't actually care about women as people but just as objects. And the way they tell the story, it's not really about sexual abuse. It's about proving the "us" versus "them" narrative, in which "they" are all evil and "we" are all pure and good.

But this completely misses the point. Because sexual abuse happens everywhere all the time, and Hamas hardly has a monopoly on hurting Jewish women. In fact, one in 3 women in Israel and around the world will have experienced sexual violence in her lifetime, more often than not by someone she knows, almost always by one of her own people. (One in nine men will also experience sexual violence, by the way.) So beware of this narrative. Sexual violence is everywhere. And people who actually care about women's bodies should ALSO care when the perpetrator is one of "us".

Two, beware of using Oct 7 as a diversion tactics. It's classic, and so very toxic. Now, sexual predators everywhere — like, apparently, Alan Dershowitz who allegedly liked his victims young — have this new tool for diversion. "But look over there! It's Hamas!" Like that. How many sexual predators are doing this right now? Are going on television and radio acting like great defenders of Jewish women by screaming about Hamas while they themselves are doing the worst things in secret? I can think of a few.... It's not just Dershowitz.... Beware of who is using this story to hide the truth about themselves....

Three, another toxic tactic Dershowitz is using is the Good Guy Defense. That is, where the abuser, being confronted with the truth of his own actions, claims that he can't be a bad guy because he is such a good guy. I think of it as the "Eric Schneiderman Move". Schneiderman was literally the hero of the #Metoo movement as NY Attorney General, prosecuting case after case of rape victims, and Harvey Weinstein victims -- all the while going home and strangling his girlfriends. His girlfriends did not want to come forward because he was the guy wearing the Superman Cape rescuing women. Classic Good Guy defense. They didn't want to ruin all that.... (Read the NYT article about this by the brilliant Jill Filipovic.) Anyway, this is exactly what Dershowitz is doing, too — trying to use all of us as his witnesses. Putting on his Great Savior of Jewish Women Cape so that we won't talk about how he raped teenage girls on Jeffrey Epstein's island. It's like, "You see, I'm on the side of the GOOD GUYS here! We are defeating Hamas! How can you accuse ME of such a thing?" Good Guy Defense.

Three, the misogyny of it all. He is taking this one step further to attack all feminists. As if to say HE is the good guy defending women and feminists are just EVIL. This isn't new of course. Guys like Ben Shapiro have been using the story of Hamas' sexual assault on Oct 7 to attack feminists since the beginning of the war. So has our very own MK May Golan, the anti-feminist self-proclaimed racist who ALSO unfortunately happens to be the Chair of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women. Who has done literally nothing for women or gender equality. (Why should she? She doesn't believe in it!) But has been on a media tour attacking feminists for not speaking up about Oct 7. Yeah, you read that correctly. The head of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women is using the story of Hamas as an excuse to attack feminists. It's a head-spinning manipulation. It is absolutely using the pain and suffering of women to advance an anti-feminist misogynistic racist violent agenda.

(I'm not saying that certain global feminist groups haven't been infuriating about this. That is its own story, and it is particularly hard for many Jewish feminists. But it does not represent all of us. It is an old and frustrating story about how narratives of oppressor-oppressed become so black and white that many radical progressives have been unable to see the truth about what happened to Israeli women. That is happening and it's very difficult and I'm not dismissing that. But it is NOT a reflection of all feminism. And is not an excuse for overarching misogyny and feminist-blaming. And is certainly not an excuse for bad guys to get away with pedophilia, rape, and sex trafficking.)

Anyway, we will now have to get used to Dershowitz defending Israel on the backs of women and feminists. Because Bibi is apparently looking to appoint him to a position as official Defender of Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Yeah, this is all about to get worse.

And what do you think that says about Bibi?

And what do you think that would mean for women and feminists?

And what will this all mean for the future of Israel and the Jewish people and our conscience and ethos?

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Overall, I am very worried about where we are headed in our discussions about sexual abuse by Hamas on Oct 7.

I am worried that the issue is being co-opted by those on the radical right who want to use women's stories of pain in order promote their own particularly violent approach to the conflict. By people who don't ACTUALLY care about women but are just using women's lives as "proof"of their own misogynistic righteousness. And as an excuse to defend the most extreme and violent actions in Gaza.

The Oct 7 story SHOULD be viewed as one of MANY examples of the way in which women's bodies are used by men in their political and personal agendas.

And people who actually care about what happened to women on Oct 7 should be interested in sexual abuse and assault everywhere -- including how rampant it is in Israel, even when Hamas is not part of the picture.

Because when sexual assault is carried out by people labeled as "bad", it's easy for everyone to pile on. But when sexual assault is carried out by the guy next door, the guy who everyone sees as one of the "good guys", that's when the victims really need our help.

And meanwhile, instead of seeing women as "damsels in distress", the people running this war should try actually PAYING ATTENTION to women and LISTENING to what women are saying about this war and everything else.

A Hebrew infographic about the paltry representation of women (red) versus men in a range of locations: as Directors of publicly held companies (26% versus 745), as ministers in the government (5 versus 30), as Knesset members (30 versus 90), as news anchors (32% versus 68%), as professors in university (21% versus 79%), as Directors in government offices (1 vs 31), as heads of local councils/municipalities (15 vs 241), as artists being aired on the radio (32% versus 57%).

And just as a final reminder: There are zero women in the security cabinet influencing decision-making in this war.

So here we are.

Who is leading Israel today? Who is leading the Jewish people today? Nobody who represents me.

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