October 11, 2023 - 2:30pm
Terrorists hate women. They rape girls; they parade women’s bodies; they deliberately target events where many of the injured and dead will be female. Hamas did it at the weekend, killing and abducting young women from a rave in Israel. An Islamist and his brother did it in Manchester six years ago, bombing an Ariana Grande concert packed with teenage girls.
What has happened to the hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas hardly bears thinking about. Yet every atrocity has its apologists, who claim the terrorists are really freedom fighters. They’ve been out in force since the weekend, taking to the streets and social media to blame the victims, while hailing marauding sexual predators and killers as heroes. It’s as if terrorists have to steel themselves to assault helpless young women, doing it for the cause rather than because they enjoy it.
Witnessing this species of rape apology over the last few days has made me sick to my stomach. One of many horrifying images showed the inert body of a young German-Israeli woman lying in the back of a truck, being driven round Gaza while men spat on her. Are we supposed to believe that these jubilant misogynists eventually parked up, went home and read bedtime stories to their nieces?
In 2017, when there was a series of fatal terrorist attacks in London as well as the Manchester Arena bombing, I noticed that almost all the perpetrators had histories of domestic violence. It was true of the Right-wing extremist who attacked worshippers leaving a mosque in North London, as well as the Islamists who drove into pedestrians on London Bridge.
I wrote a book, Home Grown, which was a catalogue of men who had beaten and sexually assaulted women in their own families before they became notorious as terrorists. I argued that conventional wisdom, which blames terrorism on ideology, had got it wrong. These men were excited by violence, and that’s why they were attracted to terrorist organisations like ISIS which trafficked women, among other war crimes.
After the book was published, I was invited by the police and the Home Office to be involved in a project that analysed just over 3,000 referrals to the Prevent programme in England and Wales in 2019. It showed that almost 40% of adults referred to Prevent had a history of domestic abuse — and that was no doubt an underestimate, given that domestic violence is one of the most underreported crimes. The comparable figure for children was 30%, another likely underestimate because under-16s were not routinely questioned about domestic abuse in the home.
If that’s true of men living in a relatively peaceful country like the UK, imagine what it’s like living in a claustrophobic environment like Gaza. Rates of domestic violence soar in conflict situations, and in 2019 the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics said that 41% of women in Gaza had experienced domestic violence. In a patriarchal society, where reporting this kind of violence is likely to be met with indifference, the real figure is bound to be much higher.
What this means is both chilling and obvious. When people who imagine themselves to be “progressive” cheer on Hamas, they’re siding with pitiless misogynists. And it is women, in both Israel and Gaza, who get forgotten when idiots make excuses for rapists and murderers.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She has been Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board since 2013. Her book Homegrown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists was published in 2019.
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SubscribeI don’t know how so many so-called Progressives can live with themselves.
The sort of people who have no hesitation in branding those using the wrong pronouns as “hateful Nazis”, yet their response to the naked, broken and humiliated body of a young woman paraded as the “spoils of war” is to rush to excuse the men who have brutalised her or just remain silent. As if differences of opinion on the status of sex vs gender requires their urgent, authoritative intervention, yet women and children being rounded up, tortured and murdered in real time is of no consequence.
I don’t care what your political sympathies are, if you witnessed the footage of the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and your reaction was anything other than utter revulsion and condemnation of this evil, then you have lost all moral authority to comment on anything.
No. It’s a mental illness. “When people who imagine themselves to be “progressive”…” they adhere to the concept of moral relativism. That means anything goes, who are we to judge?
But they never realize that the brutality of moral relativism might actually reach their doorway some day. It’s so easy to be a SJW from the comfort of your flat. Perhaps it’s the same delusional people who tell us to be proud of whoever we are? And perhaps they will, one day, add another colored stripe to the silly inclusion flag.
Thank you for saying exactly what needs to be said.
Aren’t there a lot of the same factors at play with Pakistani grooming gangs ?
You belong to a very sexually repressive culture yourself; you project a lot of hothouse fantasies onto wicked Western women or others ; you affect to despise them and voila, then you can justify your own behaviour and gratify your urges at the same time.
Those attitudes are replicated towards women who are non- white but are perceived as ” straying”. While in my student days I can recall being spat on by Pakistani men as I merely sat unchaperoned at a cafe in Central London with friends who happened to be white males.
It’s the whole baggage of repressive chauvinism – defend ” hijab and niqab” as choice, support ” triple talak” and march with Palestine flags chanting ” Death to Israel” in various Western cities- women doing themselves in taking advantage of all the benefits of Western democracies.
I never cease to be amazed at the mental gymnastics that progressives will perform to accommodate seemingly mutually exclusive viewpoints like supporting women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, yet also supporting the Palestinians who literally spit upon such notions against a nation with one of the better records when it comes to women’s rights. I think this must be what Orwell meant when he coined the term ‘doublethink’. Two contradictory beliefs held by people in spite of all logic and reason.
People are too softhearted. We shouldn’t be accommodating these terrorists, we should be wiping them off the face of the earth. Nothing in the world is entirely black and white, but sometimes there are good guys and bad guys, or at least allies and enemies. The Palestinians have shown themselves time and again to be enemies of western civilization, peace, and civility in general. They spent half a century cursing Israel for destroying their nation, but when finally given a part of their own nation back, they used it as a base for terrorism and low level warfare long after most of the Islamic world had made peace with Israel. The world would almost certainly be a better place if Israel permanently annexed both Gaza and the entire West Bank, deported all the terrorists and inciters of violence, and allowed anyone willing to coexist under Israeli law to stick around.
Steve, in your posting you never mentioned Hamas, only mentioned Palestinians. Why? Isn’t the enemy Hamas? Do you consider Palestinians and Hamas interchangeable? The reality is that in the past many Palestinians opposed Hamas, many died opposing, many imprisoned.
And progressives,you seem to believe that progressives per se support the barbarism of Hamas. Some do and many do not. Personally, I believe that if a person supports Hamas that person in my book is not progressive. To say that a person who supports Hamas is axiomatically progressive is a form of doublethink. In my book it would be impossible for “progressives” to support mass murderers. There is nothing progressive about mass murder, no matter how they may rationalize or attempt to justify mass murder. Persons who support Hamas are supporting sociopaths; said label is justified since they have no guilt and they celebrate their killings of anyone who is Jewish; the neo-Nazi label also fits.
unfortunately, your labeling promotes divisiveness. Let’s deal with those who support Hamas, who support terrorism, rather than using pejorative labeling to degrade many Americans who are anti- terrorism.
You inadvertently proved my point for me. Yes, I was using them interchangeably, because Hamas was democratically elected in elections overseen by the UN. In the same way WWII was fought against Nazi Germany, Israel is fighting an Islamic terrorist Palestine. I’m also old enough to remember when the first time Israel let the Palestinians elect a leader, they chose the terrorist PLO leader Yasser Arafat. The Palestinians have consistently chosen terrorism and violence over negotiation and peace. When I speak of ‘progressives’ on the other hand, I’m referring to the idiots that attend ‘free Palestine’ rallies and do the mental gymnastics I mentioned to make themselves believe they’re not supporting Hamas or antisemitism. I contend that the government of Palestine is an accurate reflection of its people, probably more so than most western governments for reasons I won’t go into here, but as far as I’m concerned, if you support Palestine, you support Hamas. There is no difference. I would assume you disagree, which is fine, but in my humble opinion, your entire comment is an example of the ridiculous mental gymnastics I mentioned in mine that allows you to believe supporting a free Palestine is compatible with other progressive positions like women’s rights or non-violence, which I happen to enthusiastically support. The people attending free Palestine rallies can call themselves whatever they want, but I’ll call them what they are, idiots.
Islam was invented by a man, or men, who lusted after power, wealth and sex, and who cobbled together garbled fragments of Jewish, early Christian, and Zoroastrian texts, together with local superstitions and stuff made up as necessary, to give themselves ‘divine authority’ to satisfy those lusts. Realise that and you understand the whole history of Islam, its behaviours over the centuries, and its appeal to men, especially losers, those with a disposition to violence, and sexual predators.
Clearly, some people use violence to promote a cause. Because they love the cause. But other people use a cause to promote violence. Because they love violence.
Hamas (and other Islamist) terrorists have no respect for women, I agree. Even “their own women” (as they see them) are only respected in words, while treated poorly. So, yes, they are misogynists.
The root cause, however, is that they respect no one, not even themselves. They suffer from the belief they are disrespected victims and the idea that monstrous behaviour makes them important and manly. It does not help that their religion is essentially one in which conversion to the true faith is acceptably achieved by conquest (as once was Christianity? To its own shame).
…theologically, Christianity NEVER mandated forcible conversion… and indeed argued for generations even about the use of force in self defence…with the bishops and Christian rulers finally compromising around the “Just War” Concept in the very early Medieval period.
…which is not to say some rulers and even some bishops did not seek to impose their own faith on others by force…or even their own version of Christianity…but such actions were very difficult to justify theologically…
…Islam, on the other hand DID mandate “Jihad” which was very widely interpreted then, as it is now…as an absolute right to bring “Islam” (submission)…by fire, sword and slavery…hence the Muslim Conquests…
…which destroyed the Christian, Roman and post-Roman Civilizations of the Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, parts of the Balkans…and for a period Spain, Sicily, and Southern Italy…in the Centuries that followed the Prophets explosion out of Arabia in 635 AD.
Bear in mind, the Crusades were the first Christian counter-offensive against those centuries of relentless Islamic agression…and were intended to secure the City of Jerusalem, which was the centre of Christianity…for three hundred years before the birth of the Prophet…
…and indeed that the Christian World was on the defensive against Islam for most of history…an offensive only finally checked by King Jan Sobieski “The Fat” of Poland leading his winged hussars down the Kahlenberg and falling like the Hammer of God on an Ottoman Army encamped at the Gates of Vienna.
To which one should add…that when Christian powers did take over previously Muslim states…as in North Africa, and parts of India…we made no effort to force the peoples there to change their faith…and indeed, in India…the British authorities actively discouraged any such activity.
Islam does not mean ‘peace’. It means ‘submission’, and the implied threat that they will only leave you in peace if you submit.
…of course it does…slip of the brain…correction made!
Not all parts of India were ” Muslim States” when the British took over. The Marathas ruled large swathes too.
And although the East India Company was largely welcomed in most Muslim ruled areas due to the factor of oppression the Hindus had faced, it did provide an enabling environment for Evangelicals to operate.
In the North Eastern parts of India the British actively encouraged Baptist missionaries to convert the indigenous tribes to convert-due to which most of it is Christian today.
Ooo! Scary Evangelicals!
The Baptist missionaries in Bengal did a lot of good work in building the Bengali language and script. Just that they along with the ” fishing fleet” of various English women descending to look for husbands, stopped the liberal inter- mingling which the early East India Company did. Had this twin ” assault” not happened the history of British India may have been very different!!
Yes, Sayantani, but there’s a difference between “encouraging” conversion and forcing it. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt that the Baptists forced anyone to convert.
In a poverty stricken populace if you offer material inducements to people to convert it is tantamount to the use of dodgy tactics.
The Baptists were also cheerleaders for spewing hatred against Hindu theology and practices.
You don’t possibly understand the social point I make- if Evangelical propaganda hadnot infused British rule in India with ideas of racial superiority, the easy intermixing of the early EIC days could have continued and India could have seen a genuine and acceptable form of a mixed blood population.
Instead the increasingly supremacist overtones of administration led to the trajectory Indian history took.
The Evangelicals had a large role to play thus in isolation of the rulers from the ruled.
Excellent. There is no equivalence between Christianity and Islam, Christianity’s greatest aberration & heresy.
All true, but progressives never let little things like facts get in the way of their anti-western neo-flagellant ideology, and to be fair, a significant number of these antisemitic protesters were probably not westerners at all, but rather immigrants from the Middle East allowed in by lax immigration policy from clueless globalist leaders.
The ‘root cause’ is Islam.
I’ve seen Free Palestine memes posted by in response to Hamas’ atrocities by left-wing women who are otherwise (rightly) angry about male rapists being put in women’s prisons here in the UK. I have no words.
Can you provide links? Shocking, but not wholly surprising.
It makes the refusal by the BBC to call Hamas “terrorists” even more revolting.
Brilliant Joan! Thank you for shining your wonderful light, on this very dark issue for women. Simply horrifying to witness.
The Muslim culture seems to be one of huge sexual frustration.
I think that the “sexual frustration “ argument doesn’t play well with reality. The myriad types of sexual violence commonly appeal to pornographic views of sex which dehumanize and seek to dominate the vulnerable. If we start early enough, these attitudes can be taught to the young, hence the danger of the internet and predatory adults who seek to mould the young for nefarious purposes.
Thank you, Joan.
…in addition to which, the theology of the religion which these people adhere to would…in theory…allow a middle aged man to simultaneously enjoy the use of four wives in their early teens (if he could provide for them all equally)…and more broadly, has no notion of “turning the other cheek” and “loving one’s enemies”…
…I would suggest this marks a fundamental difference as to how the role and value of women and non-Muslims is understood between that religion and the Judaeo/Christian tradition of companionate marriage between one man and one woman, by consent and for life…and of “loving one’s neighbour”
…do those from the Judaeo/Christian tradition fail to do as our culture tells us we should? Of course we do…but we mostly know we have done wrong, and often try to do better…
…whereas those from that other tradition do just what their religion allows…towards their own womenfolk, and towards “infidels” who come into their power…
…so of course Muslim men are mostly to some extent misogynist …and often brutal and exploitative towards women, and non-Muslims…their faith and culture tells them very clearly that they are allowed to be…
Indeed. It is now clear as day to the whole world what sort of people Hamas are.
I will go and buy your book now.
I read a very good (albeit distressing) book on the topic a couple of years ago: ‘Our Bodies, Their Battlefield.’ As the mother of a young girl, I am acutely aware that even in our fortunate and peaceful life, far away from violent conflict, I must teach her to try and identify and evade the violent men who exist alongside all the wonderful men. I can only try and imagine the burden of teaching this lesson in a war-torn country.(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/08/our-bodies-their-battlefield-christina-lamb-review-women-war-rape-victims)
Perhaps some ‘progressives’ could think more of the possibility that their activism can lead to the destruction of the lives of people they purport to support, in addition to those they appear not to?
Half the people in Gaza are female.
Your point, O wise one?
…I wonder if the Women in Gaza have asked their menfolk how many Jewish Women and Girls (that is, Children) they and their friends gang-raped and murdered on October 7th? Or how many of the hostages they are holding are being assulted or tortured now?
No, thought not…
I think this is rather going to depend on the terrorist group. So far as I am aware the IRA, for example, had no particular antipathy towards women. We should perhaps be unsurprised if Islamic terrorists have a specific antipathy towards women they consider immodest. It’s no surprise to most people that Islam has a woman problem.
I find it concerning though that feminists always seem to want to make every issue about themselves. It’s a monomania and it reeks of narcissism.
What kind of mentality does it take to look at everything terrible on the news and think “this is really about me”.
Speaking of Hamas, in particular, I’d say that they hate people and are therefore indifferent to the suffering (which they knowingly cause either directly or indirectly) even of their own families. This makes them misanthropes, not misogynists. But this comment is about understanding a phenomenon, not merely assigning a label.
The attitude of Hamas terrorists toward Israeli women is indeed contemptible, but women are not their only targets and victims. And rape in this context is not necessarily an end in itself, because doing so has political repercussions. I haven’t heard that they rape Israeli men. If they do, we’re unlikely to read or hear much about it. But raping male prisoners of war, the ultimate humiliation of military enemies, has a long history going back to the ancient Near East. In any case, Hamas terrorists certainly do murder Israeli men (let alone Israeli children of both sexes) as brutally as possible. They take Israelis of both sexes as hostages. And they give every indication of taking pride and even pleasure in all of these activities.
Not being a psychoanalyst, I won’t attempt a medical diagnosis, but doing that would in any case be less than helpful. I say this partly because I’m not convinced that anyone, no matter how well-trained professionally, can see very far into the minds of other people (or perhaps even into their own minds). But I say so mainly because anyone who is governed primarily by compulsive psychosis is, by definition, not a moral agent at all. I see no evidence that these terrorists are out of touch with reality and therefore incapable of moral choices, only that they are guided by a brutal worldview–and one that is, frankly, not entirely due to Islamic theology and law (which leave room for restraint and mercy). I suspect that the underlying factor here is tribalism: a worldview that revolves around publicly obliterating external sources of shame (as distinct from privately coping with internalized sources of guilt). These terrorists do what we consider shameful things, in other words, because Hamas is a shame culture.
You must be feeding the crocodile in the hope that it will eat you last. The SWERF-hating and TERF-hating organisations and outlets are exactly the ones that cheerlead for Israel, that hated Jeremy Corbyn, that still hate Julian Assange, that have the pitchforks out for Russell Brand, and so on. The same corporations, the same NGOs, the same publications, the same astroturfed campaigns, the same politicians, the lot.
Opponents of measures such as vaccine passports should also consider how much the likes of Hope Not Hate hate them. I am an unrepentant anti-anti-vaxxer, but those of you who took a different view, who opposed the lockdowns, and so on, were called “anti-Semites” and so forth all the time by the people with whom you are now lining up. Do you think that they now love you?
That thesis about the origins of terrorism is beyond satire. What a thing it must be to be quite so privileged as to be able to imagine such a thing.
The Los Angeles Times has withdrawn its unsubstantiated claim of rape against Hamas. Meanwhile, the IDF has had to correct the baseless “beheaded babies” story on the British frontpages this morning.
It could be all a hoax, but then why are people across the world celebrating the slaughter of Israeli women and children?
No sources, David?
The other world media have not withdrawn from the truth. Rape was common in the attack.
So they weren’t beheaded, just slaughtered…. much better I suppose!
You’ve got worms for brains, sir. Hopeless.
“These men were excited by violence”
Women are excited by male violence. It would be interesting to discover what percentage of male criminality is driven by males needing to convince their paramours that they are dangerous, exciting and unpredictable. Any of the surviving bloodthirsty Hamas guys will be very much desired by women, but no doubt this will be explained away by The Patriarchy or some such.
That’s a gross simplification. Women are likely attracted to men who are capable of violence, because they want their man to be able to protect them. A husband who’s too weak or timid to defend his family is useless.
Very, very few women are attracted to men who carry out wanton violence. That kind of man will always turn on his family too.
To be honest, this is all conjecture – but interesting and worthy of study.
In response to Arthur, you are assuming women will have a buffet of (genetic) traits they can choose from: so, the kindest man in the world to his wife and kids, but a killer to his enemies. But the choice may not be that free – the capacity for violence may not be that situational. So women may be attracted to violent men.
Please note the may. Conjecture, but worth exploring.
Any evidence for this. Are the audiences at boxing matches predominantly female, for example? Some women may be excited by male violence in general. Perhaps more are excited by men fighting (literally and metaphorically) over them.
Not denying what you say – I think the darker side of female sexuality and arousal is worthy of further exploration – but is there scientific evidence?
The immense popularity of “50 Shades of Gray”?
That gives us some idea of female fantasy, but that’s not quite the same. Also I think the original post was about women being excited by male violence against others.
The women who flocked to the Islamic State were the most extreme example of women going above-and-beyond to secure a mate who rapes, murders and enslaves others. For every woman who made that trip how many more wanted to? Or consider the non-Muslim, Western women working on combating IS who fell in love with the violent sadists with whom they were communicating – there were at least two.
The note of reading stories to “nieces” rang strange on the ear. Why not daughters? Might it be that the author is trying not to humanise the terrorists by suggesting they might have wives and children of their own? There is no dichotomy between inflicting violence on other people and loving one’s own family, as much as social scientists would love this to be different. The other point is that what is considered “domestic abuse” in the West is certainly a lower bar than that used in Gaza. If wife, husband and wider society don’t consider it abuse then it isn’t right to compare them to citizens (even criminals) in the UK.
Oh, that’s alright then.
Most of these terrorists are young, single men, just like ISIS. The women who were forced to marry the men of ISIS were basically raped day after day. (Some women married them willingly, but their fate was the same.) I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too generous, but I’d like to think that a man who has a child wouldn’t be able to kill a child or its mother. I guess my eyes are closed.
Willfully closed.
Violence isn’t relative- hurting and humiliating a family member or anyone for that matter feels the same irrespective of social/ethnic background.