Barbara Kay: The Lack of Feminist Condemnation for Hamas’s ‘Toxic Masculinity’ Pogrom
The United Nations’ International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is commemorated yearly on Nov. 25. However, its campaign runs until Dec. 10, which encompasses the anniversary of the mass murder of 14 women at Montreal’s École Polytechnic in 1989.
The families of the Montreal victims find solace in national and international remembrance ceremonies. To this day, every feminist in the West interprets the actions of Montreal killer Gamil Gharbi (son of an Algerian father and Québécois mother; he adopted the name Marc Lepine) as a symbol of toxic masculinity that afflicts every man, in every generation. However, women-only massacres are vanishingly rare in history.
In military conflicts, the most common rule is rape as a weapon of humiliation for women and their male kinsmen with execution for boys and men. The Montreal Massacre was a one-off in the West, with no prequel and no sequel, because relations between the sexes here are a product of cultural values, and oppression of women is not the norm. However, despite this, feminist voices denouncing the “toxic masculinity” of various conflicts are few and far between. This is because movements are guided by ideology rather than conscience.
The Oct. 7 pogrom by some 3,000 Hamas terrorists was a proto-genocide of unusual savagery, meeting and surpassing the atrocities of ISIS in Syria and the Levant. Yet, feminist and sexual-violence organizations here and internationally failed to denounce or address it.
In November, U.N. Women eventually met with Israeli women’s rights experts advocating for official recognition of Hamas crimes against women and children. However, many other so-called women’s organizations remained silent on the matter.
