While violence and murder continue in Gaza and escalate in the West Bank – with house demolitions, infrastructure destruction, mass arrests, blockades on entire cities, hundreds of checkpoints, and burning of property – Israel is not letting up, even when it pretends to talk about a "ceasefire." The destruction, grief, and loss are not side effects, but a direct result of a long-standing policy that spills the blood of both the oppressed and the oppressors.
Amid all this, the public discourse in Israel is ablaze – not around genocide, not around destruction, but around a case involving a personal trainer, intimate videos that were shared without consent, and moral judgment about women's lives. Instead of talking about the crime of distributing intimate materials, society is busy blaming the victims and engaging in self-righteous debates about betrayal and loyalty. This is nothing new: women's bodies have always been a playground for the powerful, whether it's soldiers desecrating Palestinian homes, posing in Palestinian women's intimate clothes, or men distributing videos without permission.
Women are always the first to suffer – in war, occupation, sexual violence, and public judgment. And society in Israel, quick to preach about values, once again reveals that there is no problem trampling on women when they don't meet the standards society imposes on them.
It's time to direct anger to the right places. Not towards individual women who have fallen victim to exploitation, but towards the policies that lead to ongoing destruction and oppression – on all fronts.
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