Gal Gadot: ‘The World Has Failed the Women of October 7’

If only Wonder Woman were real, then Israel’s Gaza nightmare might be over — but in the meantime the actress who brought the superhero character to the big screen is telling the world it needs to stand up for the women victimized by Hamas when members of the terrorist group attacked Israel in October.“The world has failed the women of October 7,” Ms. Gadot wrote on Instagram to her more than 109 million followers. “Two months after” the “first blood-chilling video emerged of Shani Louk being paraded naked and defiled by her proud assailants,” Ms. Gadot wrote, “women are still hostage to these rapists and the world has failed to call this situation what it is: an urgent emergency that demands a decisive response.”“I am beseeching all those who have done so much for women’s rights globally — from the UN, to the human rights community to please join in the demand that Hamas release every single woman hostage immediately.”Hamas and other Palestinian Arab terrorists seized about 247 hostages in their deadly October 7 attack on southern Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were killed. The attacks set off a war between Israel and Hamas, which nominally rules the densely populated Gaza Strip. While Hamas has freed most of the women and children it took captive on October 7 and, per the agreement, a number of Palestinian Arab prisoners were released by Israel on Friday, the Jewish state said that 136 hostages remain in Gaza. According to the IDF military spokesman, Admiral Daniel Hagari, they include 119 men and 17 women and children. Most are Israeli while 11 are foreign nationals. A seven-day truce between Israel and Hamas that began on November 24 broke down last week after Hamas refused to release 10 female hostages, instead seeking to release abductees from other categories in violation of an agreement that had been reached with Israel. On Friday, before the truce was scheduled to end, Secretary Blinken said that Hamas began firing rockets and “reneged on the commitments it made in terms of releasing certain hostages.”As Israel presses ahead with its efforts to dislodge Hamas from Gaza with a stepped-up military campaign that has shifted to the southern from the northern section of the Strip, dueling narratives are waxing online. As more people, particularly younger ones, obtain their news from social media and the celebrities and so-called influencers that dominate them, that battle has taken on outsized importance. That is especially so because international support for Israel’s campaign against Hamas over time cannot be taken for granted.In the immediate aftermath of October’s attacks, Ms. Gadot was criticized for attempting to draw a parallel between the innocent Israelis who were killed on October 7 and Palestinians Arabs caught in the crossfire of the fight between Israel and Hamas in the densely populated Gaza Strip.Ms. Gadot’s latest post appears to be an attempt, however belated, to come around to condemn unequivocally as well as specifically the terror that Hamas exercised against women on October 7. Ms. Gadot is arguably the world’s most famous female Israeli since Golda Meir.The actress is a Hollywood megastar in her own right, so when she has something to say it carries weight. She stated that Hamas must free the hostages “not after the next round of international mediation” or after “another day” but immediately, because “these women cannot survive another moment of this horror.”The reason why international organizations have lagged in condemning Hamas’s vile use of sexual violence against women is likely wrapped up in a general left-wing tilt that often badly misdiagnoses the chaos in Gaza. As the Sun has reported, in an October 13 statement on the attacks that occurred just days before, the UN’s leading group on women’s rights makes no mention either of sexual violence or Hamas. Over the weekend IDF troops in the northern Gaza Strip found rockets under boxes with labeling from UNRWA — that’s the UN agency that underwrites “relief and human development” for so-called Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip. Nary a peep from the feckless UN chief, António Guterres, about the Israelis’ less than surprising find.As for the womens’ group, it is formally known as the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, and informally as UN Women. Only on Friday, December 1, did UN Women issue a statement saying it was “alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence” Hamas perpetrated during the attacks.Yet on Saturday the American taxpayer-funded group demonstrated that it is institutionally incapable of making a clear and correct value judgment. In a post to X, the UN statement claimed that “we reiterate that all women, Israeli women, Palestinian women, as all others, are entitled to a life lived in safety and free from violence.” In that platitude, the careful reader will detect more than a grain of anti-Israeli sentiment. Speaking on Sky News, Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Tzipi Hotovely, said, “It took over 50 days for the UN women’s organization to condemn something that is so clear.”Even if it is a case of better late than never, there is little in the UN group’s condemnation that could be said to constitute a call for action. For that, it won’t be Wonder Woman to the rescue, but a plea from mighty Gal Gadot may be the next best thing. “This,” she declared, “is our moment as women and allies of women to act.”

Gal Gadot: ‘The World Has Failed the Women of October 7’

More from the New York Sun

Let Some Oil Tankers Sail Through the Strait of Hormuz — World Oil Prices Will Retreat Big Time

‘What Is Chabad Exactly?’

On Taxes in New York, It’s Mamdani v. Hochul

More from the New York Sun

Let Some Oil Tankers Sail Through the Strait of Hormuz — World Oil Prices Will Retreat Big Time

‘What Is Chabad Exactly?’

On Taxes in New York, It’s Mamdani v. Hochul

‘Hoppers’ is the Best Pixar Film of the Decade

Florida Senate Advances Bill To Let State Leaders Designate Groups as Terrorists After Federal Judge Blocks Effort by DeSantis

One Week In, Will Trump and Netanyahu Have Time To Finish Reshaping the Mideast and the World?

State Department Says Charter Flights Are Evacuating Hundreds of Americans Stranded in Middle East

Mayor Mamdani’s Wife Liked Posts Cheering on Hamas’s October 7 Massacre: Report