I stood up for ‘woman, life, freedom’ in Iran. Now I speak up for women in Israel

Much of the world remains silent about the women of Israel who were raped, tortured and killed by Hamas militants on Oct. 7. Silence also surrounds the topic of female Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza for more than four months.

In refusing to speak up for these women because of their Israeli and Jewish identities, leaders and women’s rights activists around the world are failing women everywhere. They are excusing global human rights institutions from doing their job, and are breeding a dangerous trend of contextualizing and politicizing crimes against women.

This silence legitimizes the crimes that increasingly threaten women just like me, who are born in places where extremism and hate against women is bolstered by those who watch globally and say nothing.

Iran, the country of my birth, is controlled by a dictatorial regime that has oppressed its own population for 45 years, and is now at the heart of the current violence and terrorism against Jews, Israel, the United States and Western allies. It is no secret that the Islamic Republic regime that controls Iran used its oil wealth to fund the Hamas attacks. Iran-backed Houthis have halted much of the traffic on a major sea shipping route; their militias attack U.S. military bases in the region; and their sponsored proxy group Hezbollah fires missiles daily toward Israeli civilians to continue a war that is devastating both Palestinians and Israelis. 

Iran is also one of the worst places on Earth to be a woman. The global expansion of Iran-backed violence should be enough for those who care about women’s rights to put aside their political differences regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to call out Iran-backed Hamas for such egregious crimes against women. 

A powerful precedent that proves such allyship is possible comes from events around the Women Life Freedom movement, which began with protests in Iran in September 2022 following the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in Iranian police custody after she was arrested for failing to wear her head covering “appropriately.” Women and thousands of men as allies from various backgrounds across Iran came out to demonstrate in support of Amini (who was herself from Iran’s Kurdish minority), many of them risking their lives. Government forces killed more than 500 demonstrators (including children), blinded many more, and imprisoned more than 20,000 people to stop the growing support for this unprecedented women-led movement. There are still demonstrations in Iran among a brave populace that believes in the power of women’s voices. 

In the diaspora, Iranians from different backgrounds, as well as non-Iranians, came together to offer support to Iranian women. This united but diverse and determined global group was essential in forcing the United Nations to remove Iran from its Commission on the Status of Women, a scandalous position for the country to hold in light of the violent oppression against women there. 

My involvement in this movement in Canada made me realize that without individual accountability from allies and a united outcry of support for women harmed by extremists, egregious outcomes are very likely for all of us as women, everywhere. Even if it’s simply posting on social media, each of our voices matters for the promotion and protection of women’s rights. We all make a difference.

This is the kind of broad and diverse support that is needed today against Hamas and its vicious treatment of women. Choosing to remain silent ultimately allows oppressors to harm women through the legitimacy granted by a world that watches and does nothing. Such silence also sends the message that not all people are worthy of support, heading down the dangerous slope of contextualizing violence and oppression against women and politicized minorities. 

I refuse to live in a world where crimes against women are viewed as legitimate actions in war — and you should as well. 

We are seeing some brave voices. For example, Iranian-American journalist and women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad has spoken out strongly against the gender-based crimes of Hamas — and about the grave risk of remaining silent on the topic. “If we don’t get united now, the terrorists will rape more women for sure,” she wrote on social media. “As a woman from the Middle East, who listens to the stories of women being ignored by their fellow sisters in the west, I have to say that my heart is really broken. We are talking about rape. Where is the outrage?” An Iranian woman going by the handle Lily Moo also condemned the atrocities against women when speaking out against the Hamas attacks at a rally in London. She is unable to unveil her actual identity due to threats to her life.

More than anyone, women in Iran understand that global support for oppressed women anywhere and everywhere is essential. More than anyone, they also understand that the violent suppression of the “Woman Life Freedom” movement was a canary in the global coal mine. 

The same regime and ideology behind the oppression of women in Iran is spreading its footprint, with the goal to create extreme societies without room for women’s equality, without room for difference and without basic freedoms to express what is wrong and harmful to society.

For the sake of all women and every decent human being, government and global institution needs to speak up now, especially those of us living in Western democracies who have a voice, which millions of other women in the world lack. 

This is not only about protecting the rights of our sisters in more dangerous places, it is also about protecting our own rights here in the West in a future where political convenience or “context” could erode them. 

The rights of women all across the world are not disconnected from each other. They are one and the same. 

Saeideh Fard is a Toronto-based high-tech executive and a founding member of The Collective, a movement of Muslim, Jewish and secular women who denounce terrorism and antisemitism and are working toward a shared future, operating under the umbrella of The 49%, a nonprofit media production company focused on women’s rights.