Barbara Fields

Passion for cities & communities. Change agent.

[Barbara Fields @barbarafields_]

@JackMcCJr @SenJackReed @SenWhitehouse @SethMagaziner @gabeamo @uscourts @USDC_RI Great moment!

[Bill Maher @billmaher]

All wars end with negotiation, but it's hard to negotiate when the other side's bargaining position is "you all die and disappear."

[Equal Justice Initiative @eji_org]

A 38-year-old man named Derrek Martin was beaten to death yesterday at Elmore Prison in Alabama. Mr. Martin is at least the 14th person murdered in an Alabama prison this year, and one of at least four people killed at Elmore Prison in 2023 alone. https://t.co/cXB96yXvIk

[Barbara Fields @barbarafields_]

Heather Cox Richardson:

The image of a woman forced by the state to carry a fetus with a fatal condition at the risk of her own health and future fertility until finally she has to flee her state for medical care is one that will not be erased easily.

[Abt Global @AbtGlobalImpact]

Looking for a way to keep up with the latest insights on housing vouchers, homelessness & the connection between housing and health?

Our At Home newsletter delivers key findings, new blogs and upcoming events right to your inbox: https://t.co/TtuekIXbTO

[Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 @MarinaMedvin]

“I was forced to leave my study group because my group members told me that the people at the Nova music festival deserved to die because they were partying on stolen land.”

MIT.

[StopAntisemitism @StopAntisemites]

No anti riot police were dispatched.
No arrests were made.
No repercussions.

This is YOUR failure @PhillyMayor

[Christine Kensche @c_kensche]

The most bizarre moment of my career so far. @welt

[Barbara Fields @barbarafields_]

@ElizabethWisman @LouisvilleMayor Congrats!

[Arsen Ostrovsky @Ostrov_A]

Last week, I wrote an op-ed about the silence of women's groups & int'l organizations, in the face of the mass rape and sexual assault of Israeli women by Hamas terrorists on Oct 7.

Sadly, not a single mainstream publication was willing to publish it. So I am posting it here!

***

Me Too, Unless You’re a Jew?
By Arsen Ostrovsky

As a father of girls, I have no more sacrosanct duty in life, than the protection of my daughters, and as a human rights lawyer, I have proudly stood with women, advocating for greater equality.

Yet I have been utterly devastated at the abject silence and cold indifference of international organizations and women’s rights groups, following the unprecedented massacre perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli women and girls.

A devasting picture is rapidly emerging of horrific mass rape, torture and mutilation inflicted by Hamas terrorists upon young children, girls, women, even babies and the elderly.

One Israeli morgue worker said how there is evidence of widespread rape of so brutal that the terrorists “broke their victims’ pelvis – women, grandmothers, children.”

In another instance, first responders found a pregnant woman who was murdered, shot in the head, with her stomach cut wide open and her unborn baby still being connected to the umbilical cord.

In Kibbutz Be’eri, a place I visited personally a number of times following the massacre, a paramedic recounted how he found the bodies of two teenage girls in a bedroom, still lying in a pool of blood. They were raped, beaten and executed by Hamas. However, the paramedic was still unsure if they were raped first or executed and then raped.

Young girls, the bodies mutilated, paraded like trophies on the streets of Gaza.

There are countless more stories like this of the most unimaginable evil.

In addition, there are now also at least 240 hostages, that Hamas is holding captive in Gaza. At least 100 of them are women and young girls, with one even reported to have given birth, while in captivity. Thankfully some of them now are reportedly being released.

Yet despite this overwhelming evidence of the brutal, heinous mass rape and assault against Israeli women and kidnapping of young girls, the so-called enlightened voices of the west and self-proclaimed feminist groups, have been virtually silent.

Where is UN Women’s agency, the primary UN body tasked with ending violence against women? Silent.

Where is the Women’s March, which started to support women’s rights and create awareness against sexual abuse, harassment and rape of women? Silent.

How about members of The Squad? They don’t waste a breath to preach about Palestinian women’s rights, but are conspicuously silent here.

What does their silence convey?

Are the rights of Israeli women and girls not deserving of their attention? Is the kind of abominable behavior by Hamas to be condoned or excused? Or is it really ‘Me Too’ … unless you’re a Jew?

In case it needs to be reiterated, rape and sexual assault in armed conflict is a grave war crime under international law. The Geneva Conventions clearly state that “women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape … or any form of indecent assault,” while the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court deems the rape or sexual violence against women in armed conflict, both a war crime and crime against humanity.

That is why we made rape and the sexual assault against women, a pivotal part of our war crimes claim against Hamas, submitted last month to the International Criminal Court.

But the world has been mostly silent about these heinous Hamas crimes against girls and women.

Worse yet, some have even sought to perversely ‘contextualize’ it.

In an essay titled ‘The Compass of Mourning’, published in the days immediately after the Hamas massacre, Judith Butler, a leading American philosopher and gender studies scholar, claimed that Hamas’ actions need to be looked at “in context”.

No. There is never a ‘context’ to the wanton rape, defilement and sexual violence of women, full stop.

Sickeningly, there is now also a rape-denial movement growing as well. The director of the Sexual Assault Center as Canada’s University of Alberta, for example, was just fired, after the director signed an open letterdenying that women were raped and sexually assaulted during the Hamas terror wave.

What kind of message does it send when these so-called women’s groups and UN agencies are silent as Israeli girls are raped in the beds of their homes or women’s organs are mutilated?

How can one have such callous indifference, as children and elderly women are taken hostage and held captive in the dungeons of Gaza?

And what of those supposedly enlightened and educated voices, who seek to ‘contextualize’ toddlers being ripped apart from their mothers arms or the gang rape of women by sadistic Hamas monsters?

Are you really saying that the life of an Israeli girl or woman is worth less? Shame on you, your hypocrisy, and worst of all, the attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

History will forever record your silence, indifference and utter irrelevance.

[Benjamin Butterworth @benjaminbutter]

[Graphic warning] I have just seen the raw footage from Hamas terrorists of their attacks on 7 October. The screams of civilians murdered in their cars, babies slain in Disney pyjamas, children begging for “daddy” as he is blown up, the dead spat on.

As they mercilessly slaughtered, one terrorist yelled down the phone, “I killed 10 Jews with my hands, dad! I will go live on WhatsApp! Your son is a hero!”

If the Holocaust had cameras, this is what you would have seen.

I fear too many people do not grasp this.

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

52,000 Americans killed. That’s the equivalent of what Israel suffered 3 wks ago today. So let me ask you: If 52,000 Americans were killed in a single terrorist attack, would the world tell America how they should respond like the world is telling Israel how they should respond?

[yaakov schreiber @yaakovschreiber]

1 thing we learned over the last few days: the world doesn’t care about us as much as we thought and we care about each other a lot more then we realized.

[Barbara Fields @barbarafields_]

@wpri12 @JoeNews42 Good job! Was it on at 5:30??

[Abt Global @AbtGlobalImpact]

Our team of affordable housing experts is attending #NCSHA23 this weekend!

Adam Travis will present alongside speakers from @TCBCommunities & @BeingBeacon on enhancing affordable housing's #climateresilience and green retrofit opportunities.

Learn more: https://t.co/zxdxE2b2Bt

[Daniel Rubenstein @paulrubens]

Let’s talk about the water situation in the Gaza Strip. Gaza has an underground aquifer. If Gaza was governed in a remotely sane manner, the aquifer would provide enough water for everyone’s needs. But Hamas, being a genocidal terrorist group and all, didn’t effectively manage Gaza’s private wells. The aquifer was polluted by overpumping and wastewater contamination. In addition, the water infrastructure in Gaza is outdated because the local authorities preferred to invest in rockets, mortars, explosives, a vast underground tunnel network for its fighters, and other expenses required of jihadist groups. Who made up for the resulting water shortfall in Gaza while swimming pools at holiday villas were full? Israel. Israel did. The people of Gaza have been getting Israeli water. The payment for this water came last Saturday morning in the form of a massacre of over 1,000 people – children slaughtered in their beds, families gunned down, grandmothers taken hostage. I anticipate that there won’t be much farming happening in Gaza in the near future and therefore the water needs of the population will drop.

[Barbara Fields @barbarafields_]

This. Watch it all. Thank you @bariweiss for clear language.

[The Free Press @TheFP]

Our founder, @bariweiss, on @morning_joe sets the record straight on the Israel massacre. “The Nazis tried to hide their war crimes. Hamas is livestreaming theirs.”

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

#StandWithIsrael
#IsraelUnderAttack
#HamasMassacre

[Avi Mayer אבי מאיר @AviMayer]

The sheer scale of this catastrophe won't be known for hours or days, as the dead and missing are tallied, but it is already clear that it is unlike anything Israel has experienced in half a century or more.

This day will go down in history. Nothing will be the same after today.

[Barbara Fields @barbarafields_]

@KarenAnnSantill @RISpeaker @JoeShekarchi @CrossroadsRI Congrats, Karen & team!