Women have failed the women of Gaza

Most Zimbabweans profess the Christian faith, full of compassion and a shared eternal destiny with all humanity.

I believe it is partly in recognition of their compassionate nature, their advanced sense of care that most countries are beginning to agitate for gender parity and equity in all spheres of life.

There is a feeling that women are less prone to corruption, are more responsible administrators, less aggressive physically, and would therefore move the world towards greater peace and prosperity, and less human suffering.

This stems from practical necessity from experience.

In every situation of conflict, it has been observed that women and children suffer the most. In addition to the natural brutality of war, the usual killings and torture, women carry the further trauma of being turned into sex slaves.

This is made all the worse by the fact that they are hardly ever involved in the causes for which men start wars.

They should therefore be the peacemakers and nation builders.

Culture being what it is in every society, the boys who grow up going to church with the mother along with his sisters, still turns out to be the bad guy, the aggressive one, the bully, the causer of wars.

And naturally, given the new, evolving role of women in society, in the globe, we expect them to show that they can give us a better world tomorrow, a world full of hope and a better future.

Over the past four weeks of wanton, brutal violence against women and children in the godforsaken land of Palestine, I have looked right, looked left for women of courage and integrity to show leadership in our society.

I have been disappointed. I have found none.

Media reports show that more than 90 percent of the people being killed in that senseless war of aggression are civilians. About 75 percent of those dead civilians in Gaza Strip are women and children.

As in all such senseless conflicts, women bear the brunt, the greatest burden.

They must worry about not only about their own security but also that of their children, and make sure they are fed and taken care of.

Women’s organisations in Zimbabwe and the globe in general appear not to be touched by the grisly images coming out of that conflict. If they have, they have failed to show solidarity with the grieving and dying women and children of Gaza.

Or they have chosen to view this as an isolated incident so far away that it doesn’t affect or concern them. Which would be disheartening for a world which seeks to place such enormous responsibility in the hands of our compassionate womenfolk.

Nobody is saying women should take up arms, although if they did, they would find a lot of men ready to join them. The issue is that they should not underestimate the power of peaceful protest against evil.

That in part helped in the release of Nelson Mandela and galvanised world opinion against the apartheid regime.

In the case of Gaza, we should not expect women from the West to lead the way. We need our own powerful, new Winnie Mandela’s to lead campaigns against the senseless killings and abuse of women.

We have so many women’s organisations in Zimbabwe, some of them appearing to champion dubious causes. We have a thousand and one NGOs and civil society organisations, most of which are simply lousy versions of political parties.

Yet in the past four weeks when Israel’s rabid war machine has been wreaking havoc in Gaza, they have all been as vocal as the bodies in a morgue. That’s not an exaggeration.

And most of their members are, as you read this monologue dear reader, preening themselves in crisply pressed uniforms, ready to go and worship a God of compassion and mercy.

Where are the lawyers for human rights? Where are the ICC lobbyists for Netanyahu’s indictment? Where are all the noisy organisations purporting to stand for human rights across the globe?

Aren’t we told every day that human rights are universal, why the universal silence during this rape of Gaza?

We have churches, traditional and modern, whose aggressive approach to worship suggests a God who is always in a hurry for a physical dance than spiritual nourishment and moral well being.

They have never been heard to raise their holy voices against the carnage currently going on in Gaza. It is as if they have already been taken to the peaceful world which is deemed the ultimate prize of their Sunday ritual.

They have left all things earthly and reached nirvana.

In Gaza, women and children are being bombed in churches, schools and every possible sanctuary has been desecrated to ferret them out. They have nowhere to run.

The escape routes to Egypt have been blocked. Everyone and each one of them is awaiting their moment to be shot or crushed under crumbling brick and mortar.

It is most horrible to be a woman or child in Gaza today.

In our neighbourhood, the only protests I can recall came from one of the most unexpected quarters. It was the Economic Freedom Fighters of South Africa led by Julius Malema. They threatened to go to Gaza.

Closer to home, it has been left to President Mugabe to raise a dissident voice on a continent which has been so badly compromised by the economics of dependency that it cannot speak against the criminal behaviour of America which is actively supporting Nyetanyahu’s war.

I have deliberately slanted my argument against women because I believe they are letting themselves down as peace-builders in a world ravaged and weary of man-made wars.

The global media, despite their own biases, have done their best to focus the spotlight on the plight of women and children in Gaza.

And women have demonstrated to the world that they are not together, that when not led by men they are prepared actively or tacitly to conspire against fellow womenfolk, they are ready to play spectator to war.

In reporting in war, the idea of particularising women and children is to highlight their vulnerability, to prick the conscience of the most heartless brute, to raise human sensibilities. Women in this case have let humanity down by failing to raise the moral stakes.

Women of the world have failed the women of Gaza.

What I find utterly distasteful is that stakes are often raised so high when it comes to issues of homosexuality, but the rights of women and children in Gaza are non-existent. Gay rights are more important than the women of Gaza.

There is a saying to the effect that a society’s sense of justice is judged by the way it treats its weakest members. In our very masculine world the most vulnerable are children, followed by the physically-handicapped and then women.

The world, even a man’s world, is often very sensitive to this perking order. It is a circumstance which women can exploit to their advantage.

But I more than shocked that women have chosen to abdicate their moral duty regarding the plight of the women of Gaza, opting instead to be silent, which amounts to complicity in Israel’s relentless and unremitting drive to destroy not just the most basic infrastructure for human survival in Gaza, but to annihilate Gazans from the face of the Earth.

When will women fight for women’s rights without expecting to be sponsored or paid by men to do it, without expecting a reward?

So Zimbabweans, as you go to church today, spare a thought for the women of Palestine in the face a depraved and relentless attack on their humanity.

It is the least we can do as a country in a world ruled by a superpower without a conscience.

By Joram Nyathi – Group Political Editor