Views

essay
The Women’s March
It fi
 nally might be ready to take Jewish women seriously.
F

or the first time in a while, 
I am cautiously hopeful 
that the Women’
s March 
may be turning a corner. 
I am not talking about the 
dramatic changing of the guard, 
though it is 
certainly a big 
deal that three 
of the march’
s 
four prominent 
co-chairs — Bob 
Bland, Tamika 
Mallory and Linda 
Sarsour — have 
stepped down after the organi-
zation’
s leadership was plagued 
with controversy, including 
praising notorious anti-Semites 
like Louis Farrakhan and alle-
gations they pushed a Jewish 
woman out of leadership 
because of her religion. 
For me, the bigger news is 
that one of the 17 new board 
members has already been 
removed for rhetoric that 
many found to be anti-Semitic 
, 
including demonizing the Anti-
Defamation League, chastising 
Muslims who are willing to join 
interfaith efforts and calling 
Israel a “racist” state that 

“engages in terrorism.
” 
Just days after Zahra Billoo 
was announced as part of the 
new board, the Women’
s March 
took the outpouring of concern 
from Jewish organizations seri-
ously and actually did some-
thing. The organization that in 
February 2018 took a staggering 
nine days just to say Louis 
Farrakhan did not “align” with 
its values managed to actually 
fire someone over anti-Semitism 
concerns.
This is a marked difference, 
indeed, from where the organi-
zation began.
In 2017, shortly after the first 
Women’
s March rocked not only 
Washington, D.C., but the entire 
world as a unifying feminist 
storm, I found myself reluctantly 
questioning whether I was wel-
comed in this supposedly inclu-
sive wave of feminist activism as 
a Jewish woman and a Zionist. 
I very much would have pre-
ferred to pull the pink pussy hat 
over my eyes and ignore the fact 
that there was a singular hostility 
toward Israel in the movement 
and then a growing tolerance 
for anti-Semitism. It felt whiny, 

if not traitorous, to question 
and raise concerns when I was a 
proud feminist who agreed with 
so many of the overarching goals 
and objectives of the movement. 
I should take the good with the 
bad, I thought.
But I couldn’
t. It felt dishonest 
and hypocritical, especially in 
a movement that proclaimed 
to value intersectionality and 
encouraging people — especially 
women — to speak their truth 
and be the ones to name and call 
out discrimination and hate.
I was prompted to write 
“Does feminism have room for 
Zionists?” after the International 
Women’
s Strike — distinct from 
the Women’
s March — present-
ed a platform that singled out 
Israel as the only country other 
than the U.S. for condemnation, 
demanded the “decolonization 
of Palestine” and proudly touted 
Rasmea Odeh as an organizer. 
Odeh had been convicted for her 
involvement in a bombing that 
killed two Hebrew University 
students. 
The response I received from 
the most prominent and loudest 
voices of the modern feminist 

and progressive movements was 
a resounding no — both implic-
itly in their hyper-hostility to 
anything that could be mistaken 
as acknowledging the legitimacy 
of Jewish statehood and explicit-
ly from Sarsour.
Anti-Zionism seemed like rel-
atively small potatoes against my 
new looming question: “Does 
feminism have too much room 
for anti-Semitism?” 
It wasn’
t just that Sarsour had 
said that “nothing is creepier 
than Zionism,
” but that she had 
unabashedly and unapolo-
getically minimized its harm, 
saying, “I want to make the 
distinction that while anti-Sem-
itism is something that impacts 
Jewish Americans, it’
s differ-
ent from anti-black racism or 
Islamophobia because it’
s not 
systemic.
” 
But a year can make a dif-
ference. With fresh blood and 
a willingness to listen and take 
action, there is finally some hope 
that Jewish women’
s concerns 
will be heard and taken seriously.
This doesn’
t mean that there 
isn’
t more room for improve-
ment. For one, it was disappoint-

Emily Shire

JTA

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