Last December, a collective of 55 female leaders from across the Middle East, encompassing representatives from the Muslim, Christian, Druze, and Jewish communities of 12 countries, issued a public denunciation of Hamas and its supporter, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Spearheaded by women’s rights advocates from Iran and Israel, this open letter attracted endorsements from a broad spectrum of women from countries including Iran, Iraq, Israel, Bahrain, Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, and the Palestinian Territories.
Among the endorsers were key figures in the fight for women’s rights, including human rights proponents Mariam Banihashemi and Lisa Daftari; Ahdeya Ahmed Al Sayed, previous chair of the Bahrain Journalists Association; numerous women previously imprisoned by the Islamic Republic of Iran; former Miss Iraq Sarah Idan; former Israeli lawmakers Gadeer Mreeh and Ruth Wasserman Lande; Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Fleur Hassan Nahoum; and legislators, including Belgium’s MP Darya Safaei and Canadian Member of Provincial Parliament Goldie Ghamari.
Hearing their stories
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, The Jerusalem Post reached out to two of the signers to hear about their experiences and views regarding the current situation.
Emily Schrader
orn in the United States, Emily Schrader, a journalist and human rights activist and one of the main initiators of the letter, made aliyah ten years ago. “I wanted to create this statement uniting Israeli and Iranian women because, from my work in human rights, I know that we have remarkably similar values and even histories if we go back to the time of Cyrus the Great,” she says.
“Initially, the goal was to have Israelis and Iranians, but when we spoke to more women leaders in the Middle East, we discovered that there were dozens of Arab women who also wanted to join this call, condemning the negative impact of Islamist terrorism and, specifically, the terrorism of the Islamic Republic of Iran and how it harms the entire region.”
Schrader explains that the goal of the letter is to show the world that the conflict in the Middle East “isn’t between Arabs and Jews, but rather between radical violent forces, like the Islamic Republic and its proxies, and those who seek peace and security.”
According to Schrader, the letter’s target audience was leaders in democratic nations, mainly because of their failure to hold the Islamic Republic accountable for its crimes against humanity, which harm women in the entire region. For this reason, she explains that Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Emirati, Bahraini, and Iraqi women all signed the open letter, focusing on the shared future of all ethnicities in this region.
“We can unite and fight the forces that seek to destroy both of our civilizations,” she says.
They received only positive feedback. “There are more women who want to be added to the list than I can keep up with,” Schrader elaborates. “I have been receiving messages from all over the Middle East, including people who are not the biggest fans of the State of Israel, saying, ‘thank you for this.’”
Schrader adds that she expected some pushback due to the war, but surprisingly, many women in this region agree about this threat to the area’s shared future.
When asked about the situation of women’s rights in the Middle East these days, Schrader says that while some countries have made significant progress towards equality for women in the Middle East, “in the last 45 years, we have seen a serious regression in women’s rights in places like Iran, where the regime has a policy of gender apartheid.”
Schrader believes that there is “a huge problem all over the Middle East, including Israel, with stereotypical attitudes and expectations for women culturally,” and she holds that “until we get to a place where men and boys in the Middle East are taught to view women as equal partners with ambitions, we are going to be dealing with the problem of inequality for women.” She also criticizes the security establishment and political sphere in Israel, where, she notes, women are vastly underrepresented.
Schrader “want[s] to encourage anyone who is reading this in the Western world to urge their democratic leaders to have a zero-tolerance approach to the Islamic Republic because it has a profound impact on the women and children of this region. The terrorist agenda of the Iranian regime doesn’t just stay in the Middle East. It will expand, and we already see those efforts popping up in other countries. Women’s rights are under assault from extremists, and we need all women and all people of conscience in the world to stand with us against forces that try to take us thousands of years back.
“We won’t accept this, and we won’t go quietly,” she concludes.
Elaaheh Jamali
Born and raised in Esfahan until the age of 13, Elaaheh Jamali, an Iranian-British human rights activist and women’s rights advocate, also known as LilyMoo, found asylum in the UK in the year 2000 as a political refugee, along with her family.
“This was right after a major uprising in Iran, led by students, and I was just a young girl, but I remember that my family was politically active in different instances,” Jamali recalls.
Starting in 2009, as the Green Movement, which disputed the election results in the Islamic Republic, gained ground, Jamali found herself becoming an activist for Iran and Iranian women in exile. “We thought that maybe there’s a chance to overthrow the government. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, but there’s also a good side to it, as the ‘reform’ everyone talked about was never going to be a full one but, rather, some cosmetic changes, maybe,” she adds.
Jamali continued to be active on Iranian issues, though to a lesser extent, until September 2022, when Mahsa Amini was brutally murdered by the so-called ‘morality police.’
“Just like everyone else, I decided to take to the streets. I carried on raising awareness about the Islamic Republic’s violations of women’s rights and human rights, met up with parliament members in the UK and EU, organized rallies, wrote letters...” Jamali pauses.
“Then, by the anniversary of Amini’s murder, I grew disillusioned by the Biden administration as they decided to hand the Islamic Republic six billion dollars of previously blockaded money. This gave them much confidence in their delusional legitimacy,” she explains.
In this context, Jamali also expresses her fury regarding the diplomatic achievements of the Islamic Republic, including their election as chairs of the UN Human Rights Council meeting and even the Nuclear Disarmament Committee.
“When I was approached with the letter, it was only natural and very fitting that I’d be partaking and signing, [and] also advocating for it. I believe every word that’s written in it and more,” Jamali continues. “It highlights the Islamic Republic’s abuse of human rights, which we can witness in the ranks of their proxies as well. You have child marriage in Gaza and Lebanon, and in the Islamic Republic, they openly encourage ‘exporting’ Iranian women for their proxies through ‘Sigheh’ (a temporary marriage) as a means to deepen the ‘revolution.’
“They see women as property, and this is the same guise under which they saw Israeli women on the October 7th attack,” she adds. “The attack was funded and facilitated at the hands of the Islamic Republic with money belonging to the people of Iran but spent on the proxies. So, it comes as no surprise that the same practices of sexual violence were not only limited to Hamas but were also being performed during the crackdowns against the uprisings in Iran.”
Jamali says that she got mixed reactions to the letter, with some lauding her while others accused her of being an Israeli spy for the Mossad. “I still choose to remain hopeful. Prince Reza Pahlavi says that ‘we are only as strong as the weakest link in our chain,’ and so we have to be strong and hold on tight, reach out to like-minded people. Do not distract yourself from those who bring you down.
“The current national revolution in Iran is led by women and is fully supported by our men,” adds Jamali. She also explains that while thousands of women are in prisons in Iran, “modern Iranian men have it in their DNA to support women,” following the example set by the emancipation of women in Iran, a process led by Reza Shah Pahlavi.
“There are currently thousands of young Iranian men in prisons in Iran who came to protest against the Islamic Republic and the gender apartheid it imposes, calling for justice and regime change and rallying around the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom.’”
Jamali recalls how when she lived in Iran, Iranian women were forced into hiding, while in her mother’s generation, Iranian women were celebrated. “My mother is a huge source of inspiration and support for me. She raised us to be women’s rights advocates all our lives. We grew into it and never stopped. During our years living under the totalitarian, brainwashing regime, my mother made sure to sit with us every day and dismantle and cleanse away all the bad convictions we were forced to absorb.
“Other sources of inspiration for me are all the women who signed the letter, all the women in prison in Iran who fight for the country – Fatemeh Sepehri, Nasreen Shahkarami, and, of course, Shahbanou Farah Pahlavi, queen and empress of Iran.”
“By the way,” adds Jamali, I’m sure that many women in Iran stand with the women of Israel. The biggest enemy of the Iranian people is the biggest enemy of the Israeli people, the Islamic Republic.“My message to women is: Listen to each other, stay strong, make a strong chain together, stay united, fight for our liberties, and hope for a day when International Women’s Day becomes a day in which we celebrate achievements rather than grief over hardships. Also, bring the hostages home!”