CODEPINK = CODE-RED

By Phyllis Chesler

Alice Schwarzer, the leading feminist of Germany and the founder of EMMA magazine, introduced the German edition of Women and Madness way back in the early nineteen-seventies. Over the years, I’ve appeared in Emma’s pages as an interviewee; they have also excerpted some of my work.

Well, she, and her interpreter, Sophie Bettina Flitner, came to see me and a really good time was had by all.

Given the feminist and lesbian-“queer” hardline positions against Israel, I was thrilled to find out that Alice and I not only agreed on sex-based rights over and above gender-based rights, and on issues such as commercial surrogacy, pornography, prostitution, and on the trans issues–but also on Islamism, women under Sharia law, Islamic Jihad, and the alarming global rise in Jew and Israel hatred.

We also agreed on the tragic rise of Jew hatred and Israel hatred among so-called feminists. She was happy/disconsolate to discover that what she calls the faux-feminist movement in Germany is much like its sad and sorry counterpart in America and elsewhere in Europe and Australia.

Please understand: I have both lost and left countless feminist and faux-feminist colleagues and friends. They are completely drunk on every kind of Kool-Aid propaganda. There is absolutely no getting through to them. One of the few real feminists with whom I am still in touch actually just sent me an article written by one of the two CODEPINK Ladies, Medea Benjamin and Jodi Evans, who are funded by far left/Marxist billionaires, and whose position on Israel and Palestine is, in my considered view, far beneath contempt.

Yes, we are that far apart.

Neither Benjamin nor Evans is a feminist activist, although many feminists point to them as feminist heroes.

For example, through her foundation, The Benjamin Fund (assets total $47.9 million), Medea Benjamin has granted funds to American Muslims for Palestine, Amnesty International, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, etc. In November of 2023, post-Hamas’s 10/7 pogrom-on-steroids, CODEPINK organized demonstrations, protests, and disruptions “to demand an immediate end to the brutal siege of Gaza and the cessation of all U.S. aid to Israel–and, that same month, 11/23, they demanded that President Biden “Stop Supporting Israeli Apartheid.” CODEPINK got themselves arrested for interrupting a Senate hearing on aid to Israel. They also signed a letter which urged “international support for South Africa’s genocide case against the state of Israel.

Their anti-Israel focus goes on and on. They’ve partnered with Samidoun and Jewish Voice for Peace (oh please, do check them out); they’ve also endorsed “Global Days of Action for Palestine.” Please read about CODEPINK’s long history in my colleague Gerald Steinberg’s totally trustworthy report, NGO-Monitor.

What do any of CODEPINK’s positions and activism have to do with women’s rights? Especially with the rights of women living under Sharia law in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and all across the Muslim Arab Middle East, Muslim India, and Muslim North Africa? Why have these so-called heroines not demonstrated against the Taliban, the Iranian mullahs, or the Qatari sheiks who have bought and paid for the downfall of Western Civilization via the Western academy and the Western media? What about CODEPINK’s non-confrontation of Hamas which, arguably, has held their own people hostage and used them as human shields for propaganda purposes against Israel? Yes, and this includes the Gazan Arab women and children whom CODEPINK claims Israel, but not Hamas, is starving, killing, and abusing in other ways.

Where is CODEPINK’s passionate statements on behalf of the Israeli women who were torture-raped, murdered, and kidnapped by Hamas? And over the years, by all the Arab Jihadist actors within Israel and on its borders? Groups and individuals that are still lobbing rockets, perpetrating stabbings and car rammings within Israel?

But more importantly: Where is CODEPINK’s work on behalf of women’s reproductive rights, or on issues such as rape, domestic violence, incest, forced veiling, forced marriage, FGM, honor killing (femicide), and on the trafficking of girls, boys, and women into sex slavery? Where is their work on all the varieties of slavery in African, Arab, and Muslim countries?

What kind of feminist analyses have led to CODEPINK’s positions? And why have some otherwise real radical feminists, not the faux-kind, been sending me articles written by Medea Benjamin in response to scholarly and thoughtful analyses of the dangerous rise in Jew hatred globally? Why do supposed feminists actually believe that Israel is purposely starving Gazans and committing a “genocide” in Gaza?

In short, Medea Benjamin and Jodi Evans are communist-style anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic agitators. Alas, is this what feminism has come to? I fear it has.

If you look at most Women’s Studies programs today, you will find that the focus is on the crime of unjustly imprisoning African-American men; the crimes of global capitalism and imperialism–but only as practiced by the West; terrorism, not the Jihadic kind, but only as having been practiced by American settlers against native-American Indians; the primary importance of indigenous populations; trans rights as feminist rights; queer rights over and above lesbian or bisexual rights; studies in Beyonce; etc.

There are some younger real feminists on the rise. WOLF, for example, or ROAR. One can only hope that their vision will triumph.

Here are some photos (just one in NER)  taken the day of my meeting with Alice, and Sophie (Bettina Flitner), who accompanied her as her interpreter, and took these photos. Thank you. Much appreciated.

First published in Phyllis’ Newsletter