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sexual violence
Israel: The Country Whose Actions Never Represent Itself
As a country that invests heavily in public relations and presenting itself in a positive light, Israel often claims its representation lies in anything but its own actions.
May 22, 2026
On Wednesday, Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, publicly shared videos of the mistreatment of the activists of the Global Sumud Flotilla, illegally intercepted by Israeli forces earlier this week in international waters, including in broad daylight.
In addition to condemnation by representatives of several countries, Ben Gvir also faced internal criticism. Israel’s Prime Minister himself, Benjamin Netanyahu, expressed his disapproval by saying that “[t]he way that Minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel's values and norms.”
This is where I invite you to pause the unfolding story. Let’s put what we are seeing in other words: Israel’s Prime Minister, who has an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, is telling one of his ministers that his treatment of illegally captured activists doesn’t match Israel’s values and norms. Netanyahu says that after congratulating the Israeli army for intercepting the flotilla just days ago. According to him, this kind of abuse is not what Israel is about; Ben-Gvir, his own minister, should not form our image of Israel.
A question comes to mind: If it is not his own government official's, whose actions, according to Netanyahu himself, should we consider as we form an image of Israel’s values and norms?
For the ones willing to listen, Israel’s actions have spoken louder than any of its hasbara statements and have represented its values and norms very clearly.
Could it be when the Israeli soldiers continuously brag about their looting in Gaza on social media, when armed settlers—protected by the Israeli army—increasingly torch Palestinian houses in the West Bank, or when “Death to Arabs!” is being shouted with pride by the marchers on Jerusalem Day each year?
Would any state policy exemplify those values and norms? Like what we can read in the multiple reports describing systematic torture and sexual violence in Israeli detention (reports by the United Nations, B’Tselem, and Amnesty International)? And if someone argues that the Israeli government is not in fact showing what has become normalized through this specific state policy, it is difficult not to wonder what its values and norms have become when the detention of prison guards, caught brutally sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee on camera, is protested by fellow Israelis, when they are welcomed to Israel TV stations, and finally acquitted of any crime?
This is what this story illustrates: While Israel claims to represent many (for example, the global Jewish community), conveniently, no one seems able to represent Israel itself. Because if official state policies, military instructions and actions, public demonstrations, and the conduct of prison guards supported by the people do not represent Israel’s values and norms, the notion of Israel’s representation has become nothing more than what we find in political dystopias: just words we are supposed to accept.
The words become both the representation and the represented: The world’s most moral army is so because that is how it describes itself; there is no forced starvation because those responsible deny it; the abuse of the Global Sumud Flotilla crew is an exception because the war criminal in charge says he does not approve of it.
This is how simple Israel’s hasbara has become. And if it purely relies on the credulousness of its audience, who is left in that audience by now?
It is clear to see that this Orwellian reality is cracking. US citizens’ support for Israel is at an all-time low. The petition to suspend European Union-Israeli trade reached over a million signatures. Even something as seemingly unshakable as Europe’s fascination with Eurovision saw five countries and many viewers boycott the show due to Israel’s participation. The Government Pension Fund of Norway, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, divested from 11 companies, including Israeli banks, because of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank. For the ones willing to listen, Israel’s actions have spoken louder than any of its hasbara statements and have represented its values and norms very clearly.
Ultimately, what Netanyahu’s comment shows is a complete disconnect from reality. And perhaps that is the ultimate representation of how Israel and its supporters are left to operate.
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Silence Is Not Solidarity
If we are serious about building a world where women have equal power—economic, political, and personal—then we have to be serious about accountability within our own ranks
May 06, 2026
In the span of a month, two stories have laid bare an uncomfortable truth about progressive politics: Too many people will protect powerful men at the expense of the women they harm, whether to protect a movement, a party, or because they’ve been conditioned to believe this is how power works.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) announced his resignation from Congress last Month after multiple women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault. March’s revelation by Dolores Huerta that iconic labor leader Cesar Chavez sexually abused girls and women for decades is still reverberating through communities that revered him. In both cases, the pattern is the same: Whisper networks carried warnings for years, but survivors who came forward were silenced or discredited for the sake of the “greater good.”
Why? Because Swalwell was seen as a rising Democratic star, a useful weapon against President Donald Trump. Because Chavez was a civil rights icon whose legacy anchored an entire movement. Because people convinced themselves that exposing the truth would do more damage than burying it.
They were wrong. Silence doesn’t protect movements, it protects oppressors. It tells every woman who has been harassed, groped, or assaulted by a powerful man on “our side” that her pain is an acceptable cost of doing business.
Letting people in power abuse women is never acceptable, regardless of party, regardless of legacy, regardless of how inconvenient the timing might feel.
We have seen this calculation before—the quiet bargain where accountability is sacrificed on the altar of political convenience. It never works. The truth always surfaces. And when it does, the cover-up inflicts its own damage, compounding the harm to survivors and eroding the moral authority these movements depend on.
Consider the moment we’re in. We have a president who was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing a woman, and accused by at least 28 others, and has faced no meaningful consequences for it. A president who has made clear, through word and policy, that he believes powerful men can do whatever they want. His administration is rolling back decades of progress on combatting sexual harassment and assault in workplaces and schools; gutting protections against discrimination; and dismantling the legal infrastructure women depend on for safe, equitable workplaces. The Supreme Court, made up of one-third of Trump appointees, is the first since the 1950s to rule against women and people of color in a majority of civil rights cases.
This is the landscape women are navigating right now. And into this landscape, we are supposed to accept that the men or other abusers on “our side” get a pass? No.
If we are serious about building a world where women have equal power—economic, political, and personal—then we have to be serious about accountability within our own ranks. Not because it’s easy, but because the alternative is corrosive. Every time we look the other way, we tell the next generation that a woman’s safety matters less than a man’s career. We weaken the very movements we claim to be protecting.
The women who came forward about Swalwell, including content creators who had no institutional backing, no legal team—just their own platforms and conviction—showed extraordinary courage. So did the survivors who finally broke decades of silence about Chavez. They did what the political establishment was unwilling to do. They chose the truth.
The lesson here is not that our movements are broken. It’s that they are only as strong as our willingness to hold everyone in them accountable. Letting people in power abuse women is never acceptable, regardless of party, regardless of legacy, regardless of how inconvenient the timing might feel.
We are in a fight for women’s futures in this country. That fight requires moral clarity. It requires us to stop treating accountability as a threat and start treating it as the foundation. Good things, lasting things, come from doing what is right, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
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No, #MeToo Isn’t Over
Even in Trump’s America, where lawlessness can feel like the norm, survivors are here, demanding that individuals and institutions treat sexual violence with the seriousness it deserves.
Apr 22, 2026
After serious allegations of sexual misconduct, Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell and Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales resigned from Congress on the same day. That same week, convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein went on trial for the third time in New York; the University of California, Berkeley removed the name of accused sexual abuser Cesar Chavez from its student center; and a federal judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump regarding his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
These consequences for powerful men credibly accused of sexual assault have people asking: Is the #MeToo movement back?
As a co-founder of the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, which was launched in 2018 to provide legal funding and media assistance to support survivors of workplace sexual harassment and related retaliation, I can confirm: Even in Trump’s America, where lawlessness can feel like the norm, survivors are here, demanding that individuals and institutions treat sexual violence with the seriousness it deserves.
When #MeToo first went viral, it felt like the Earth shook. Women worldwide responded to bombshell New York Times reports by sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse. Quickly, it became clear that Weinstein was the tip of a massive iceberg. Allegations soon spread from Matt Lauer to Roger Ailes and beyond. But while big household names were capturing the public’s attention, something else was happening: People across the country were ready to take their abusers to court.
We have seen consequences for powerful men over the last weeks that go to show that powerful movements don’t end, they echo.
That’s why, three months after #MeToo went viral, the National Women’s Law Center joined with other advocates to create the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, which helps survivors, no matter where they work, find justice. Over the last eight years, we have found a great deal of justice.
Since its founding, we have helped more than 12,000 people get the legal assistance they needed to hold their perpetrators accountable. From McDonald’s workers who were survivors of rampant sexual harassment by their bosses, to a female truck driver in Arizona who was sexually assaulted by her co-worker on the side of the road, the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund has fought for justice and accountability—and won.
In the years since we launched the fund, the #MeToo hashtag may have stopped trending (in part because people are less likely to use hashtags altogether), but the movement is still here, doing the work. In fact, 27 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws aimed at strengthening protections against workplace harassment. And we are not done.
We also can’t discount the immense cultural change that #MeToo’s created. For instance, Cheyenne Hunt, a Democratic creator and activist, used social media to draw attention to her story about abuse from Swalwell. She may not have used the #MeToo hashtag in her initial posts, but her courageous work follows the same playbook thousands of other survivors used to hold their perpetrators accountable. And the public was ready to respond, after nearly a decade of being grounded in Tarana Burke’s MeToo framework.
Yet we have seen from across the political divide people questioning whether the movement was successful, as evidenced by the alleged serial abuser now sitting in the Oval Office, who once said, “Grab ‘em by the pussy.” But these are the wrong questions to consider. Better ones might be: What would it take for women to feel safe in the places they work and learn? What support do survivors need? What is the cost of refusing to provide that support—the cost to survivors and to all of us, as women’s careers and contributions and opportunities are short-circuited by sexual violence?
What has happened in comment sections and court rooms has helped assure that this movement lives on in our laws and culture. Try as some might to roll back this progress—and some, particularly the president, are trying mighty hard—this reckoning will never simply be put back in the bottle.
That said, the latest examples make clear that this country still has miles to go. And given who is in the White House, the threat to survivor justice is as stark as it’s ever been. The Trump administration has spent the last year undermining survivor protections—in just over a year, it has refused to enforce harassment protections for transgender workers, blocked funding for domestic and sexual assault organizations, and weakened protections for victims of sexual harassment in schools.
But that is not evidence that this movement has failed; rather, it goes to show what many of us in the movement already knew: that there is always more work to do.
That work is, of course, made harder by people who think women’s bodies are theirs to possess, and that power means being immune to consequences. Still, we have seen consequences for powerful men over the last weeks that go to show that powerful movements don’t end, they echo. No matter how powerful you think you are, no one is above accountability.
So for anyone who thinks the #MeToo movement is over, I challenge you to look into the faces of the brave women whose stories are demanding and shaping change: Lonna Drewes. Ally Sammarco. Annika Albrecht. Regina Ann Santos-Aviles. Jessica Mann. Ana Murguia. Debra Rojas. Dolores Huerta. Annie Farmer. Virginia Giuffre. Survivors everywhere continue to speak truth—and because they do, #MeToo is as loud as it has ever been.
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