Israeli 'Handmaid's Tale' protests: Fight to save women's rights

In the third episode of the first season of the TV series The Handmaid’s Tale, protagonist Jane Osborne says, “When they butchered Congress, no one woke up; when they annulled the Constitution and blamed it on terrorists, they still didn’t wake up; they said it was only temporary – nothing changes overnight.”

This is the same message behind the protest by the women in red that in recent weeks has become an integral part of the protests in Israel against judicial reform. “Does seeing these women taking part in the Handmaid’s Tale protest scare you? It should,” says one of the protesters. “We are here to protest the crushing of women’s rights.”

“We must not take freedom for granted. Life can change in the blink of an eye,” says Liad Suez-Karni, field director for Bonot Alternativa, the organization behind the Handmaid’s Tale protests. Suez-Karni is a former coach for Israel’s national basketball league and currently a mental performance coach for athletes.

“In the past, people would say to me, ‘You women are exaggerating; that would never happen here,’ but no one can promise me that. All over the world we see this happening, that life suddenly becomes so dark. That’s why our presentations have had such a strong impact – we’re showing the Israeli public, in a way that they can no longer ignore, what could happen in the near or not so near future. 

“People are expressing intense feelings of uneasiness and telling us that our protest has really opened their eyes. They are finally realizing that this is real, that something like this could really happen here.”

The women participating in the Handmaid’s Tale protests over the last few weeks in Israel’s larger cities, such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba, Herzliya and Kfar Saba, have been wearing red gowns and white bonnets, walking demurely in absolute silence with their hands clasped in front, their heads down as a symbol of oppression, just as the characters in the TV show do.

These protests in Israel have garnered quite a bit of a stir in the media at home as well as abroad, even grabbing the attention of Margaret Atwood herself, the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, which was published in 1985 and upon which the TV series was based. Atwood retweeted a post on the demonstrations that said: “Over 20 handmaids reminded 100K Israelis protesting against judicial reform what can happen when a group of fanatical religious men takes over.”

“Of course, this is a bit of an exaggeration, but it doesn’t seem like a far-fetched possibility anymore,” says Suez-Karni. “A year ago, people laughed at us, and now suddenly it seems like this isn’t actually so implausible. That’s the power of our campaign. At the first massive protest against the reform on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv, speakers took the stage, one after another, and suddenly we realized that not one single person had brought up the issue of women’s rights.

“That’s why we felt the need to fill this vacuum. The first group of people that is going to be affected by these changes in Israel are women. They’re going to be the first ones kicked off the buses. The moment laws restricting women go into effect, and if the Supreme Court is no longer able to protect us, that will be the beginning of the end, just like what happened in Iran and Afghanistan. And we won’t be able to do a single thing about it.”

The Handmaid’s Tale campaign began as a wild and crazy idea thrown into the ring during a brainstorming session held at Bonot Alternativa, an apolitical organization whose members hail from a large number of political parties and communities around the country. The women comprising Bonot Alternativa are secular, haredi, right wing, Arab – every type possible. What brings them all together is the desire to promote women’s rights in Israel.

The first march took place in Jerusalem, with 20 women demonstrating in red cloaks, but within a few weeks the group had expanded to 150 women, who marched in a number of locales across the country. Everything is organized on WhatsApp, and all participants are volunteers. In the beginning, there was just one WhatsApp group, but now there are 15 subgroups, all protesting in different locations around Israel. A few weeks ago, a group made up of Israelis in San Francisco staged a similar march as well.

“At our brainstorming session, someone suggested to the group an idea to hold a Handmaid’s Tale protest, and we all laughed and said, ‘Yeah, that would be awesome, but no. Next…’ But I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, so I asked two volunteers if they wanted to try to put something together, and from there it just snowballed and kept getting bigger and more powerful,” recalls Hadas Ragolsky, a journalist, editor, social activist and spokesperson for Bonot Alternativa, a role which she does on a volunteer basis.

How does Bonot Alternativa operate?

“So we never know which women are going to show up on any given day; it’s not like we’ve assigned spots to individuals. We opened WhatsApp groups and began sending updates. We gained new members who’d heard about us by word of mouth. Then our campaign began blowing up in the media, at which point a multitude of women began reaching out to us. We kept opening more WhatsApp groups as needed and would send out a questionnaire, such as ‘Who can come to Dizengoff on Shabbat at 3 p.m.?’ Last week, 150 women replied in the affirmative,” says Ragolsky.

Are you receiving any financing other than from Bonot Alternativa?

“No, none. We all pay for our own cloaks and transportation costs. Nothing is reimbursed. We’ve started a crowdfunding campaign, and that’s also being run by volunteers. We’ve spent money on placards, design, etc. We don’t have an office, so that saves on costs. When we want to hold a meeting, we ask one of our members to host it in their office,” says Ragolsky.

The Handmaid’s Tale TV series features a futuristic dystopian world in which the women who live in a patriarchal, theocratic, totalitarian state known as the Republic of Gilead, in which they are deprived of all their rights, turned into handmaids and are forced to have children for other women who are infertile. Any handmaid who does anything to oppose the dictatorship is hanged on the Wall or sent to do hard labor in the colonies.

Some people have expressed criticism of the show, claiming it does a disservice to the feminist movement and displays pornographic violence. The series became an even bigger discussion topic following the overturning of the federal decision granting the longstanding constitutional right to abortion in the US.

“The Handmaid’s Tale portrays a fictional world that seemed so far-fetched at the time it came out but that now seems to be all too real and possible,” explains Merav Cohen-Mor, a strategic adviser and community organizer who joined the campaign over a month ago.

“The series is a sad but totally believable reality, considering what we are seeing here in Israel with the judicial reforms that are being passed in the Knesset at lightning speed. Even as it stands today, women have very little power when it comes to decision-making, and we are at risk of losing the little leverage we have gained.

“These legislative reforms will harm women’s efforts at reaching equality. Women are going to be excluded from public positions even more than they are today, and restricted in academic circles. The rabbinic courts will gain even more power. It’s true that this is not where we stand today, but with the way the trends are moving, this is where we could end up in no time at all.

“Women may not be forced to wear red robes, but our freedom will become seriously restricted. The reason we are engaging in this campaign, which includes no speech at all, and during which we all keep our heads facing down, is to show how our vision is restricted – no longer will we be allowed to look left or right. Our quiet but powerful protest is a way for us to display our fear of what’s in store for us if we continue going in the same direction.

“Most of the reactions we get from people who see us on the street protesting are positive and supportive, but of course some of the things people say to us are quite offensive,” continues Cohen-Mor. [Last weekend, for the first time, some women went to protest alone at Dizengoff Center, not as part of a group.] “While we were putting our outfits on, someone threw raw eggs at us from an open window.

“One of our ironclad rules is that we do not engage with anyone, ever, so we just moved to a different spot. Other than that incident, all the other comments we got were pretty positive. People clapped for us, others fell in line marching alongside of us. The first time we marched at the protest on Kaplan Street, it was hard for us to walk through the crowd because no one knew what we were doing; but now everyone is expecting us and immediately make room for us to march by.”

The women participating in the campaign hail from varying cultural, political and religious backgrounds. The organizers are very clear that none of these categories are relevant to the cause. “Everyone realizes we’re all going to be hurt by these reforms,” Cohen-Mor says.

“Many of the women marching with us have serious jobs, where it would not be fitting to discuss their views of the reform. But since their faces are covered with the white bonnet, they can walk freely with us. Some women even cry while we’re protesting. Many women have told me they don’t feel like it would be possible for them to walk around with an Israeli flag now, and so marching with us is a way for them to protest without showing their identity. Some women are very young, while others are young at heart. 

“I’m sure we even have a few Likud supporters among us. We don’t ask anyone about their political affiliation,” she says.

IT’S NOT a simple thing to march with the handmaids – thus new women join a short training session beforehand, so they’ll have a better idea of what lies in store for them when they’re out on the streets protesting. “We explain to new participants that they are not allowed to speak at all, nor are they allowed to raise their head or look where they’re going, and that’s why we have a leader at the head,” notes Cohen-Mor.

“When you’re walking with the big red cloak on, you feel like you’ve lost yourself, like your personality has gone and left you, and you are no longer a single individual of value. You’re not allowed to look up at anyone, to speak, and you have to do everything you’re told; to remain absolutely silent, and not to respond to anything said to you by passersby.

“You really start to lose yourself – it’s an absolutely frightening experience. Some of the women who’ve joined us have been so overwhelmed by the experience and felt deep distress. It really makes you feel the visceral danger inherent in the situation,” says Cohen-Mor.

“Our experience in Kfar Saba was surreal,” recounts Suez-Karni. “It was like the Red Sea opened up in front of us. People moved out of our way, clapped for us, and waved their flags to cheer us on.”

When asked if they truly believe that Israel could one day become a place like the Republic of Gilead, Bonot Alternativa founder Moran Zer Katzenstein says, “We are not out there every week marching because we think we are living in Gilead but because it’s important to us to wake everyone up and show them what lies in store for us if we don’t make a change.

“For weeks now, we’ve been watching as bill proposals say gender segregation is not discrimination. Our concern is that every draconian law against women will get passed along with this torrent of judicial reform, and we will no longer have a Supreme Court to protect our rights. Women and minorities are going to be the groups most harmed by these new laws.

“If you look at pictures of Iran from 1977, before the Islamic Revolution, people there look just like us, wearing bathing suits on the beach. Just two years later, the women in Iran are discriminated against, persecuted and made to stay closed up at home or completely covered up when they’re outdoors.

“When people in Iran had protested, they were told, ‘Trust us, we’ll take care of you,’ which is pretty similar to what’s being said here in Israel now. The only way to overcome a dictatorship once the new laws are in place is by violent means. In the meantime, the Iranians are still living in the dark – why would it be any different here?”

The verbal attacks against the Handmaid campaign came pretty quickly: “People like [leader of far-right Noam party] Avi Maoz and [Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich, who are pretty much of the opinion that women are only good for having babies, and they see no need for us to have interesting jobs in the IDF or serve in senior positions in any organization – these are all signs of the deterioration of our society,” adds Suez-Karni.

“We are aware of the criticism of our campaign, and it’s understandable that some Israelis find it stressful to watch our processions, but it is a crucial wake-up call and warning to us that we need to open our eyes and see what our reality will look like in the near future if we don’t take heed and prevent these new reforms from being implemented,” concludes Ragolsky. “The vision of the handmaids walking without any control over their lives is what will happen when legislation creating such stark inequality becomes the law of the land.”

Bonot Alternativa is currently holding a crowdfunding effort to help finance future activity. “We’ve created tremendous momentum with our Handmaid’s Tale campaign, which has encouraged a huge number of women all across Israel to become active,” says Zer Katzenstein. “No, we are not living in a world like Gilead, but we also do not want to wake up one morning to a reality in which women have no rights, when it will be too late to do anything about it.”

“I am a proud Zionist, but I have been asking myself, would I be willing for my daughter to grow up in a society where she has fewer rights just because she is a girl?” asks Suez-Karni. “In my mind, this is simply not an option. Even if we end up triumphant in this round, that does not mean that the stark differences between the democracy and dictatorship camps will disappear overnight.

“But it’s great that all of these issues are affecting us, and so many of these issues are finally being discussed and brought out into the light. I don’t recall a time when Israeli society was experiencing such a big crisis. When it comes to matters that are this important, there’s no room for sitting on the fence. 

“Everyone needs to choose a side because there’s no such thing as living in a place that is half a democracy and half a dictatorship,” she says. ■

Translated by Hannah Hochner.