Antisemitism in the Birth World: A Hidden Safety Issue

Antisemitism in the Birth World: A Hidden Safety Issue

Most people assume maternity care is neutral and a safe, compassionate space where politics stays outside the room. This episode of the Feminists Against Antisemitism podcast challenges that assumption. For Maternal Mental Health Week 2026, Georgia Ladbury, a public health professional and doula with a particular interest in maternal health and health inequalities, is joined by Laura Godfrey-Isaacs (NHS community midwife) and BJ Woodstein (doula, IBCLC lactation consultant, author) to talk about an issue many people don’t even think exists in the birth world: antisemitism, and how it’s affecting Jewish women’s safety, trust, and mental health during pregnancy, birth and postpartum. They describe a side of maternity care most people don’t realise exists: staff protesting in scrubs, Jewish women hiding they’re Jewish in hospital, and Jewish birth workers being frozen out for speaking up, even facing political vetting like “Are you a Zionist?” They connect today’s rhetoric to older antisemitic tropes (including blood libel), and ask what “inclusive care” means if Jewish women don’t feel safe at the most vulnerable moment of their lives. [00:00] Introduction: antisemitism in the birth world - Why maternity care is an overlooked site of antisemitism and inequality. [00:02] Guests and lived experience in maternity care - Laura Godfrey‑Isaacs and BJ Woodstein on working, birthing, and advocating as Jews in the birth world. [00:06] Power, trust, and the role of doulas - Why emotional safety and advocacy matter so much in pregnancy and birth. [00:08] Antisemitism inside healthcare spaces - Political activism, professional pressure, and the impact on Jewish staff and patients. [00:15] Blood libel and “baby killer” rhetoric - How ancient antisemitic tropes reappear in contemporary maternity contexts. [00:22] Zionism, misunderstanding, and silencing - Why Jewish explanations are dismissed and how language is weaponised. [00:27] EDI blind spots and data erasure - How equality frameworks fail Jewish women and why Jewish identity isn’t properly recorded. [00:39] Mental health, fear, and professional fallout - Trauma, isolation, and loss of safety for Jewish mothers and birth workers post–Oct 7. [00:51] Shifrah UK: building Jewish cultural safety - Why Shifrah was founded and how it supports Jewish families and professionals. [01:02] Stronger together: allyship and closing reflections - What solidarity looks like in maternity care and how women can stand together. Follow us at:https://x.com/FAAntisemitism https://www.instagram.com/faantisemitism_uk https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61588267236387 Support Us – https://donate.stripe.com/4gM00j20h8Pe5DXdDTgrS00 And hit SUBSCRIBE on our YouTube Channel 📣 Join our WhatsApp Channel - Quick updates, new posts, event announcements →http://whatsapp.feministsagainstantisemitism.org/

Antisemitism in Australia: A Conversation with Jewish Women on the Front Line

Since 7 October, Australia has seen a rapid rise in open antisemitism — from “gas the Jews” chanted on the steps of the Sydney Opera House to the doxxing of hundreds of Jewish creatives, most of them women. What many once dismissed as fringe has broken into the mainstream, and Jewish women have been forced to confront it head on. This conversation brings together four women who have lived the consequences of this shift: writer Julie Szego, musician Deborah Conway, NCJWA president Lynda Ben‑Menashe, and online‑safety advocate Zara Cooper. Together, they explain how antisemitism in Australia metastasised so quickly, why institutions froze, and how entire sections of the feminist, academic, and LGBTQ+ worlds turned on Jewish women. The panel speaks plainly about:– how “self‑righteousness” and influencer culture have turbo‑charged harassment– the way online mobs organise, attack, and justify their abuse– the decay of critical thinking and the spread of disinformation– the failure of feminist organisations to respond to sexual violence against Jewish women– how academic theories like “settler colonialism” became blunt political weapons– the hollowness of multicultural rhetoric when it refuses to name antisemitism– the deliberate platforming of fringe Jewish anti‑Zionist groups as if they speak for the community. This webinar makes clear that antisemitism in Australia didn’t appear overnight; it’s the result of years of ignored warnings, institutional cowardice, and fashionable ideological narratives that treat Jews as fair game.But it also shows how Jewish women are pushing back — using evidence, principled feminist analysis, and the simple insistence on truth. Despite the hostility, there is solidarity, clarity and a refusal to be intimidated.As one speaker put it: “Hate is loud. Jewish women are louder.” ⁠https://x.com/FAAntisemitism⁠⁠ Support Us⁠ – Your contribution powers the essentials, our website, tools, tech etc. so we can organise, host events, and challenge antisemitism in feminist spaces. We’re not a charity; we’re a collective of women taking action. Your support fuels the work. https://donate.stripe.com/4gM00j20h8Pe5DXdDTgrS00 And hit ⁠SUBSCRIBE⁠ on our YouTube Channel

Inside the Birmingham Maccabi Football Scandal — In Conversation with Simone Schehtman

Birmingham entrepreneur and social activist Simone Schehtman reveals how misinformation and antisemitism almost kept Jewish fans out of Birmingham, and why the consequences reach far beyond football. Recently Susan McDonnell sat down with Simone Schehtman, who is a quietly unstoppable Birmingham community leader who found herself at the centre of one of the most bewildering — and frankly frightening — episodes we’ve seen in British public life for a long time. What started as “just” a story about football fans being barred from a match turned out to be anything but. As Simone tells it, the deeper you look, the stranger (and darker) it gets: misinformation that somehow became “intelligence,” extremist activists shaping the narrative, police relying on AI fabrications over actual government reports, and a chain of decisions so sloppy and prejudiced that it nearly resulted in Jews being banned from a public event in Britain. Not in the 1930s. In 2025. This conversation is a wake‑up call. As Simone tells it, we can discover just how thin the line can be between safety and scapegoating. And, optimistically, how quickly institutions can fold when they meet loud, organised pressure. It’s also a story of tenacity: of a handful of volunteers, exhausted and furious and determined, refusing to accept “we’ve made our decision” as an answer. We hope you’ll listen. https://x.com/FAAntisemitism [https://x.com/FAAntisemitism] Support Us [https://donate.stripe.com/4gM00j20h8Pe5DXdDTgrS00] – Your contribution powers the essentials, our website, tools, tech etc. so we can organise, host events, and challenge antisemitism in feminist spaces. We’re not a charity; we’re a collective of women taking action. Your support fuels the work. And hit SUBSCRIBE [https://www.youtube.com/@FeministsAgainstAntisemitism] on our YouTube Channel

The Soviet Roots of Modern Antisemitism: What Every Feminist Needs to Know

Izabella Tabarovsky unmasks the Soviet playbook hiding behind today’s so‑called “compassionate” anti‑Israel mobs, and the lessons we can take from the Soviet Jews who resisted. In this episode of the Feminists Against Antisemitism podcast, Freya Papworth speaks with the writer and historian Izabella Tabarovsky to uncover the origins of the antisemitism erupting in feminist spaces. In the West, most of us were taught to recognise antisemitism only in its Nazi, far‑right form but that narrow education has left many of us unable to spot the strain that came from the Soviet left, where Antizionism was engineered as a socially acceptable way to target Jews. Watch to understand how this blind spot enabled antisemitism to spread through activism, academia, and feminist circles, and why so many feminist spaces are now saturated with it. This important conversation makes clear that what is often framed today as “progressive anti-Zionism” is neither new nor accidental, but something more precise and more dangerous: Antizionism, a dedicated antisemitic political project rooted in Soviet propaganda and designed to make hostility toward Jews appear moral and principled. We recognise these narratives for what they are, and we refuse to accept their laundering into our feminist spaces. By tracing how Antizionism was engineered, absorbed, and reproduced, we can finally name the pressure placed on Jews to prove their moral worth through denunciation. The Refuseniks, and especially the women whose courage and organising exposed Soviet lies, show us what resistance looks like: refusing silence, refusing erasure, and refusing to bend to ideological demands. This understanding is why we are pushing back. It is why we insist on a feminism that does not sacrifice Jewish women, and why antisemitism, however repackaged, has no place in the movements we are building. Izabella Tabarovsky has been named by Moment Magazine one of 50+ Jewish Innovators of the Past 50 Years. She has lectured at Yad Vashem, Georgetown University, the London School of Economics, George Washington University, the Parliament of Finland, and before a U.S. congressional briefing, among others. She is a Senior Fellow with the Z3 Institute in Palo Alto and a Fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, and the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa. Show Notes * Background (2:23): Isabella’s background and why she wrote “Be a Refusenik” * Soviet Antisemitism and the Roots of Modern Antizionism (5:57) * Post-Holocaust Soviet Jewish Experience (10:31) * The Refusenik Movement (28:11): What is a Refusenik?; * Parallels to Today’s Campus Antisemitism (33:42) * Women in the Refusenik Movement (55:39) * Feminism and Antisemitism (1:01:49) * “As a Jew” Jews (1:08:25) * Conclusion (1:17:11): The burning bush metaphor --- Feminists Against Antisemitism is building a community where women—Jewish and non‑Jewish—can speak openly, learn together, and push back against a tide of antisemitism that has gone unchallenged for far too long.If this resonates, please share the event, join our Substack, and stay with us for the next conversations.Follow us at: http://feministsagainstantisemitism.org/ https://x.com/FAAntisemitism Support Us: https://donate.stripe.com/4gM00j20h8Pe5DXdDTgrS00 And hit SUBSCRIBE here on our YouTube Channel

She Warned Us Phyllis Chesler on Feminism and Antisemitism

Susan McDonnell speaks with legendary second‑wave feminist Phyllis Chesler – founder, scholar, and author of Women and Madness, An American Bride in Kabul, and The New Antisemitism – about a lifetime of documenting how parts of the feminist left embraced Antizionism, excused Islamist misogyny, and silenced women who refused to go along.Chesler traces the rot back decades: from UN women’s conferences hijacked by anti‑Israel propaganda to academics and media gatekeepers who blacklisted her for saying what was happening to Jews – and to women – before and after 7 October. She names the costs: cancellations, smear campaigns, death threats, and the women (and men) who kept going anyway. Most of all, she calls today’s feminists to moral clarity: defend women under Islamist regimes, reject fashionable Jew‑hatred, and build real alliances across faiths to tell the truth and save lives.She also talks bluntly about the cost of telling the truth: ostracism, career sabotage, threats, and why she kept going anyway. And for women navigating this terrain today, she offers sharp, unsentimental guidance about how to survive inside a movement that often punishes dissent. She lays out strategy, what to expect, how to stay standing, and how to always keep your integrity intact.---Feminists Against Antisemitism is building a community where women—Jewish and non‑Jewish—can speak openly, learn together, and push back against a tide of antisemitism that has gone unchallenged for far too long.If this resonates, please share the event, join our Substack, and stay with us for the next conversations. Follow our work at: http://feministsagainstantisemitism.org/ https://x.com/FAAntisemitism And hit SUBSCRIBE here on our YouTube Channel