Sadly, I think that JSTL doesn't support anything but an iteration through all elements to figure this out. In the past, I've used the forEach method in the core tag library:
<c:set var="contains" value="false" />
<c:forEach var="item" items="${myList}">
<c:if test="${item eq myValue}">
<c:set var="contains" value="true" />
</c:if>
</c:forEach>
After this runs, ${contains} will be equal to "true" if myList contained myValue.