Feminists Need to Support Israel

The majority of USA radical feminists need a jug of ice water splashed in their face... why?

To wake them up from their rabid, psychotic, intolerant behavior.

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of feminism - "belief in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes" - has been kicked aside by ultra-left leadership.  Instead, USA radical feminism seems to be focused on hate.  Hating Sarah Palin, hating Republicans, hating housewives, hating Christians, and fervently hating, above all else... Israel.

Shameful!  Stupid!  Internationally, there are myriad atrocities harming the female gender that we can all battle against: sex trafficking, female feticide, dowry burnings, female genital mutilation, honor killings, incest, rape, wage inequality, lack of political representation, child marriage, wife-beating, sexual harassment...

Half of that list looks like daily life in Palestine, doesn't it?

There are horrific problems that females encounter that all sensible women - and men - would happily work to abolish.  But... is this the primary focus of USA radical feminists?  Is feminism a "big tent" that everyone - left, right, center - is welcome to enter?

Does Sarah Palin believe women deserve equal pay for equal work?  You Betcha.  Does Sarah Palin want women to be political leaders?  You Betcha.  Is Sarah Palin reviled by radical feminist leaders because they have re-defined feminism to mean, "women who hate everything we hate"?  You Betcha.

The angry, exclusively left-wing stance of American feminism isn't a new development.  Twenty years ago I was in a "Take Back The Night" march at UCLA.  I asked a young coed there - smart, attractive, ambitious, compassionate - if she defined herself as a "feminist."

"No!" was her startled reply.  Why did she reject the "feminist" label?  Or did it... reject her?

By the way, she was Jewish.

"Jewish" and "Feminist" used to belong together.  The long list of historic Jewish feminist torch-carriers includes Ernestine Rose, Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, and... Phyllis Chesler.

Ms. Chesler, presently teaching at CUNY, was a hard-working participant in second-wave feminism until she was exiled from the cadre, because she supported Israel.

Today, being "feminist" is no longer the OED definition.  Instead, it requires that you hate Israel.  Today's synonymity is "Feminist" and "Palestine."  Web petitions circulate with messages like, "An Open Letter to All Feminists: Support Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Women - as feminists and anti-imperialist people of conscience."  The implication of this hogwash is that you're either a feminist/pro-Palestine/humanitarian or a misogynist/pro-Israel/sociopath.  No gray zone here!

Ms. Magazine refused to print a pro-Israel advertisement in 2008, but its foundation provides funding to the American Society for Muslim Advancement.  Is radical feminism anti-Semitic?  Sometimes, the derogatory term "FemiNazi" starts to make insidious sense.

Feminist leftists demonize Israel.  They wear keffiyas and t-shirts that say "We are all Palestinians." They want to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Israel. In the ivory tower, feminists aren't allowed to support Israel.  Instead, Women Studies programs provide only a biased, repetitive deluge of anti-Israel speakers.

American feminism has been hijacked and held hostage by pro-Palestinian thinking.  This idiotic attitude, yearning for dhimmitude, is a self-destructive alliance, as Phyllis Chesler knows.  She experienced Muslim oppression first-hand in 1961 when she married an Afghani college sweetheart, who moved her to Kabul, where he abused her and forced her to wear a veil.

The truth is, as Caroline Glick noted in her Jerusalem Post column, "the feminist label has been about advancing the left's social and political agenda against Western society.  It has been about castigating societies where women enjoy legal rights... the feminist movement has used the language of women's rights to advance a social and political agenda that has nothing to do with women."

Feminists turn a blind eye when they're faced with women's oppression in Islamic nations.  The Village Voice reports that Patricia Clough, director of the Center for the Study of Women at CUNY, "declined to call female genital mutilation wrong."  Instead, she called FGM, "a site of identity formation."

???This is Feminism???  Are feminist academics so enamored of Edward Said they can't even criticize his brethren?

USA lefty-feminists have been completely derailed by "political correctness" and "cultural relativism."  Today, they're unable to focus on universal human rights for women, because they're afraid of insulting the ethnic scholars in their midst.

For example, they listen compliantly to obfuscating nationalists like Amal Abdel Hadi, who says, "For us Palestinian women, the enemy is never the Palestinian male - it is the Israeli male."

Or Dr. Ghadi Hashem Talhami, who claims, "the American feminist movement has always stressed electoral rights, political rights, education, the glass ceiling, and sexual freedom.  These issues are really irrelevant to Third World nations - terribly irrelevant."

What self-serving, deceptive drivel.  What a distraction from valuable work that could be done, saving girls and women from real abuses.

Let's take a look at recent women's equality news in Israel and Palestine.  Compare and contrast:

In Israel, feminist activists successfully brought ex-President Moshe Katsav to trial, where he was found guilty of rape and sexual harassment.  Israeli feminists are also forming a voting bloc - "mitpakdot" - which will seek to elect women and pro-feminist candidates.

In Palestine, a 2010 study by the Journal of Interpersonal Violence surveyed 450 West Bank women, and reported that:

59% of Palestinian women thought wife-beating was justified if a woman insulted her husband

49% if the wife disobeyed her husband

25% if the wife went out without telling him

11% if she argued with him

65% agreed that there was at least one good reason for wives to be beaten.

Obviously, the Palestinian women are so brainwashed by their misogynist culture that they have become enablers in their own mistreatment.

Unfortunately, USA radical feminists are enablers as well.

(photo by Ella Novak)