Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Elder of ZiyonYesterday, I reported that Gulf News published an absurd story claiming that a Palestinian labourers working in Israel are at a high risk of sexual harassment by Israeli women, based on a supposed report by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
Since then, the Gulf News report has been picked up by other media, none of which bothered to find the original "report" to see if there was any truth to it.
So I looked again - and actually found the study.
Not surprisingly, it says something quite different than what is being reported.
Called "Risky Behavior by Migrant Laborers" and found on the UNFPA page, it was published in 2010. It is only available in Arabic.
The study was meant to find out how much Palestinian Arab laborers knew about safe sex and how to stop sexually transmitted diseases among them.
While indeed 77% in one focus group of workers, and 52% in another, claimed that they were "harassed or sexually harassed," those terms are not defined. From the context it appears that if they even see an Israeli woman with shorts on the bus they consider that harassment.
Moreover, many of them admit that they work in Israel in order to have sex. They hang around clubs, go to massage parlors and try to take advantage of Jewish women, especially Russians who are judged to be "easy." Some workers are married; most are single, but both categories will try to get laid. Many of them use their time in Israel to act out their fantasies.
In addition, the study says, there is a great fear among single Arabs that they won't know how to perform on their wedding nights, so they really want to gain experience and look at Israeli Jewish women as the ones they can practice on. The study specifically notes the sexual deprivation that they experience as they grow up as one of the factors behind their risky behavior in Israel.
But there is one other factor that some use as justification to have sex with Jewish girls: Jihad.
According to the study, some of the Arabs regard sex with Jewish girls as a form of "jihad" - as a way to punish the Jews! As one puts it, this is a form of "revenge" on Israelis.
The overwhelming sense from reading the report is that Arab workers are the ones who are stalking Jewish women in Israel, and when they say they are being harassed it is really a projection of their own fantasies, as they travel from their villages where women are completely covered and find themselves surrounded by women they believe are shameful but also enticing.
As far as I can tell, this study was never publicized, nor translated into English.
There is one thing that everyone in the study has in common, as well as the labor official quoted in the Gulf News - a view of Jewish women that is completely demeaning. If Israeli Jewish men would have made these sorts of statements, the media would be shouting about their "racism" and intolerance. But here, in a study that the UN supports, there is not a word about Arab male misogyny and anti-semitism. The sickening bigotry is accepted as a fact, and the Jewish women who are victims of Arab predators are utterly ignored.
And it will be ignored. We won't hear anything about how Arab men actively demean Jewish women from "progressive" sites like 972mag or Mondoweiss. We won't hear any word of protest from Judith Butler. The Huffington Post will be silent. Because to them, Israeli Jewish women cannot be considered victims when the victimizer has been canonized as the ultimate victim.
This is yet another example of how the world allows Arabs to behave in ways that are totally unacceptable when done by others.
UPDATE: I found an executive summary in English of the report on the UNFPA site, but it does not go into the detail of the actual Arabic report.
