How to spread antisemitic lies in academic papers: A case study from @FeministReview_

In 2021, the academic journal Feminist Review published "(Re)producing the Israeli (European) body: Zionism, Anti-Black Racism and the Depo-Provera Affair" by Bayan Abusneineh.

Its abstract:

This article examines the Depo-Provera Affair—where Israeli doctors administered the contraceptive Depo-Provera to newly immigrated Ethiopian Jewish women—to argue that the Israeli settler colonial project depends on these forms of gendered anti-Black violence, through the management of Black African bodies. In 2013, then Israeli Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman admitted that they had administered Depo-Provera to Ethiopian immigrant women without their consent, after reproductive and civil rights activists in Israel called for an investigation after a drop in the birthrate among Ethiopian women: close to 50 per cent within the previous decade. The demarcation of Blackness as a political tool necessary to advance Israeli modernity and the situating of Black bodies as antithetical to the state of Israel are not contradictory but rather illuminate Israel’s deployment of anti-Blackness through the racial and reproductive violence necessary to become part of the superior, European West.

The entire article is an anti-Israel screed (and, as you can see from the title, an anti-Jewish screed that accuses Jews of being white Europeans). 

And it is based on something that never happened.

Yaakov Litzman didn't "admit" that Depo-Provera was injected into Ethiopian Jewish women without their consent. There was a  documentary that made those claims then Litzman authorized an investigation. But in the end, it was all a slander - no Ethiopian women were forced to take this (temporary) contraceptive, although some may have misunderstood what the doctors said. As my investigation proved, many of the women wanted to take the contraceptive secretly, against their husbands' wishes - turning this episode from infantilizing these women into empowering them. 

Haaretz' story claiming that Israeli officials admitted to this conspiracy theory was corrected and rewritten.

The entire basis for this paper is false. Its conclusions of a racist Israeli society - the only country that actually went out of their way to save the lives of black people in Africa - are utterly false. The paper also sprinkles other lies, like claiming that Israel as a nation has "past and present ties to the eugenics movement" based wholly on the opinions of one Zionist who died in 1943.

It is bad enough that Feminist Review publishes a paper where the linchpin of the author's thesis is a falsehood. 

It is bad enough that Feminist Review is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

But since this lie was published in a respected, peer reviewed journal, it is now being cited as factual in other academic journals. Google Scholar lists six papers that cite this one, most of them clearly written from an anti-Israel perspective as well:

Coloniality and feminist collusion: Breaking free, thinking anew

NK Purewal, J Ung Loh - Feminist Review, 2021

Beyond the contours of Zionist sovereignty: Decolonisation in Palestine's Unity Intifada

W Alqaisiya - Political Geography, 2023 - Elsevier

Structural racism and the health of Palestinian citizens of Israel

O Tanous, Y Asi, W Hammoudeh, D Mills… - Global Public …, 2023 - Taylor & Francis

For sled dogs and women: Hormonal contraception and animacy hierarchies in Danish/Greenlandic Depo-Provera debates

AN Bang, CH Kroløkke - European Journal of Women's …, 2023 - journals.sagepub.com

Jil Oslo Generation Palestinians and the Fight for Human Rights

BK Thakore - Critical Sociology, 2022 - journals.sagepub.com

Criminalising Palestinians: History and Borders in the Construction of the Palestinian Threat

M Al-Hindi - International Journal for Crime, Justice and …, 2023 - crimejusticejournal.com

The lie spreads and cross-breeds with dozens of other falsehoods and half-truths, in turn creating more raw material for modern antisemites to spread hate in an academically respectable way.

---

---

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

Read More

To Palestinians, women are only good for being terrorists - or mothers of terrorists

Today is National Day of Palestinian Women.

The theme of the day was to pressure Israel to release terrorists from prison.

The participants in supportive vigils for prisoners organized by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in coordination with the governorates, on the occasion of the National Day of Palestinian Women, today, Monday, stressed the need to form a fact-finding committee to study the situation of male and female prisoners and discuss it with the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, and to facilitate and facilitate regular and regular family visits for female and male prisoners.

For its part, the Ministry of Women's Affairs called, in a press release, on the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, to put pressure on the Israeli occupation, the occupying power, to end the file of administrative detention and to abolish the policy of solitary confinement and stop its use against Palestinians.

What does that have to do with women? Not much, but they tried to shoe-horn it in, by mentioning female prisoners (a whopping seven prisoners are mothers, out of 30 total)  and that Palestinian women are suffering when their husbands or sons are in prison.

Nablus Governor Ibrahim Ramadan said, "The wounded, the martyr, and the captive represent the homeland. Without them, there is no homeland. We support their mothers who shed tears for their children for the sake of the homeland."

To Palestinians, women are there to make male babies to blow up Jews, and this is their highest purpose.

If you think this sounds sexist, that is because it is. Even a Palestinian Women's Day is hijacked into anti-Israel incitement, and Palestinian women are shoved to the side on their supposed special day.

The website of the Minister of Women's Affairs - who very ministry's existence is proof that Palestinian women are regarded as peripheral to society - features several statistics showing exactly how little women are regarded in their society:

96% of Chambers of Commerce members are men

15 of 16 governors are men

89% of foreign envoys are men

87% of cabinet members are men 

95% of PA Central Council members are men

89% of members of the National Assembly are men

This is the reality of women's rights in the PA - and it is worse in Gaza under Hamas.

The Ministry of Women's Affairs, like the National Day of Palestinian Women, are symbolic shell institutions to make the gullible West (and pesky Palestinian women) believe that something is being done to address the inequalities in Palestinian society. They exist so the PLO can report to the UN how many accomplishments they have achieved - "look, we put resources into women's rights!" But none of it translates to anything that actually helps Palestinian women.

And the anti-Israel feminists of the world don't give a damn. 

---

---

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

Read More

"Palestinian Feminist Working Group" shows no interest in women's rights for Palestinians

A recent Mondoweiss article by the "Palestinian Feminist Working Group" sheds some light on how hate for Israel is often disguised using liberal buzzwords that have nothing to do with the actual agenda of these groups.

The article is typically ridiculous - it pretends that Zoom, YouTube and Facebook's pulling the plug on a conference featuring a proud terrorist Leila Khaled was about censorship and a silencing of Palestinian feminist voices when it was simply adhering to existing US anti-terrorist and sanctions laws. 

It goes on to justify Palestinian terror as "resistance" and defining everything Israel does as terror.

This is the first appearance of this group, which is what makes it interesting. The group has no website. It describes itself this way:

The Palestine Feminist Working Group is a U.S. based network of Palestinian and Arab feminists who are committed to ending all forms of Zionist colonial and gendered violence and oppression. We believe that social liberation is a critical component of Palestinian national liberation. The working group was founded by the Palestinian Youth Movement’s (PYM) Women’s Committee. To learn more about our work and/or to join our efforts contact us at Palestinianfeminists@gmail.com

Note that it doesn't say a word about feminist issues in the Palestinian controlled territories at all. The supposed feminism of this group begins and ends with attacking Israel. 

Many of the people signing this article are academics at US universities:

Noura Erakat, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, Rutgers University

Dr. Sarah Ihmoud, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The College of the Holy Cross 

Dr. Hana Masri, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Maisa Morrar, Physician Assistant and member, Palestinian Youth Movement

Dr. Loubna Qutami, Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, UCLA

Basima Sisemore, Researcher, Othering & Belonging Institute, UC Berkeley 

Randa M. Wahbe, Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology, Harvard University

Yazan Zahzah, MA in Women and Gender Studies, San Diego State University

Leena Odeh, J.D., The Decolonizing Race Project

Isn't it strange that these "Palestinian feminists" have so little interest in feminist issues in Palestine?

The United Nations Development Programme published a comprehensive guide to gender laws under the PA and Hamas in late 2018.  It uncovered state-sponsored discrimination against women, which I have summarized before:

Domestic violence: Palestine has no domestic violence legislation.
Marital rape: Marital rape is not criminalized.
Abortion for rape survivors: Abortion is prohibited in the West Bank by the Jordan Penal Code (Articles 321–325) and in Gaza by the Criminal Code of 1936 (Articles 175–177).
Sexual harassment in the workplace: Sexual harassment is not criminalized by the Labour Code.
Honour crimes: Mitigation of penalty Laws allowing mitigation of penalties for ‘honour’ crimes were repealed in 2011 and 2018 in the West Bank. However, the government in Gaza has not applied the reforms.
Adultery: Adultery is an offence in Gaza and the West Bank. In the West Bank, Article 282 of the Penal Code criminalizes adultery
Human trafficking: Palestine does not have comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation. Some provisions of the Penal Code of Jordan apply to trafficking in the West Bank.
Sex work and anti-prostitution laws: Prostitution is prohibited by Articles 309–318 of the Penal Code in the West Bank and Articles 161–166 of the Criminal Code of 1936 in Gaza.
Marriage and divorce: The personal status laws for Muslims require the husband to maintain the wife. A wife owes obedience to her husband. A husband can divorce by repudiation (talaq). A wife has the right to divorce on specified grounds. She can also apply for a khul’a divorce without grounds if she forgoes financial rights.
Male guardianship over women: Muslim women require consent of a wali (male guardian) to marry. There are some weak legal protections for women under guardianship. Women can seek permission from the court to marry if the guardian withholds consent without a legitimate reason.
Guardianship of children: Fathers are the sole guardians of children.
Custody of children: After divorce the mother has custody up to a certain age, but automatically loses custody of her children if she remarries. Inheritance Sharia rules of inheritance apply to Muslims. Women have a right to inheritance, but in many cases receive less than men. Daughters receive half the share that sons receive.
Polygamy: Polygamy is permitted.
Legal restrictions on women’s work: Some legal restrictions exist on women’s employment in certain industries that do not apply to men, such as mining.

The report seemingly went into a black hole. There are very few references to it online. Yet it is probably the most comprehensive report on women's rights in the Palestinian territories that exists. 

Real Palestinian feminists would be screaming from the rooftops about this. But not the members of the "Palestinian Feminist Working Group."

The fact that Leila Khaled's PFLP actually murdered an Israeli girl last year doesn't diminish her "feminist" bona fides for some reason. None of these "feminists" condemned the murder of a Jewish girl.

These people aren't feminists. They are Jew-haters who use feminism as a justification for their bigotry and hate.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More

Is it even possible to be a pro-Palestinian feminist?

This article in The Nation is being reported all over:

Her arguments are really nutty, but Sarsour knows how to get publicity.

So let's use her own methodology to ask whether it is possible for Linda Sarsour, or anyone else, to be a feminist while supporting Palestinian Arabs.

According to the UN,  there are no specific laws or provisions in the Palestinian Authority or under Hamas rule that protect women against domestic violence and sexual violence.

If women are not able to provide/show evidence of “force”, “threats” and/or “deception” to support rape claims, they risk being criminalized for “adultery.”

The Palestinian Authority has adopted the Jordanian 1960 "rape marriage" law  that says that a rapist will not be prosecuted if he marries his victim. These laws often result in rape victims being coerced by family or courts to marry their rapists.

While rape is illegal, the woman is often the one who must defend herself since the rape laws only apply “provided that such a woman is not a prostitute and is not known for her immoral character.”

Murderers who claim to have murdered women in order to ‘maintain family honor’ can be exempted from judicial sanction.

Marital rape is not against the law.

This study showed that Palestinian women only went public about being abused sexually only where the abuse was extremely traumatic, publicly apparent, and the victim absolved of blame. 10% of the women who went public were murdered. Usually the family would respond with measures like hymen reconstruction, marriage to the rapist, and abortion to “nullify” sexual abuse.

Women are not allowed to marry without permission from their guardian, Men may marry up to four wives.

A Palestinian Arab man can divorce his wife for any reason, but Palestinian women can request divorce only under certain circumstances. When a divorce is initiated by the woman it means that she must give up any financial rights and must return her dowry.

Sexual abuse of women and children are rampant but swept under the rug.  37% of married Palestinian women were exposed to some form of violence by their husbands in the previous year alone, nearly 12% exposed to sexual violence in the previous year. 65% of those who were exposed to violence stayed quiet about it because of cultural mores.

20% of Palestinian women are married before they are 18, almost always to older men, which is a human rights violation. Because of child marriages, 10% of all Palestinian women between 15-19 give birth in any year.

The highest rates of violence against women are found where the families tend to be more religious, in Gaza and Hebron.

The Palestinian Basic Law, by saying that ‘the principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation’, can be interpreted in a manner which undermines the rights of women according to a UN study.

I'm not even going into Shari'a law here, which is far worse than Palestinian law for women. (Linda Sarsour has publicly defended Shari'a law, which calls into question her own qualifications to be called a feminist.)

Liberal "Pro-Palestinian" activists rarely if ever mention any of the issues listed here. The media is also complicit in its silence on these topics. Yet Palestinians know all about them, and it is likely that Sarsour is quite aware of them and chooses to remain silent, because that would blunt her anti-Israel message.

Her hate for Israel is more important to her than the rights of Palestinian women.

Sarsour says "You either stand up for the rights of all women, including Palestinians, or none. There’s just no way around it." Which means that Sarsour is not a feminist by her own definition because she does not stand up for the rights of Palestinian women who are suffering so badly under a patriarchal, Islamic-based system of laws and customs. In fact, her anti-Israel stance is her way to divert attention from the very real discrimination and abuse that Palestinian women suffer.

Sarsour, with her silence,  is actually enabling the daily abuse of Palestinian women from the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the misogynist Palestinian society that she idealizes for the cameras.

Linda Sarsour, and all so-called "feminists" who use their platform as a means to bash Israel, are in fact anti-feminist and tacitly support discrimination against and abuse of Palestinian women that happen every day.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More