Two lobbies defend the
oppression
(November
8, 2007)
There could not have been a worse time to release the
Human Rights Watch report
on violence against women within Palestinian families and society:
yesterday,
November 7, at the same time the Israeli army withdrew from Beit Hanun
after a
six-day assault that claimed 53 lives. At least 27 of those killed were
unarmed
civilians, including 10 children and two Red Crescent volunteers. Of
the 200 or
so people injured in the operation, there were at least 50 children and
46
women. In addition to the casualties, homes were destroyed and the
water,
electricity and road networks damaged.
In the competition over the Palestinian slot in the
Israeli media, it is
obvious that a report critical of Palestinian society and its
institutions will
trump the option of completing a report on this assault before the next
military raids dismiss it from the media entirely. In the same fashion,
the
Israeli media has ignored Ramzi al-Sharafi, a 16-year-old student from
Jabalya
who was hit and killed by an Israeli missile Monday morning on his way
to
school, as well as the teacher who was seriously injured by that same
missile,
and the kindergarten and grade-school children who were injured or put
in a
state of shock.
For precisely this reason, there is no appropriate or
inappropriate time to
publish the latest report by the U.S. human rights organization, which
discusses the persecution of girls and women within their own homes and
families and the inability of society and its institutions to save them
from
their persecutors - who, in most cases, are their own relatives.
The report is based on the constant work of both
independent and official
Palestinian organizations that are leading the battle against the
societal and
masculine disease of persecuting and oppressing women. Palestinian
women's
organizations are fighting to end the leniency of both society and the
law
toward those who murder female relatives, including the protection
offered to
rapists and the concept that incest and physical abuse against women
and girls
are "internal family matters."
The Human Rights Watch report, like the work of these
Palestinian organizations
in general and women's organizations in particular, prove that human
rights
have no ethnic, political, geographic or gender borders, and that there
are
also no borders to the demand that they be respected or to those making
that
demand.
The traditional-masculine lobby in Palestinian society
co-opts the Israeli
occupation in order to set the borders of the public, institutional
debate and
deter the critics and the voices demanding social change. Twelve
Palestinian
women - eight from Gaza and four from the West Bank - have been
murdered since
the start of 2006 by relatives on the pretext of "family honor." How
convenient for the traditional lobby that Israel is attacking
ceaselessly,
facilitating the concealment of this fact and the perpetuation of the
idea that
women are the property of the male head of the household.
In the same way, the demon of anti-Semitism makes it
convenient for Israel and
its overseas lobbyists to make light of international resolutions
(regarding
the annexationist route of the separation fence, for example), to
violate bilateral
agreements (such as by discriminating at the borders between Jewish and
Palestinian foreign citizens), and to destroy, kill and demolish,
mainly in
Gaza but also in the West Bank, in routine assaults that are not even
mentioned
in the Israeli media.
Most of the Israeli public locks itself behind a
well-defined, impenetrable
wall that it has built for itself. This wall distinguishes between the
rights
of Jews and the rights of others, between the pain of Jews and the pain
of
others. This separation wall, which gives the army's commanders and its
emissaries within the government a free hand, blocks out not only all
public
debate over morality, but also questions based on realpolitik.
For six years now, we have been hearing that the Israel
Defense Forces' attacks
have racked up important gains in damaging the terror infrastructure,
killing
and arresting terrorists and confiscating arms caches. At first, these
achievements were against youngsters throwing stones, then against
people
throwing Molotov cocktails and gunmen shooting at roads in the West
Bank, and
later against suicide bombers. At first, homemade rifles were seized;
later,
the number of regular rifles that were seized increased. The more they
are
confiscated, the more they proliferate.
In Gaza, before the Qassams, the gains were against
people who infiltrated the
settlements or who placed explosivesbeneath tank treads. Now, three or
four
years later, the gains are always against the rocket-launching teams.
Once,
their range was short, amateurish. Now, so say the experts, their range
is
expanding constantly. Our army, meanwhile, continues to rack up
victories. It
threatens new assaults, and in Gaza, Hamas gains in status. After all,
it is
their militants who headed into battles against the enormous Israeli
force that
had invaded Beit Hanun - battles that were lost before they began, but
were
nevertheless heroic, in their eyes.
Is it possible that the army and the politicians
commanding it can't see the
fearful symmetry between the deepening Israeli military oppression and
the
ongoing Palestinian arms buildup? Between the oppression and
Palestinians'
support for that arms buildup, however backward and meager, compared
with
Israel's might? Or is that exactly what the Israeli government wants,
with or
without Avigdor Lieberman - to perpetuate the military conflict and
bolster the
Palestinian military lobby, in order to repel any chance for a
political
solution?