When Victims Rule (pdf)

ISRAEL AND ZIONISM
“Many of the same American Jews who led the fight against US intervention
in Vietnam, and supported an unconditional withdrawal of US
forces, ignore or defend the long and bloody Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza, and the mistreatment of Palestinian population
there. How have most supporters of Israel in the United States avoided
dealing with their own political inconsistencies? The answer lies in their
personal image-maintenance methods designed to avoid the cognitive
dissonance between their perceptions of Israel and its reality. That, and an
American media that for many years sympathized with the Israeli point of
view, has helped them to preserve the Israeli fantasy.” [HADER, p. 27]
In Stephen Green’s research of documents at the United States National
Center for a book about the founding of the state of Israel, he noted that “the
reality was so different from the myth as to be unrecognizable … Selective historical
knowledge has led to fundamental false impressions in America about
Israel and about the Middle East dispute generally.” [GREEN, p. 10-11]
Another of the endless mythologies surrounding Israeli society is the enforced
illusion that women fare better against male sexist-mores in the Jewish
state. Israel has long propagated the symbols of young, noble women working
the farm fields and female soldiers in the Israeli army. Lesley Hazelton, in her
book Israeli Women: The Reality Behind the Myths, is among those who have severely
deflated such propaganda. “Myths compel respect, not necessarily by
their truth, but because they are needed by those who believe in them,” she says.
“It is not a rational need, certainly not a conscious need: but it is often
vital, since myths lay the basis for society’s perceptions of itself, for its
collective identity and the identity of every member in it … The liberation
of Israeli women is such a myth. For nearly three decades Israeli
women have been the paradigm of women’s liberation … They have
made an essential contribution to Israel’s self-image as good and progressive,
the antithesis of its notoriously and cruelly sexist Arab neighbors
… But the destructive aspects of this myth far outweigh its creative
potential for Israeli women … Their reality has been subordinated to
the accepted image, and they have been relegated to the status of shadows,
while the gap continues to widen between their public image and
their real selves.” [HAZELTON, p. 22]
Herbert Russcol and Margalit Banai noted in 1970 the status of women in
Israeli society:
“In Israel, today, a wife is still called by the lowly, pejorative term that
the Old Testament calls hers: isha, woman. Her husband is still addressed
by his splendid biblical title, ba’al, master. In the glorious days
of the Kings of Israel, upon marriage an isha became the physical possession,
the chattel, of her ba’al along with his handmaidens and slaves,
his ox and his ass. For this reason, ‘to marry a wife’ and ‘to become master’
have the same root meanings in Hebrew. The infinitive liv’ol, commonly
used in the sacred texts, means bluntly, and most vulgarly, to
possess a woman sexually. What our fiercely free sabra girl thinks of re-
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