Identity and Collective Denial - Lia Tarachansky on Reality Asserts Itself (2/3)

The only way to peacefully resolve a problem is by dialogue, & part of getting to the root of the problem is asking questions. Israel & Zionists have never self-reflect to the point that they can see that what they are doing is similar to what Hitler & Nazis did to them in Germany, Poland, Austria, & Netherlands.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPmj1NyTcBI

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Why do you go to Canada?

LIA TARACHANSKY, ISRAEL-PALESTINE CORRESPONDENT, TRNN: Well, my father died, my mother became even more a Zionist, and I went to University, and all of my Zionist identity unraveled.
I can tell you a story. On my first year of university, I walked into my campus, and one day in the very beginning of the winter semester, the university was transformed into one giant flag of Israel. It was flags of Israel everywhere, and it said Israel Week. And in the student union building there was this huge row of tables, and they had all these banners, and they had these titles: Israel is the most democratic state in the Middle East, Israel is the most gay-friendly state in the Middle East, Israel has the best tomatoes in the Middle East, etc. And I walk in. And, I mean, I was shocked and weirded out and creeped out and all kinds of things, ’cause it–to me it made as much–like, Guelph, where I went to school, is a tiny little agricultural university. I mean, I was studying biomedicine in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of, like, fields in Canada. Like, it’s the same as having ... a Canada Week in some small college town in Zimbabwe. It made no sense to me. And so I walked past these people, and I just thought they looked weird, and ... they just creeped me out and they pissed me off because ... I was very much a Zionist and part of the project and Israel all the way, but I was a Russian in Israel. So I didn’t have any illusions about what Israeli democracy looks like. If you don’t fit into this box of what it means to be an Israeli, you’re out.
Which means Ashkenazi, which means strong, which means a veteran. It means a fighter. If you don’t fit into that, you’re out. If you don’t serve in the army, you’re out. If you adopt and embrace your Arab identity, you’re out.

...

I just thought that they were ridiculous, because they had no idea what Israel is all about. I mean, it’s a complex society. And it’s not like we walk around in Israel asking each other, hey, are you a Zionist? I mean, we don’t question each other’s opinions on the conflict, really, while we’re growing up.
I mean, the big debate in the ’90s was: are you for the Yitzhak Rabin plan or are you against it? But Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. And with Netanyahu and the beginning of the Second Intifada, you kind of stopped debating these things.
No one ever asked me, what do you think? And so, when I came up to these excited 21-year-olds, I understood that the longest any one of them has been in Israel is one week on birthright. They didn’t know anything about us. They were driven on a bus funded by an American billionaire from one tourist site to the other. They met really nice soldiers. They met really friendly Israelis. They were told, this is your national homeland, welcome, you’re one of us. And they return back to Canada with the mission of representing Israel. They didn’t know a thing.
In Israel, we have a lot of jokes about birthright kids, but I won’t get into that here. ... The second year of university, I had decided I’m going to talk to them. Now, I didn’t know what the hell I’m going to say to them; I just knew, I’m going to talk to them. And as I came to campus–and again Israel flags, Israel Week–and this time they had a girl who was standing in the middle of the Canadian winter, outdoors, on campus, and for a week straight she read the names of every single person killed in the Holocaust. ... she stood there day and night and day for a week straight. So this was Israel Week for the Canadians, and this is what made me so upset is because to them they were presenting the Holocaust and this narrative of, like, Israel is the most blah blah blah.
And I think the reason it made me mad is because in Israel we don’t talk about the Holocaust. ... The Israel government uses it a lot to justify a lot of things, but we don’t. We’ve never really opened up the trauma of the Holocaust. We talk about what happened in Auschwitz. But a trauma is not the event of rape. It’s the ten years after the rape. It’s the way that the rape has intertwined itself into your very psychology. And that’s essentially what the Holocaust was for us. It was a national rape. It was not even a national, ’cause it’s bigger than nationalism, but it was a total rape of our identity, and it completely and forever changed the way that we as Jews see the world, whether we and our family was killed in the Holocaust or the neighbors’. ... the irony here is incredible–is how the Palestinians were impacted by the Nakba, having been forced to be refugees all around the world. And so ... to me it was like, why are you talking about the Holocaust? We won in the end. Look, we are so strong, we are in the Middle East, we have a nation. We won.
So as I was about to approach them with this big speech & at the very end of the tables was a different kind of table with a different kind of flag. And I thought, oh, maybe it’s not Israel Week; maybe it’s international week. So I went up to this table, and there was, like, a bunch of people there, and there was a bunch of books. And there’s this flag I’ve never seen before. And I came up to girl that was standing there, and I’m like, what’s this flag? And she ... stands up and she goes, hello, my name is Galia. I’m an anti-Zionist Jew. And this is the flag of Palestine.

...

And I found myself just exploding on this poor girl, just standing there, yelling at her, defending these idiots. What? Why would you bring this Arab propaganda? Why can’t we have just one week to ourselves to talk about Israel and to show Israel to the world? Why would you bring this Palestinian terrorism here? And I’m standing there yelling at her, and I’ll never forget the look on her face. ...

And I’m yelling at her and I’m yelling at her and I’m yelling at her, and she can’t get a word in. I don’t even think she said anything. I think she said, I’m an anti-Zionist Jew. I asked her, what is that? And she said something like, we believe in Palestinian human rights, I don’t know, something so banal that I would laugh at it if I saw it today. And yeah, and I just broke. I mean, I’m standing there yelling at her. And I ... think the reason I was yelling at her is because if you live in Israel-Palestine, we are in an active conflict–you eventually lose people. And if you live there long enough, you lose a lot of people.
...

And I’m standing there yelling at this girl in Canada, and I’m teleported to this moment, and I can smell it. And what was amazing is she’s standing there, and she comes from around the table, and she hugs me, and she says in Hebrew, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay. And I’m yelling at her, and the only thing I can think in my mind is everyone who died is your fault. And I don’t know why. Everyone I love. It’s your fault, ’cause you are defending this idea. And as we all know, the war of ideas is a lot more important than the war of bodies.

And that was the end for me. That was the end of something in which you could not ask, you could not touch, you could not criticize. There’s things you can criticize in Israel, but you can’t to criticize the bigger thing. You can’t talk about the bigger issues, the bigger problem. That was the end of that.
...

I mean, before that, whenever I’d talk to people, I’d be like, you don’t know anything; I lost someone in the terrorism. Everyone lost someone in terrorism. You know, you had 9/11; we had a hundred 9/11s; the Palestinians had 10,000 9/11s. America and–you invade not just people’s homes; you invade people’s lives, you tear apart their very belief in security, their very belief that they have a place in this world where they can go to sleep and wake up in the morning. That’s how profound your violence that you project on the world is and the violence that we project on the Palestinians is.

My little tragedy is nothing compared to the bigger picture. And yet it is only when you go to the root of this thing, you go deep into it, and you crack it, and you rip it right open to the point that you–only from that point can you build. And I was so lucky that I had someone like Galia to question me, ’cause this is the end of something, but it has to be the beginning of something else. She started giving me books. She started inviting me to lectures. She started forcing me to watch documentaries.

And the most important thing is she asked me questions. No one ever asked me real questions from a place of humility and empathy. People always told me what to think. They always told me that I was an Arab-hating Zionist. They never asked me, well, what do you think? Does any of what you say make sense to you? If you put A+B+C together, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, right? They only want to kill us; all of them just want to kill us; they don’t have any history; no, we can’t build a Zionist state if we don’t erase their history; there’s nothing to erase, ’cause they were never here. No, they were here, because–. None of it makes any logical line of sense until you start questioning it. And this is what she did for me. She forced me to start asking questions.

And I think that the most profoundly effective thing that growing up in Israel and Zionism in general has managed to achieve is that it taught all of us what questions we cannot ask, to a point that it is now a part of the Israeli DNA, knowing what questions you cannot ask, because once you start asking these questions, everything starts to unravel.
...

I think I am more pro-equality than I am anti-Zionist. I have nothing against spiritual Zionism and the belief that Jews have a place in Jerusalem and all of that narrative. I have no problem with that. I think that it should be open for all to live in and shared equally. My issue is with equality. In Israel it’s–we have institutional legal segregation inside of Israel.
...

There’s all these elements of inequality that I was completely unaware of. Yes, there’s a lot of denial, and we talked about that, but I didn’t know the facts, I didn’t know that we have more than 30 laws that on their surface, in their language, distinguish between Jewish and not-Jewish citizens.

So when Galia started me on this process of questioning, she introduced me to a lot of materials, and I could start asking questions. I started reading Israel’s laws. I started reading Israel’s land laws. I started seeking out all these holes in my education. And once you know, you can’t unknow. I mean, that’s the power of education. And it’s still–I mean, it’s like a spiral. She started me out of the cycle into a spiral, and I’m still on the spiral.
...

When it comes to the Middle East, Ottawa sits on its hands to keep Trump happy

A good op-ed piece on Canada abstaining from voting, on Jerusalem being recognized as the capital of Israel, in the UN General Assembly. As the piece says that this abstention was against Canadian official foreign policy on Israel & Palestine but when push came to shove, when it was time to stand for your principles, when it was time to show the so-called "bully" of the world that the world will not meekly follow whatever Mr. Trump will say, then Canada quietly, feebly, meekly, ran away from the fight with its tail between its legs.

That's Canada for you, ladies & gentlemen !!! That's the so-called "leadership" Canada is trying to show to the world !!!

If you may recall that there were dozens of Justin Trudeau's pictures circulating on the web, after his election win, showing him sitting for Iftars with Muslims & fasting for a day with Muslims, & several other pictures of him mingling with Muslim voters. Him & his party officials "opened the gates" to Canada to refugees running away from US, to Canada.

People all over the world, & esp. Muslims, were proudly saying that Canada is the best country to live in & Justin Trudeau & his party support Islam & Muslims. However, when it came to show how much skin you have in the game, principles & all that verbal support for Muslims evaporated in the thin air, & Canada acted like an Ostrich; bury your head in the sand & hope for the problem to go away. All those pictures & oral support was just for electoral show, because, actions speak louder than words, & such an important vote, regardless of it being not legally binding, was still politically important, & needed Canada to show where it really stands in foreign policy circles. Couple this decision with Liberals not backing away from selling armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia, amounting in the billions, even though, the whole world knows that Saudi Arabia openly violates human rights, & we can see how much Liberals, & Justin Trudeau, support Muslims.

This vote was the time for Canada to show if it can make decisive decisions. A leader makes decisive decisions, rightly or wrongly, & then stands firm on those decisions. Donald Trump's actions might be horrendous, & pretty much, every American leader before him, but, US is still considered a world leader in foreign policy matters, even after making horrible mistakes with even more horrendous consequences several times, from World War 2 (dropping atomic bombs on innocent Japanese) to invading Vietnam to putting through Iraqis, Afghanis, Libyans, & now Yemenis, from unforgettable nightmarish life-long moments, but still, what America says, goes.

Yes, certainly, desperate times like these need leaders, who, despite heavy odds against them, take a strong & decisive stand for their principles they believe in. If you don't stand for your principles, then you don't have any principles. You are merely going along wherever the wind takes you. Nobody will ever take you seriously & you will never be considered as a leader in anyone's eyes. That's Canada for you.

Regardless of how much Canada wants to become the darling of the world, & be considered for leadership roles in the international fora, Canadian leaders are too afraid of making ripple effects. But that's what makes you a leader. It's too easy to be a nice person when everything is going great. Tough & testing times separate the men from the boys, & separate the followers from the leaders. This vote in the UNGA was the time when Canada should've stood up for its principles, regardless of its ongoing trade negotiations, & voted with other G7 countries, because, at the author says near the end of the piece, those trade negotiations still might not work out in favour of Canada, because, hey, after all, who listens to a follower!!!

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https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2017/12/21/on-the-middle-east-ottawa-sits-on-its-hands-to-keep-trump-happy.html

And so the year draws to a close just as it dawned — with Canada walking on eggshells around Donald Trump.

Thursday at the United Nations, the Liberal government had two choices. It could poke Trump but stand on principle, or continue a pattern of voting with the U.S. on the Middle East.

With the world watching, it did neither.

It abstained.

It moved to the sidelines and let the rest of the world take a position.

Mostly, it didn’t want to rattle Trump’s cage with the future of NAFTA very much in doubt.

A vote to declare Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel “null and void,’’ passed 128 to nine with 35 abstentions.

The U.S. won the support of key allies like Togo, Palau, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Honduras, Guatemala and, of course, Israel.

Take Israel out of the equation and the entire population of those backing the U.S. is less than the population of Canada.

Canada, on the other hand, was the only G7 nation beside the United States that did not vote to condemn the move by Trump.

An abstention, at first glance, does seem to be a craven move, especially in light of the crass threats and bullying delivered by the American ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley.

Haley was defending Trump’s right to make an unnecessary, provocative move in the Middle East for strictly domestic political reasons.

Oh, she was going to take names. She wasn’t going to forget this vote.

She was going to remember when nations come calling for America’s financial help or its global influence.

It was an appalling performance, coming on the heels of Trump’s flat-out threat to cut off aid to anyone who voted against him.

Don’t disrespect us, Haley warned.

The Americans were going to take their ball and go home if others were mean to them.

In short, it was the type of speech that should have sent nations on the fence into the “screw you’’ camp against Washington.

Canada stayed quiet.

In Canada’s case, an abstention does send a message, because the Trudeau government, like the Stephen Harper government before it, has slavishly backed the U.S. in voting against UN resolutions perceived to be anti-Israel.

But overwhelmingly the message sent by an abstention was that Ottawa didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to take a stand, wished that this would just go away.

It was in keeping with Ottawa’s initial non-reaction reaction to the Trump move, a statement that did not mention the U.S. or the president, but merely affirmed Canada’s support of a two-state solution that includes agreement on the status of Jerusalem.

By abstaining, we did not support Trump, nor did we poke him, but, of course, Washington immediately spun the results to indicate those who had abstained had backed them.

It’s been a long year for a government dealing with Trump as a neighbour and with NAFTA talks resuming next month, 2018 could be tougher.

We have been “disappointed” by his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, and have “disagreed vehemently” with ridiculous tariffs his commerce department slapped on Bombardier.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland skilfully vowed Canada would take on a greater global leadership role as the U.S. turns inward (without mentioning Trump) and, with U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer at her side, she delivered the message that a “winner-take-all” mindset cannot lead to a satisfactory renegotiation of NAFTA.

In Ottawa’s defence, no one sitting at the General Assembly Thursday, with the exception of Mexico, was living cheek-by-jowl with a president whose next move might jolt this country. Mexico also abstained Thursday.

Canada has bilateral interests with the U.S. that compel it to be careful, certainly more careful in condemnation of Washington than countries separated from the U.S. by an ocean.

In its most important bilateral relationship, the Liberal government has been dealing with a man in the White House who stands against virtually everything this country stands for.

And it is doing it with its most important trilateral trade relationship hanging in the balance.

This country has lost its voice on the Middle East so as not to upset the U.S. president.

Thursday, Canada could not even vote for a resolution that reflected its official policy.

Ottawa sat on its hands to appease a leader who has toyed with us during NAFTA negotiations.

They could find that tiptoeing on eggshells and losing our international voice may make no difference because if Trump wants to walk away from NAFTA, he will.

A year of playing nice and biting our tongue could still count for nothing.

Feminism's Radical Turn

A great opinion piece on the West's struggle with the feminism movement. Feminism movement was made by humans / people who don't have any ability to see / predict the future. Circumstances are always evolving & one's situation is never same as the other. Hence, feminism movement was not only short-sighted to start with, it lacked inclusion of all women from different backgrounds; based on ethnicity, religion, race, culture etc.

The idea of feminism was women are equal to men. Which they definitely are. No doubt. Problem was, & still is, that women were expected to act & do things exactly like what men were doing. As Jessa Crispin notes in her book that "feminism sold women a bill of goods by framing work as self-fulfillment and self-actualization. Women who rose to positions of traditional male power in corporations, in politics, in the military, on boards, like Clinton or Sheryl Sandberg became feminist role models." Essentially, a woman's self-worth was how much money she was earning by working in male-dominated sectors of the economy; heck, it didn't have to be male-dominated sectors of the economy. Period. That's why, some women in pornography industry are very happy & rose to the level of company CEOs themselves, & on their way to the top, debased other women, because they themselves have become millionaires; their self-worth is being measured in cold hard cash by themselves & the society around them.
As the writer details Jessa Crispin's thoughts on feminism in the following paragraph, it becomes evident that women were only fighting for equal rights & jobs as men, as long as those jobs were of privileged positions in the society. Women were not fighting to get in menial jobs. After all, those menial jobs are also held by men.

Equality is another issue in Western ideal of feminism; equality based on racial, ethnic, cultural, & social grounds. It seems that feminism became the movement-du-jour for the Caucasian / white privileged women. Every other women didn't get the memo; be they be women of African descent in America or of Latin descent in Northern & Southern America, or Muslim women in Middle East & South Asia or Hindu & Buddhist women in Asia. As Crispin correctly "echoes the sentiment in her rejection of the condescending attitude of Western feminists toward women in Muslim countries—this idea that these women need to be rescued (itself a masculine model) from their head scarves and their traditions."

In the name of feminism, women were driven out of their homes to work alongside men, & to become one more bread-winner for the family. However, nobody worked towards sharing the house work, & hence, women's responsibilities became child-bearing, child-rearing, all house work, & corporate work. Men still enjoyed their work outside the house & that was the end of their day's work.

What the general public has forgotten now that the women were driven out of the house to create a two-income family, to essentially, increase GDP in North America. The public & private sectors weren't creating any more jobs & GDP increases when the public spends on house & home purchases. Wages had become stagnant. So, instead of increasing wages or creating more jobs, women were encouraged to get out of the house, be independent, & make their own money; helping to keep up the lifestyle the public was used to; all in the guise of gender equality.

Here, I am going to bring feminism in Islam. The West & now, even the East, thinks that Islam, as a religion, suppresses Muslim women & their rights. In Islam, women are equal to men. Islam recognizes them as EQUAL, not as IDENTICAL. Both genders are complementary to each other & need one another to create a fully-functional, proper society.

This is all beautifully summarized by a letter to editor in the May issue of Maclean's magazine, by a Dr. Howard Taynen, from Ancaster, Ontario, Canada:

"... I am struck yet again by a routinely mistaken fundamental in this ever-present & evolving subject - equal is confused with identical. Thankfully, men & women are not identical anatomically, physiologically, temperamentally or psychologically. We are a magnificent complementarity of great potential value to ourselves, our children & the world. Eliminate the abuse, not the difference! It is naive & futile to defy nature by arbitrarily imposing identical roles in parenthood, marriage or the world in order to be equal. We are equal & different. It is a partnership that can function wholesomely without trying to change the differing roles & their respective strengths."

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http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/feminisms-radical-turn/

Literary Critic Jessa Crispin clearly appreciates the value of a catchy title. Her blog was named Bookslut. Now her new book, Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto, seems calculated to grab attention at a moment when feminism is portrayed as either trending or dead—or trending because it’s dead.

Feminism’s most recent and much exaggerated death spiral can be traced to the assumption, an absurd one, that the U.S. election provided a referendum on the topic. “Hillary Clinton’s loss in the presidential election to America’s most famous sexist instantly plunged the feminist cause into crisis,” The New Republic proclaimed hours after Trump’s win, as if the “feminist cause” is a single entity run out of a central command. If anything, the reverse proved true: the political upset galvanized organized protest driven by fear that the advances made by the feminist movement over the past 50 years would be reversed. The New York Times was bleaker: “Feminism lost. Now what?” ran a headline that suggested Clinton was herself synonymous with an ideology that dates back more than a century.

It’s precisely that conflation of a powerful, high-achieving woman with modern feminism that Crispin denounces in her slim, bracing polemic. The thought-provoking, sometimes frustrating book is part of a new literary groundswell: works grappling with the complex inequities of sexual equality and the ever-shifting gender see-saw a half century after “women’s lib.” Toronto writer Stephen Marche also wades in with his trenchant new book, The Unmade Bed: The Messy Truth About Men and Women in the 21st Century, in which he recounts leaving his job to be primary caregiver to his son so his wife could fulfill her career ambition. A countervailing groundswell is simultaneously at work: this vocal contingent calls for a return to the zero-sum game of the alpha husband, beta wife just as more than a third of women out-earn their husbands. The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men and Marriage by Suzanne Venker, the niece of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, laments that “society is creating a crop of women who are unable to love” and advises “it’s liberating to be a beta!” Similar messaging underlines the North Carolina billboard that sparked outrage last month. “Real men provide,” it read. “Real women appreciate it.”

Taking a cue from Crispin’s title, the media have described its message as more piling on the feminism-is-dead pyre: “The fall of feminism,” read the headline of a Los Angeles Times’ review. “Why this literary critic rejects modern-day feminism,” said CBC Radio.

Yet Crispin sits at an extreme rarely discussed in modern-day feminism: she’s a self-professed radical feminist, hell-bent on dismantling a patriarchy she blames 20th-century feminism for buttressing. “I am angry,” she writes. “And I do pose a threat.”

Feminism sold women a bill of goods, Crispin states, by framing work as self-fulfillment and self-actualization. Women who rose to positions of traditional male power in corporations, in politics, in the military, on boards, like Clinton or Sheryl Sandberg of Lean In fame, became feminist role models. Crispin doesn’t buy it, noting Clinton dismantled social welfare programs and supported international interventions that killed thousands.

Only spaces occupied by privileged men were desirable, Crispin points out; women, who’d always worked, but in menial positions, weren’t fighting for jobs held by poor men, labourers or miners, for whom the workplace and society would become increasingly hostile. The consequence, she writes, is a “kind of hyper-masculinized world, where women are participating—and absolutely expected to participate in this world by feminists—in patriarchal values.”

Crispin also takes aim at “universal feminism”—her term for a non-confrontational feminist status quo that bends over backwards to be agreeable to avoid the “man-hating” stereotype of decades earlier. This mainstream, she believes, is preoccupied with identity politics, narcissistic “self-empowerment” and whining about TV shows rather than the hard work of bridging to universal human rights. It’s a pop star battle: on one hand, Beyoncé embraces the “feminist” label; on the other, Taylor Swift, never one to rock the boat, prefers “equalism,” the belief that both sexes should be equal without highlighting feminism. “Lifestyles do not change the world,” Crispin writes.

Within this Instagram feminism, shrillness is anathema. That’s a problem, Crispin writes: “I hear the word ‘feminazi’ coming from young feminists’ mouths today way more often than I have ever heard it coming from the mouths of right-wing men.”

The reaction can also be chalked up to marketing forces that have diluted and co-opted “feminist” to sell products with an upbeat, friendly “empowerment” message for decades—from the “You’ve come a long way baby” Virginia Slims ads of the ’70s, to Acne Studios’ “Feminist Collection” featuring a $650 sweater, to the recently published picture book Strong is the New Pretty: A Celebration of Girls Being Themselves.

The fact that anyone can self-define as feminist, or not, also can render the word meaningless. Ivanka Trump claims both she and her woman-objectifying, women-grabbing dad are feminists. ... Marche rejects the self-proclaimed “male feminist,” saying it’s typically used to win points or get women into bed. Just be a decent guy, he writes.

Decades of hindsight offer perspective. For one, “trickle-down” feminism is about as effective as trickle-down economics. Equality has not touched all women equally, and there’s anger, as was evident at the Women’s March in Washington, where I saw a black woman hold up a sign at a largely white crowd: “F–k you and your white imperialistic feminism,” it read. She had a point.

Crispin echoes the sentiment in her rejection of the “condescending attitude of Western feminists toward women in Muslim countries—this idea that these women need to be rescued (itself a masculine model) from their head scarves and their traditions.”
...

Non-feminist history also reveals that blaming 20th-century feminism for the glorification of the work and the workplace, as Crispin does, gives it too much credit. Yes, the civil rights movement stirred second-wave feminism and The Feminine Mystique raised consciousness. But other factors, namely the need for dual-income-earning families and the Pill, which let women delay child-bearing or defer it altogether, played a role.

Now it’s evident that the very corporate workplace that women—mostly wives—flocked to in the ’70s was built on a male-breadwinner, female-homemaker model that remained unchanged. Needs of the new working wife and mother were ignored; nor was there a movement to replace or redistribute her labour in the home. The result: that famous Ms. magazine cover “I want a wife,” which also became a common working women’s half-joke.
...

That disconnect could explain why, 60 years after the “women’s movement,” reproductive health rights and sexual violence remain barriers to women’s freedom. Female politicians receive death threats. A gender pay gap exists, even in the professions. Yet Crispin isn’t offering an olive branch to men. She slams “casual hatred of men as a gender,” yet in the next breath, tells men it’s not her job to make feminism easy or understandable to them. “Figure it out,” she writes. “I just want to be clear that I don’t give a f–k about your response to this book. Do not email me, do not get in touch. Deal with your own s–t for once.” She offers one consolation: “Everything is more complicated than anyone wants to admit.” And that vague understatement pretty much sums up the long march ahead.

An Occupier's Peace or a Just Peace - Shir Hever on RAI

The decades-old conflict in Middle East, between Israel & Palestine, won't end so easily, as the Global West perceives it to be, because a "just peace" have to be brought in for everyone living there. In a society, where there's "just peace," people need to have equal rights & obligations.

The current conflict will continue on until the occupying force, Israel, only wants peace on its terms, & of course, the conflict itself is helping to line the pockets of influential people in Israel & around the world. Political & military elites, & esp. the conservatives in North America & Europe want this conflict to continue on because they are profiting from it immensely. Of course, the average joe in Israel & the occupied territories of Palestine merely wants peace where everyone has equal rights.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWYeWeoQ-uQ

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: So if you're going to talk about what the future might look like, what a peace, if possible, might look like, you've first got to talk about, well, who actually wants peace, and on what basis do they want peace? ... There are a few people in Israel who are doing extremely well out of the current situation. There's a stratum of multimillionaires and billionaires, a political stratum. I mean, why would they want anything other than what they got?

SHIR HEVER, ECONOMIST, ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER: I think the vast majority of the Israeli public wants peace. But a famous German military thinker, Clausewitz, has once said the occupier always wants peace. Peace means the status quo. That's why Palestinians don't call for peace, they call for a just peace. And that's also why the Israeli peace movement has collapsed because the peace movement had this kind of idea that if Palestinians would be offered peace, they would just accept that the current situation will continue. And, of course, that's a completely false premise.

But there are, of course, people in Israel who do have an incentive to end the occupation and to end the injustice. A lot of Israelis are suffering because of the massive cost of security that is needed to repress the Palestinians. I would say the majority of Israelis are losing in their standard of living because of this continued repression of Palestinians, because of the continued conflict. So they have a real interest even in a just peace, but their voices are not heard and they cannot be heard within this kind of colonial system, which is dominated by those elites who are actually profiting.

JAY: So talk a bit about the elites because it's a very small group that own the dominating, commanding heights of the Israeli economy.

HEVER: Yeah. And I would say the major forces that push Israel in this direction of continued conflict and continued occupation are actually outside of Israel. These are the forces--the U.S. government and right-wing groups within the U.S.--that fund the most extremist and violent political movements inside Israel. Sheldon Adelson in the U.S. has opened up a free newspaper in Israel in order to make sure that Netanyahu keeps winning the elections with a massive investment that no one on the other side can match. So that sort of support makes sure that the hawks continue to dominate the political structure.

Sure, there are also Israeli security companies and military companies that are very powerful and very influential. In fact, there was a meeting in 2011 of 80 of Israel's biggest capitalists but not from the security sector, which said, if Israel will continue on this path, we're going to get to the situation of South Africa, we're going to be boycotted by the world, we have to do something. They had this emergency meeting. But they couldn't actually do something. It shows that even capital has its limits. They couldn't find a way to convince the government to act differently because there's just no historical precedent for that. There is no historical precedent of a colonial power which just stops in its tracks and says, this is wrong, we should allow these people freedom and equality.

JAY: Would you say if outside of the security-military-industrial complex, if you will, the rest of the majority of big capital would actually like to see a resolution of this?

HEVER: Yes, yes. And they've tried a couple times to fund their own candidates for prime minister and spent a lot of money on that. The public didn't vote for these candidates. The public wants a strong leader that can say--a sort of security person who can say--I will be a representative of your national pride, I will make sure Israel is safe, I will fight Iran, and so on. And when somebody says, if we end the occupation it's actually good for the economy, this sort of argument doesn't get--.

JAY: But if their heart was really in it--and they being these other big capitalists--I mean, they could match Sheldon Adleson and they could have their own TV stations and their own newspapers. I mean, they could really go at it. Is their heart really in it? They're doing so well the way things are.

HEVER: I think they estimate that if they do that, people will not see that, won't watch that television or will not read the newspaper. And they're right because people don't like to read that they're in the wrong, and that things have to change, and that political power has to be shared. They don't want to read that.

JAY: Alright. ... what is a model that if you could even think ten, twenty, thirty years out, if you were going to try to create a model that would be, one, sellable, not just just. I mean, you can imagine a just model, which is pretty straightforward. It's a Democratic, single secular state and everybody gets to vote and it's a modern country. But right now that's not a sellable proposition. So some people have talked a possible federated state, where you have a province or a state within a Federation which is primarily Jewish. Hebrew would be the language. You would have another one, another state, which is primarily--Arabic is the primary language, and so on, or some configuration. You must have thought about this. What might be possible?

HEVER: It's not only that I've thought about it, that this is also almost an obsession, but not just for me, but for political activists, for leftists for years.

But I want to answer you in two parts. The first part, I have to say, again I have to be very sensitive to my own position of privilege. Being an Israeli Jew and saying well, this is the solution is not going to work, and it shouldn't be, it shouldn't work. Palestinians should not get their solution from some Israeli. They have to come up with their own platform for political change. And therefore, I have to be very careful in how I answer that sort of question.

Having said that, let me tell you what voices I hear from my Palestinian friends about what they're saying. And among these voices, you can hear a lot of those ideas of a federation, a confederation, two separate states, three separate states, one democratic state, joining with Egypt. You can hear a lot of interesting ideas. But the voice that comes out the clearest in the last few years is the voice that says, we don't care about that. All of these ideas are legal demarcations, are some kind of--where you put the border here or there. That's not important. The important thing is to talk about rights, talk about how we have the right to move wherever we want, to say whatever we want, to have a government that represents us, to organize, to practice our religion, to trade freely. That's what it means to be free. And then it doesn't matter so much exactly how many borders you're going to stretch across this territory. If we're practical about it, historically Palestine is a country that was divided by the UN, but in fact there has never been a Palestinian state there. There's always been one powerful force of Israel and some areas that were temporarily held by Egypt and Jordan, and then Israel occupied these parts as well. Now we have a situation in which there's one state under Israeli domination with a population of 12 million: 49% Jews, 49% Palestinians, 2% others. And it's an apartheid state.
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JAY: What I'm getting at, ... if there's going to be rights, there's going to have to be at some point some kind of buy-in by enough Israeli Jews to go along with this, I mean, unless you think there's going to be some military defeat of the Israeli state, and it's hard to imagine that right now. Even if the American policy was to significantly shift, you still have a mass of Jewish-Israeli public opinion that is where it is. I mean, it's in not a very good place. There's got to be some kind of understanding of how that's going to be dealt with to create a model that's at least the next step.

HEVER: There's this famous British general that once said in Zimbabwe, whatever happens, we have machine guns and they don't. And they lost. So the military defeat is not so unimaginable, but, of course, it'll be further down the road. It's not going to be in the next few years.

I think the fact is that a Jewish state is not sustainable. It's a concept that doesn't fit the 21st century. It barely fits into the 20th century. It's a racist idea.
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JAY: Well, I was about to get to that, 'cause then you get to the campaign for boycotting, disinvestment, and sanctions. It's clearly having some influence. It's hurting the Israeli economy. If it was stronger, it could precipitate more self-interest in some kind of change in Israel. But don't you then still have to have--okay, then what does that look like? 'Cause if you get to a point of real rights the way you're talking about, this can't be a Jewish state anymore.

HEVER: Exactly. Yeah. It cannot be a Jewish state. It's going to be--I mean, even if there will be a separate Palestinian state according to what we call the two-state solution, then the battle will continue. The struggle for equal rights in Israel will continue, because Israel cannot be a Jewish state; it has to be a state for all its citizens, one way or another. And the way that this defeat comes, it comes very suddenly. And, of course, the model is South Africa, where one week before apartheid collapsed, 90% of white people in South Africa supported apartheid. One week after apartheid collapsed, they all say we were always against it. And the Israeli minister of justice, Tzipi Livni, just said a couple of weeks ago, in response to the BDS movement, she said, I went to South Africa and spoke to some Jewish people there about their experiences from this era of the fall of apartheid, and the main thing they told me is it came unexpectedly, it came suddenly. There is a moment in which you lose courage, you lose your faith that you can continue to repress other people forever. And that moment may not be as far as we believe. I'm hopeful.
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