The British are coming, the British are coming and if I could, so to speak, toss their tea into Boston (or Haifa) Harbor and ignite a revolutionary movement away from their poisonous influence, I would do so in a flash. Why are we ex-colonials still so enamored of the Mother Country? Americans love, love, love all the romantic movies about Queen Elizabeth, Virginia Woolf, and Jane Austen and we love Merchant-Ivory’s classy British celluloid countryside. Interestingly, the writer on their team, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, is a Jew from Czechoslavakia who escaped Hitler, grew up in England, married a Parsi, then lived in India for 20-30 years before moving to New York City. The vision of a stately, settled England attracts all those whom history has unsettled. And oh how we admire England’s savage, bracing wit and perhaps, how well the English language sounds when spoken with a British accent.

Enough already!

That anyone would turn to England (specifically to England’s contemporary academics) as if they were either sane or moral is frightening. Historically, England has a mixed record on the Jews. They burned and exiled them in 1292 but in the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell invited the Jews to return, and welcomed them into Britain’s colonies, not only in North America but in India, too. Thereafter, Britain and its colonies were some of the better places for Jews to live.

In the 19th century, Benjamin Disraeli became a best-selling author, then Prime Minister and Queen Victoria’s favorite; Dickens apologized for having ignorantly maligned Jews in Oliver Twist; George Eliot wrote a defense of the Jews in Daniel Deronda; a British viceroy brought his Jewish wife to India (some think that he may have been a Jew as well). Rothschilds were knighted and elected to parliament; and Cecil Rhodes’ Jewish partners helped him create the diamond industry and South Africa. The British adventurers in India preferred girls to boys, especially in the era of the East India Company, before the venerable memsahibs came out and instituted Victorian propriety.

Thus, there was a strong streak of Judeophilia in Victorian England and it lasted through Winston Churchill, who had few illusions about the Arabs. And, of course, let’s not forget Lord Balfour and his declaration.

On the other hand, Virginia Woolf was something of a snob and an anti-Semite–yes, even though she was married to Leonard, who was Jewish. (See Ruth Gruber’s book, Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman about this). The American expatriate, T.S. Eliot, was a Jew-hater too. I am not saying that Woolf and Eliot are not great writers, only that their greatness did not innoculate them from heartbreakingly vulgar prejudice.

But, from World War I to the present, British actions, attitudes and operations in the Middle East, including Lawrence of Arabia & Co. (who preferred boys to girls in the Arab world), and the types who followed and/or resembled him in the post-war foreign office, etc.–was characterized by hateful anti-Jewish policies in Palestine. This is true even though the British did appoint Lord Samuels, a Jew, as governor-general in Palestine, and it was he who (so unwisely, so tragically) empowered the Mufti who launched pogrom after pogrom against Jewish civilians in Palestine. (I saw the most moving documentary about Israel before 1948 with footage that included a top-hatted Lord Samuels walking quite a long way in the heat to a synagogue in Jerusalem for Sabbath services).

Britain did not allow European Jews in flight from Hitler to enter Palestine under the British Mandate. They literally beat their boats back to the German crematoria and interned them in Cyprus. In 1948, the British both armed and rooted for the Arabs to win their war against the Jews in 1948. True, some Brits took Jewish children in during World War Two–-but that does not begin to atone for their heinous policies in the Middle East.

Enough of this history lesson. Here’s what’s happening now. In response to the steady Islamification of England, the left-wing, politically correct British intellectuals and academics have become snarling dogs where Jews and Israel are concerned; they refuse to stop their howling against–not the Islamist preachers of hate or the heavily burqua’ed female jihadists in their midst–but against, you guessed it: Israeli academics who do not view Israel as a “Nazi” and “apartheid” state.

Yes, once again, for the third time in four years, the British University and Colleges Union has passed a resolution questioning academic ties between Britain and Israel. See HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. In essence, they have decided to hold Israeli academics responsible for their government’s perceived military and foreign policy. Thus, the British teachers want to “boycott” any Israeli academics who do not carefully and clearly condemn Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

These same British academics are not holding Saudi, Sudanese, Chinese, Burmese, or Palestinian academics responsible for their government’s atrocious policies both towards their own people and towards the international community. For this reason alone, their resolution to discuss a new kind of boycott against Israelis-only is not only anti-Semitic (which, of course, the Brits insist it is not), it is also deranged.

One cannot reason with people who think like this. What we must do is to understand that the level of Jew-hatred among British teachers now approximates the Jew-hatred in Palestinian and Nazi propaganda and the even hotter, long-term hatred embedded in the classical Islamic texts. (See Dr. Andrew Bostom’s amazing and magnificent book titled The Legacy of Islamic AntiSemitism which Ibn Warraq has introduced.)

We can’t boycott the boycotters without losing the high ground. Petitions of solidarity with Israeli academics are well and good, it is a way of counting heads–not a bad thing to be doing at this moment in history. Scholars for Peace in the Middle East has launched many distinguished petitions which have opposed the demonization and isolation of Israel’s glorious and world-class scholars and they have a new petition going HERE.

Someone has recently predicted that Britain will be a Muslim country within thirty years. I’ll say. But it might happen a lot sooner given who occupies the academic perches in the country.

NOTE: I would like to acknowledge some very helpful points that the author Rosanne Klass made in response to my earlier version of this piece and which I have now included in this expanded version of this piece.

Save the Children, a civilian aid group, released a report today which confirmed that United Nations peacekeepers and civilian aid workers have continued to sexually abuse children in Ivory Coast, South Sudan, and Haiti. The UN peacekeepers, and in this instance, British charity aid workers, have been forcing children to have sex with them in return for food, water, and medicine. Brutal gang-rapes are also common.

Ironically, both Save the Children and Oxfam have discovered child rapists on their own staff but they have dismissed them. The UN has done no such thing. Although UN peacekeepers have, in the past, been accused of similar sexual assaults upon children (in Cambodia and elsewhere), their 2006, promise to both “tackle” and monitor such heartless abuse has apparently not been kept.

A spokesman for the UN Peacekeepers is quoted as saying: “The abuse of children by those who are sent to help is a significant and painful issue and one that we have begun to address. We are doing everything we can to train our civilian staff.”

Full disclosure: I worked at the UN for almost a year, from 1979-1980. Even then, the UN culture reeked of hatred: of America, the West, Israel and of the women. The sexual harassment and abuse of female staff by male staff was rampant, a given, unquestioned. Children in war zones? Easy prey for the likes of them.

While I do not know what countries of origin the peacekeepers are from, (such information is not easily available), or what their moral standards may be, I just bet that the rapists are all men. If I’m right–why not send women-only to feed the children?

My God, am I wrecking the entire feminist enterprise by suggesting that women might be less inclined to rape children? Am I engaging in man-hating? Heaven forbid. Of course, not all men are rapists; but most rapists are men. (Not all Muslims are terrorists but so many terrorists are Muslims…)

So: Why is the United States still paying dues to an institution, (the United Nations), whose leaders and employees have been exposed as morally bankrupt, shamelessly greedy, utterly ineffective, and at best, mediocre in doing good, brilliant in doing harm? And whose staff members actively engage in raping children in war zones? And why does New York City continue to host, even fete, the UN staff with their multiple wives and domestic slaves?

It is a blot on our own reputation.

Read the article HERE in today’s New York Sun.

It only takes one person.

If one person fights with all his might to tell the truth, (and today that person is Philippe Karsenty), if he or she risks everything to expose the Big Lie, takes on The Very Naked Emperor, then, one by one, others also start speaking out.

I have been writing about the doctored footage and staged photos that characterize the propaganda war against Israel and the Jews since 2001. Most recently, see HERE (Photos That Lie: Building the Case Against Israel, Article by Article, Day After Day), and HERE. (The Hoax That Launched the Al-Aqsa Intifada: Mainstream Media Complicity and Silence).

I have known the prominent Israeli academic, Dr. Marilyn Safir, of Haifa, for 36 years. She is an American-born left feminist psychologist who moderates a major Israeli feminist academic listserv group. I have written about her experiences of anti-Semitism in both The New Anti-Semitism and in The Death of Feminism. Nevertheless, Marilyn never disconnected from the international feminist movement for this reason–and I am not suggesting that she should have.

When the Kassam rockets literally began falling on her head in Haifa she invited me to come to Israel to talk about anti-Semitism in general and among intellectuals and progressives in particular. I agreed–but then, alas, could not go.

With her permission, I am sharing what she has just told me about her personal eye-witness experience of Palestinian faux-tography in the first Lebanon war (1981-1982). She writes:

Hi Phyllis :

In the first Lebanon War, just before I left for that feminist conference in Montreal, we saw two news reports on Israel TV. In one, the Israel news team followed a French film crew. The French media put several young children in a burnt out car and lit a fire on the far side of the car and then filmed the children in the “burning car” screaming and crying with the smoke and flames billowing in the background. Two days latter I saw this clip broadcast in Montreal. If I hadn’t seen them staging it, I would have believed these were kids who were directly attacked (by Israelis) and left to burn to death.

The other clip - was of the Israeli air force attacking a “hospital” with a big red cross on the roof. We could see that the “hospital” was actually a base of the PLO who were (engaged in) shooting from it. That, too, appeared on the news. Interestingly, the Lebanese Government took out a big paid ad stating that the (so-called) Hospital was PLO Headquarters and was headed by Arafat’s brother.

(The Montreal feminist ) conference was the one that the PLO tried to take over to pass anti- Israeli Resolutions - and that I more or less single handidly fought to prevent - successfully - I might add .

Marilyn

Thank you Marilyn. I wonder how many more such incidents people know about and when will they come forward? But as important: Will the mainstream Western and Arab language media ever cover this? Will the liberal blogosphere cover it? And, if not, what do we propose to do?

Dr. Richard Landes just told me that he dates what he has coined “Pallywood” (Palestinian hoax propaganda) back to the first Lebanon War. He has an excellent article about it HERE at his blogsite, AUGEAN STABLES.

Press HERE to listen to Fausta’s podcast featuring Richard Landes and Yaacov Ben Moshe.

An Historic Moment
Left to Right: Gilles Dreyfus, the author, and Philippe Karsenty at the author’s home.

The same mainstream media that ran front page photos of the Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Dura, allegedly being murdered in his father’s arms by Israeli soldiers–are, shamefully, not running any stories about the hard-won Karsenty decision in Paris.

Thus, as of this writing, the hardcopy of the New York Times has not covered the story. Surprisingly, the New York Sun didn’t either, nor did the hardcopy of the Wall Street Journal. According to my online survey, there is no coverage in the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Detroit Free Press, The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, the Washington Post, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner or the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Well, maybe they’re working on huge weekend stories. If so, I look forward to reading them. However, a brief mention would be in order. Naught but chaos rules.

Google Mohammed al-Dura and you will find 111,000 references to the case–although there were probably millions of references to the case between the fall of 2000-2003. Google the case at the New York Times today and you will get 24,800 references to it. Google the Los Angeles Times and 11,400 references to al-Dura are listed. The Washington Post has 23,300 references to the al-Dura case listed.

When will they come clean, play fair, report the truth? Never? Or when it is too late?

Brian Rohan of Reuters covered it, (”French Court Cancels Libel in Intifada Video Case”), Melanie Phillips of Britain’s Spectator covered it (”A Milestone Victory”), as did the Jerusalem Post (”Court Overturns al-Dura Libel Judgment”) and other Israeli media. Of course, Pajamas Media published a statement by Karsenty and pieces by Richard Landes and myself.

As I noted earlier, HERE and HERE, the online version of the NY Times did cover the French decision–and, as one of my readers has pointed out, although the article gave equal “voice” and equal weight to both sides in the dispute, the headline itself was clear. “Critic of Palestinian Video Wins French Case.” (I literally did not see the headline, I only saw the “iconic” photo and the text beneath the headline. I apologize).

The International Herald Tribune ran yesterday’s AP dispatch: “Paris Court Acquits Media Watchdog of Libel Over Footage in Boy’s Death.” This story essentially takes the same line as the Times, namely, that the court merely ruled that Karsenty was entitled to voice his opinion without that opinion being deemed “libelous.”

This view of the court decision (which, as of this writing, has still not been released), does not admit that there is actual footage in which the presumably dead boy is seen alive after he has been pronounced dead. It also does not present background or context for the dispute. No other instances of staged Palestinian fauxtography are brought to bear e.g. the Palestinian lawmakers forced to work by candlelight–while it was still daylight; the same woman or the same man telling the same (false) story in Lebanon or Ramallah or Gaza to the same grateful and gullible western media.

There are no stories (at least, not yet), in which the mainstream Western media admit that in the past, they have allowed themselves to be fooled, over and over again, by the narrative of Palestinian Victimhood and Israeli Evil because it suited them–the facts be damned.

Fausta Wertz tells us that France’s Channel 2 (!) which perpetrated the hoax, has not reported the verdict. (This is France’s state-run media channel). Only Charles Enderlin, who sued Karsenty for libel, mentions the verdict on his own blog. His spin: The child died, the Israelis did it. No alternate comments are allowed on his blog. Fausta quotes Nidra Poller in Paris who describes the French media coverage as “sly” and “smartass.”

Fausta tells us to “expect nothing more from the media.” Chilling–but she might just be right.

Please let me know what the media in your state is saying–or not saying. I hope that MEMRI is checking the Arab language media to see what they print, if anything.

Please read Yaacov Ben Moshe’s Open Letter to Charles Enderlin and France2, HERE.

I have had it with the so-called “even handed” reportage that buries the truth in a barrage of lies. What, pray tell, am I talking about? While the online edition of the New York Times has actually covered Phillipe Karsenty’s legal victory, you’d never know it is a victory from reading the piece.

The reporter, Mike Nizza, opens with this: “A fierce debate over an iconic Palestinian image was jolted anew today by a French court appeal court ruling…”Say what? We are not talking about an “iconic image” but about a manufactured news report that damned Israel in the eyes of the world.

Nizza also says that the “iconic image’s authenticity was always in question.” Say what again?

This is another Big Lie. The September, 2000 news image/film/voice-over narration had no doubt that the Israelis had cold-bloodedly killed the boy. C’mon: The Israelis even apologized and it took them a very long time before they were even willing to begin to consider that a) the Israelis could not have shot the boy–not even if they had wanted to do so; and that b) the entire incident was staged, a carefully planned hoax.

The piece quotes Karsenty and his “supporters” in the media who claim a victory–but it also quotes France 2’s lawyers and Charles Enderlin himself who claim that the decision merely allows Karsenty to hold his “strident” point of view without considering it “libelous.” According to them, the court decision has nothing to do with the actual facts of the case, which includes footage which shows that the child is still alive on camera even after he has been pronounced dead.

You see: Both sides make good points, both sides are equally worthy, moral. According to Nizza, the “court has not released its decision, increasing the likelihood that this round in a continuing debate is far from over.”

According to the Times, nothing has been proven. To them, this all-too-academic debate continues.

I’ve had it, I’m going to bed. I hope that someone else–Karsenty himself, perhaps Professor Landes, or HonestReporting, performs a “fisk”analysis of the media coverage. For my part–To sleep, perchance to dream.

Read Mike Nizza’s article Here.

Newsflash: Read Karsenty’s own statment at Pajamas Media.

Well, our era’s Dreyfus has just been vindicated. Or, as an Israeli website would have it: “Pigs Fly Over the Eiffel Tower.” See my previous interview with Karsenty HERE.

A few hours ago, a French Appeals Court finally decided that Phillipe Karsenty did not libel Charles Enderlin of France’s Channel 2 in the matter of Mohammed Al-Dura. One wonders whether the world which was so eager to lap up the base, visual propaganda against Israel, will now just as eagerly lap up the truth. Somehow, I doubt it. Even if the world’s mainstream media now covers this legal victory widely, respectfully, and accurately, it may still not be able to reverse the revulsion towards Israel that this staged photo of the twelve year-old Mohammed al-Dura, (allegedly shot to death by Israeli soldiers), managed to provoke–and to keep on provoking as it was repeatedly aired, copied onto tee shirts, coffee mugs, posters, and banners at demonstrations.

Primed to believe the worst about Israelis, this staged event at the Netzarim Junction has already done its vast and dirty work. Can a carefully rendered legal decision–many words on the page–compete with a soul-stirring staged photo in the Arab speaking world? How about in the Israel-bashing French speaking world? How about in America’s mainstream media?

Can the families of all the Israelis who were murdered and maimed during the Al-Aqsa intifada sue France’s Channel 2 and Charles Enderlin for money damages? Enderlin and his Palestinian cameraman knowingly perpetrated a hoax. Having just lost, Enderlin is now vowing to appeal the decision. (Enderlin-the-guilty is the one who sued Karsenty for “libel”). As the excellent Professor Richard Landes notes in his ongoing coverage of this case on his blogsite Augean Stables: “Those whom the gods would destroy, first they drive mad.”

I spoke to Karsenty just hours before the decision. Here is some of our conversation.

Q: You expect the decision to come down later today, yes?

A: Yes, now, I’m back in Paris, expecting the verdict in 6 hours. (sent at 12:51 AM). The outcome will be known in few hours. You’ll hear from me.

Q: Has there been a change in the perception of your case among the French, European, or Israeli media? Among intellectuals? Among politicians? Has anyone surprised or disappointed you?

A: The perception has changed in the intellectual sphere because a great intellectual like Elisabeth Levy took the case seriously and went around to expose it to all the French intellectuals.The president of the CRIF (Richard Prasquier) surprised me by his strong and active support. There are too many people to mention for the disappointments…

Q: Assuming the judge finds for you and against Enderlin: What do you expect will happen next? What would you like to see happen?

A: Whatever would be the judges’ verdict, it’s important that this step is just one on the path to decency and dignity for Europe and its media outlets. We’ll have to analyze very precisely the written conclusion of the judges to see what their real opinion is. From that starting point, we’ll move forward and try to address our weakest points in order to make sure one day the truth will come to the general public. My only goal on this story is to have France 2 admit its mistake and correct the news on prime time and ask TVs of the world to correct the news.

Q: How has fighting this case changed you? How has it continued to effect your family and social life? Your political and intellectual conclusions?

A: This fight has changed me a lot because it helped me to understand that the world was not a fairy tale (I believed it before…) and that people can lie and cover others people lies without shame.During the first years of this fight, I was disinvited from many ceremonies and parties. Things have changed when some US organizations paid attention to the fight and when some people agreed to consider and monitor our evidence.

Q: Do you believe that the Jews must leave France? Europe?

A: I don’t believe that Jews must leave France or Europe now. But, it is a question that has to be addressed by the European authorities pretty soon. Jews can’t live in fortresses like they now have to do. Synagogues are protected like banks, or even better. This is not acceptable. And the only reason is because of the brainwashing (Israel bashing) that European people are subjected to. Stop the anti-Israel propaganda in the media and the people will stop hating the Jews. If this cannot be done, then the Jews will have to leave, sooner or later. This particular case of the media propaganda will may be solved soon if media start to correct their bias, starting with the al Dura fraud.

Q: I understand that you are working on a film about your struggle. Why document your struggle in a film? When do you think such a film will come out?

A: It is important to document this struggle in a film for our people now, and for our children, that they understand how such an anti-Semitic lie (easy to prove) was so fast to grow in everybody’s mind at the beginning of the 21st century. And how it was (and is still) difficult to have people admit. If we work hard enough, the film will come out in 2010.

Q: Has President Sarkozy indicated any willingness to help?

A: I had 2 meetings at the Elysée (French White House) and both of them concluded with: you’re 100% right, it’s 100 % staged. Nothing came out from those meetings.

Lately, the days are all raw and rainy. This is strange weather for May in Manhattan but who dares to complain? At least we are not enduring earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes, tsunamis, or forest fires.

I cannot imagine the suffering of those in Myanmar who have just lost their loved ones, their homes, and their health– to the weather. May God have mercy upon them. Thus far, humanity has not risen to the occasion. The same United Nations that would not “intervene” to save the victims in Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Congo, or Darfur are not saving those condemned to death, not by an earthquake, but by their own leaders in Myanmar.

Those who continue to call for matters to be settled (not by American military intervention) but by some imagined beneficent Tribe of Elders known as “the international community,” are queerly quiet now as are all those diplomats who say that we must first meet and reason with the kind of evil men who control life and death in Myanmar. Do such well-meaning diplomats believe that lives lost while waiting for diplomacy to kick in are not as important as lives lost as “collateral damage” in high risk military ventures?

Enough of these rainy thoughts. Here’s what’s on my mind, what’s really been bothering me. Where have all our standards gone? Gone to heaven, everyone?

For example, once, long ago, a professor had to complete a dissertation and a Ph.D and he or she represented the acquisition of a certain body of knowledge. This is no longer true. Increasingly, television personalities and authors of popular (but not necessarily learned works) are being appointed to professorships and are often the preferred role models. Hopelessly humdrum ideologues who are not original thinkers and who absolutely cannot write clearly or beautifully, now conceive of themselves as major public intellectuals–even as “revolutionaries.” They hold forth, they are quoted widely.

There are no standards. Everything is the same, no one is any better than anyone else, nothing matters–or rather, all that matters is whether the celebrity event raises money and leads to headlines. This standard also applies to politicians as well. If he or she are charming, attractive, young, and charismatic, (just like a movie star), we love and entrust our hearts to them. Actors or rather theatrical types are our new Gods and we have always been a faithful nation.

Back in the olden days, an author might care more about words than about performing before a live audience. Now, a book is a product (like toothpaste or shampoo), and a preferred way to market a personality or a snake oil movement. Thus, an increasing number of performers mainly excel in acting out their own life histories, over and over again. Yes, they sell books at their lectures–but not necessarily real books.

Oh, my age betrays me. Very few people complain about such arrangements. They may no longer wish to sit alone with a book and struggle to understand it. People want to see it acted out before their collective eyes. We live in an age of Cliff Notes and prize-winning comic strips. People want to be entertained, they want their information packaged in a dramatic and colorful way.

Homer read his work aloud, Shakespeare had his plays performed. I can watch and listen to a Verdi or Puccini opera every night. Thus, I certainly do not object to audio-visual presentations. Rather, I mourn how few of our bestselling books or longest running plays or most frequently assigned textbooks comes anywhere near such classical standards.

Old News: The sisters, Sarah and Amina Said, are still dead; their father-murderer, Yasir Abdul Said, has not yet been found; the mainstream media continues its uncanny silence.

What’s New: The reward for Said’s capture has been doubled and Tissy Said, his wife and the mother of the two murdered girls, has been ejected from the home of her extended Muslim family. Her beloved son, Islam, (from whom she would not willingly part), has been sent away from her. The Said family presumably want him to be “around a man” (his paternal uncle in New York City) and not around his mother. According to Tissy’s great-aunt, the brave, outspoken, Gail Gartrell:

“I feel Tissy is in grave danger from her own son. This is what I think his uncle is working through with Islam in New York. I fear his return. All the nieces and nephews in the Said family are accusing Tissy of this being her fault. They have turned on her. They blame her for allowing her daughters to see American boys. She has become the enemy. When I spoke to Tissy, she seemed more upset about this betrayal than about anything else. She told me she did not care if he (Islam? or Yaser?) killed her or not. Now, her spirit is broken since her Muslim family has walked away from her. Tissy told me that she wants to be buried next to her daughters.”

Tissy is an American citizen who is about 36-37 years old. She was married to Yaser at fifteen.

Gartrell described being recently preyed upon by a local Texas reporter who said she was a private investigator–in an effort to gain access to Tissy. The ruse did not work but it sowed discord among family members. Gartrell and other great-aunts have, reportedly, been threatened online and warned not to write about this case. (One great-aunt was writing a book–she may no longer be doing so).

Gartrell tells me that no one can save Tissy but Tissy herself. She has to “contact the police for help. A detective said the only way to protect her was if she would be willing to leave Islam and go into hiding! ”

Why is the media so disinterested? Their disinterest makes it harder for the police to find Yaser and encourages the next honor murderer to strike. Chances are, he will not be successfully pursued. Chances are, the world will not much care. What about the young boys who tried to save Sarah and Amina and who remain in hiding? The media silence endangers them more each day.

Dear Readers:

It occurs to me that I ought to have a running commentary on the anti-Israel bias in the contemporary New York Times. It is my home town newspaper and I do read it everyday. Sharing rather than silently swallowing my frustration will be an excellent tonic, and good for my blood pressure.

In today’s edition (May 15th), here is how the Gray Lady summarizes what happened in Israel yesterday.

ATTACKS DURING BUSH VISIT
“President Bush’s trip to Israel to celebrate the country’s 60th birthday was marred by violence. Four Palestinians were killed, including two militants, and nine were wounded in a series of Israeli Army strikes and incursions into Gaza said medics and witnesses there. In Israel, a rocket that the police said was launched from northern Gaza badly wounded four people, including a two year old girl.”

Before we even get to the piece itself which was located at the very bottom of page 6, lemme vent. The first “violence” noted above was that caused by “Israeli Army strikes.” Absolutely no background or context are given in terms of why Israel would strike Gaza. Hundreds, maybe thousands of non-stop Kassam rockets launched against Israeli civilians, children, schoolhouses, hospitals? Could that be it? The Times isn’t saying. And why-oh-why does TimeSpeak keep identifying Hamas terrorists and Islamists as “militants?”

And, now that the Israeli military has been maligned and branded as evil day after day in the Paper of Record, even I tend to trust a smidgen less anything they might have to say. I am meant to; thus, if the Israeli “police” tell us the rocket was launched from Gaza–perhaps, maybe, I am meant to take that with a grain of salt. Not so the “medics and witnesses” of Gaza who have never been maligned and who appear, therefore, as neutral reporters.

Only when you get to the longer piece, do you learn that the Gaza-launched rocket hit a health clinic in Ashkelon (beyond Sderot); that the doctor who was attending to the wounded was also wounded by it; that the rocket was “Iranian made;” that “Hamas has praised the attack.”

Yes, the same Hamas that Presidential hopeful Barack Obama wants us to talk to as does the new left-Jewish group which calls itself J Street– just to make sure you understand that they are truly out of this world. (”J” street in Washington D.C. does not exist, that is their clever point). See James Kirchick’s article “What Does the New Jewish Lobby Really Represent” in The New Republic of May 28, 2008.

But back to the New York Times: In terms of this latest rocket attack upon Israeli civilians, you have to read on to the eighth paragraph to learn that sixty other people were also wounded–but only “lightly.” Not seriously, right? The fact is, that such attacks have been going on for years, the civilian population is being terrorized and traumatized, as well as murdered and maimed. And yes, “lightly wounded” as well.

The Times piece includes lots of other information having nothing to do with the Israeli murdered, maimed, or “lightly wounded.” The piece is also about President Bush’s visit and the diplomats, celebrities, theologians, and Israeli leaders who gathered to be part of it.

Folks: Just for the record let me wearily repeat: Israeli government policy may sometimes be imperfect–but as imperfect as it may be, it does not justify the horrendous, exterminationist assault upon Israeli civilians that Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Iranians have perpetrated over the decades. I would like you all to read how an Israeli newspaper reported this same event of yesterday.

by Ezra HaLevi
(IsraelNN.com) The Iranian-supplied Grad-type rocket fired at an Ashkelon mall Wednesday was launched from the former Gaza Jewish fishing village of Dugit, which was evacuated and destroyed by Israel in the 2005 Disengagement for the stated purpose of strengthening Israel’s security.

Hamas-affiliated Popular Resistance Committees Spokesman Muhammad Abdel-Al told World Net Daily Wednesday that the attack, which wounded dozens, including children, was launched from Dugit, located along the coast in northern Gaza.

Dugit’s residents, mostly secular Jews who made a living fishing in the Mediterranean, left reluctantly, but without a struggle in 2005, when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his diplomatic plan to unilaterally withdraw the IDF from Gaza and destroy all the Jewish towns there. More than 9,000 residents were evicted from their homes in the operation.

At the time, residents and other opponents of the plan warned that the communities would be used as terrorist training camps and staging grounds for terrorist attacks.

Abdel-Al hailed Wednesday’s attack as a “symbolic act” that proved the effectiveness of PA Arabs’ policies of launching attacks on Jewish civilians to achieve concessions from Israel’s government. “Our launching from Dugit is a sign of success,” Abdel-Al told World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein. “Mark my words, just as we liberated Dugit, so we will liberate Ashkelon, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.”

In 2005, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon implemented his Disengagement Plan in which Israel demolished 21 Jewish towns in Gaza and 4 in northern Samaria, forcefully expelled the Jewish residents, and handed the Gaza area over to the Palestinian Authority.

In his speech to the Herziliya Conference in 2003, Sharon explained that “the purpose of the Disengagement Plan is to reduce terror as much as possible, and grant Israeli citizens the maximum level of security… These steps will increase security for the residents of Israel and relieve the pressure on the IDF and security forces in fulfilling the difficult tasks they are faced with. The Disengagement Plan is meant to grant maximum security and minimize friction between Israelis and Palestinians.”

In the mid-1990s, women in the former Yugoslavia were being systematically gang-raped. Often, their rapes were videotaped. Many killed themselves afterwards and many more suffered serious mental illness. At one point, I was preparing to testify about Rape Trauma Syndrome on their behalf in the Hague in the Matter of Bosnia. However, it soon became depressingly clear that both the necessary funding and the requisite political will were utterly absent from this Crimes Against Humanity court.

In the former Yugoslavia, men were not usually gang-raped. Many were tortured, and many were genocidally slaughtered. This happened on President Clinton’s watch and it took a long time and a great deal of persuasion before Clinton allowed America to become militarily involved. Europe did not come to the aid of its immediate neighbor. No Arab or Muslim country came to the aid of their Muslim brethren trapped in this treacherous war-zone.

The public and repeated gang-rapes of both girls and women had become a weapon of war and was no longer merely a “spoil of war.”

I published this piece in 1995, in a small, radical, very politically correct feminist magazine. The war-time rapes of women in the former Yugoslavia preceded the subsequent war-time rapes which took place in Rwanda and Darfur. In 1995, in this piece, I suggested that western feminists must hold themselves accountable for their own isolationism. The fact that I had published this idea in a small, feminist magazine did not rally the feminist troops.

In 2004-2005, I began to write about continuing western feminist passivity in the matter of the “politicized” gang-rapes in Sudan . Once again, feminists (and all other progressives) did not launch hunger strikes or send Missions into that Hell. Mainly Christian groups did that as did a handful of former American “peacekeeprs.” What happened this time was that I was attacked for publishing such ideas in a “right-wing conservative” publication such as Frontpage Magazine.

The more things change, the more they also seem to stay the same.

What is Justice for a Rape Victim?

By Phyllis Chesler

There she was, on the front page of the American newspapers, a 20-year-old Bosnian Muslim girl, hanging from a tree, a suicide, dead by her own hand, her death a cry for help. Our silence, deafening.

We cannot say: “We didn’t know, no one told us.” We know. We’ve seen it on TV, read the detailed reports, seen the photos. I knew, feminists knew what was going on in Bosnia. True, we had trouble sleeping over it, and some of us sent money, gathered evidence, drafted lawsuits, petitioned the U.N., counseled and consoled the victims, quietly helped rape-refugees to leave the country, but, as a movement, we failed to mount even one Israeli-style Entebbe-raid, even one mass “pacifist” action on Bosnian soil. We wrung our hands and waited for the patriarchal governments to “do something”: convene a war crimes tribunal in The Hague, bomb Sarajevo, lift the arms embargo, fight it out, man-to-man.

We are the Good Feminist Germans. We—and our respective governments—did even less in the matters of Rwanda, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Liberia, New Guinea, East Timor, Jammu, and Kashmir, Haiti.

In 1971, when I first heard that retreating Pakistani soldiers had begun to gang-rape Bengali women in what would become Bangladesh, I called for the rescue of “our own.” I had once lived in the Muslim world, I knew what would (and did) happen to those raped and raped-and-impregnated women. “Many will kill themselves,” I said, “if their brothers and fathers don’t kill them first.” I called for immediate feminist airlifts of the raped women.

The assembled feminists cheered, thought I was being funny, grandiose, metaphoric: unrealistic. As feminists, we had no place on earth to which we could bring our raped Bengali sisters—assuming they’d agree to leave certain death for uncertain freedom.

Well, it was only 1971, we weren’t yet organized, we had no Feminist Air Force, no sovereign territory, not even a parachute to drop behind enemy lines. It’s 1996, and we still don’t.

While the war in Bosnia raged on, millions of women, worldwide, endured rape. Muslim women in Bosnia were not the only Muslim women to be systematically raped by soldiers. In fact, rape has consistently been used as a political weapon against Muslim women by Muslim men for the past 15 years in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, India, Iran, and Pakistan.

According to attorney Karima Bennoune, from 1992 on, Algerian fundamentalist men have committed a series of “terrorist atrocities” against Algerian women. Bennoune describes the “kidnapping and repeated raping of young girls as sex slaves for armed fundamentalists. The girls are also forced to cook and clean for God’s warriors… one 17-year-old girl was repeatedly raped until pregnant. She was kidnapped off the street and held with other young girls, one of whom was shot in the head and killed when she tried to escape.” As in Iran, “unveiled,” educated, independent Algerian women have been seen as “military targets” and increasingly shot on sight. According to Bennoune, “the men of Algeria are arming, the women of Algeria are veiling themselves. As one woman said: ‘Fear is stronger than our will to be free.’”

I heard no outcry on their behalf—did you?—neither in the United Nations nor among Muslim nations. Of course not: These Muslim women “belong” to the Muslim men who are raping them. In Bosnia, however, men (Serbian Christian, mainly, but not exclusively) have been raping the wrong women: women who “belong” to other men.

The information coming out of Bosnia defies belief, confirms the worst nightmares of Second Wave feminists. The former Yugoslavia has been re-balkanized, cursed really, by paramilitary fascist/nationalists, virulent racists, misogynists. No matter who the aggressors were, their victims were mainly civilians. Male soldiers attacked civilians (who were often their neighbors) with a ferocity and hatred that was surreal. Male soldiers treated female civilians the way “kinky johns” treat whores, the way psychotic batterers treat their wives.

Perhaps this is what some men think is “manly” in the Balkans.

According to Alexandra Stiglmayer, the editor of Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbian male soldiers made their entrance cursing, often drunk; broke into houses where frightened women huddled; taunted, shoved, punched, slapped, beat the women; put cigarettes out on their flesh; cut them with knives; called them “whores”; demanded they “smile”; ripped their clothes off; raped them right there, where their children or mothers could see it; then herded the “terminally dishonored” half-naked or completely naked women away to rape-camps where many other soldiers repeatedly gang-raped the starving, naked, soiled women. Bosnian women were also kidnapped off the street, blindfolded, held in cellars/gymnasiums for one to three months, and repeatedly raped. Afterwards, they were often killed, although many were released, especially if they were pregnant with “Chetnik” babies. The men gang-raped 7- and 8-year-old girls to death, but did not allow the grown women to comfort them as they lay dying.

The rapists did not use condoms. They beat women if they thought they were using birth control. They filmed some of the rapes and they aired some live, both on radio and television.

Many—certainly half—of the rapes were committed by men whom the women knew. When the rapists were co-workers, neighbors, former teachers, they were harder, not easier, on their victims—especially if the women called them by name.

The rapists were not out of control; they were implementing Serbian military “ethnic cleansing” policy. They were only following orders. Yes, fascist/nationalist Croat and Muslim male soldiers raped women too, with as much ferocity, although on a smaller scale.

Some people say: “You see, both sides did it.” No, “both sides” did not do it. Only men raped women, women did not rape men; only men, not women, did the killing.

What did Bosnian Serb Christian soldiers do to civilian men between the ages of 16 and 60? In a ghastly replay of World War II, the soldiers ordered the men/Gypsies/Jews out of the house, lined them up, shot them in the street, or marched them out of town and shot them down into mass graves. Those men “lucky” enough to survive endured beatings, starvation, and hideous tortures in concentration camps. Serbian soldiers sometimes castrated and killed those Serbian men and boys who refused to systematically rape women.

The soldiers slaughtered the able-bodied men outright and they sentenced the women to living deaths.

This is the behavior of ghouls, not men. Ah, the ghouls are men. What conclusions are we to draw?

A number of jurists and intellectuals are eager to see rape tried as a war crime and as a human rights violation; I am too. However, I am more convinced than ever that all rape is a political crime against female humanity, not just in Bosnia, but everywhere; not just in times of civil or national war, but also in times of so-called peace; not only when it occurs between strangers, but among intimates. At the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, some feminist lawyers wanted to amend the Geneva Convention to say that “any rape, not just mass rape in war, is a crime.”

Rape is “gender cleansing.” The intended effect of rape is always the same: to utterly break the spirit of the rape victim, to drive her out of her body and out of her mind so as to render her incapable of resistance. Rape has been systematically used by men of every class and race to destroy their own women and the women of enemy-men. This terrorist tactic, coupled with childhood sexual abuse and shaming, works. Most women do not resist, escape, or kill their rapists in self-defense. When women do, they are often killed by their rapists, jailed for long periods of time, or executed. (In the fall of 1995, Sarah Balabagan, a Filipino maid, was condemned to death for having killed her employer-rapist in Abu Dhabi.)

In Beijing, the Bosnian Ambassador to the U.N. said he “could find no [raped] woman in condition to speak.” Alexandra Stiglmayer found the (Bosnian) raped women “broken,” “intimidated,” “withdrawn,” “crying,” “afflicted with nightmares,” “insomnia,” “depression,” “panic disorders,” “suicidal.” Stiglmayer says: “Most of the rape victims [in Bosnia] are broken, not thinking about revenge, for the horror of their rape and expulsion has also taken away whatever power of resistance they might have had.” In addition to these typical peacetime Rape Trauma Syndrome symptoms, Zagreb psychiatrist Vera Folnegovic-Smalc also noted “anxiety, inner agitation, apathy, loss of self-confidence, an aversion to sexuality. Rape is one of the gravest abuses, with consequences that can last a lifetime.”

According to Karima Bennoune: “Terrorist attacks on women [in Algeria] have had the desired effect: widespread psychosis among the women; internal exile—living in hiding, both physically and psychologically, in their own country.” In Bennoune’s view, “the collective psychosis” is due to the “escalation of violence” by the “soldiers of the Islamic state.” According to Michael Curtis, M.D., an American volunteer-physician for Doctors Without Borders, “In Bosnia’s Tuzla camp, the leading cause of death is suicide, probably the only refugee camp in the world where that is the case.”

Many raped women do go on with their lives; they have to, there’s no alternative. Many raped women dislike, intensely, the idea that they have been “diminished,” victimized, wounded, by a hateful assault.

Many survivors of rape, torture, and genocide say that the most lasting and haunting harm resides not only in the atrocity itself, but in how others, afterwards, have dealt with it. Survivors are haunted by those who heard the screams but turned their backs; those who blamed the victim and collaborated with the rapist/torturer/killer; those who minimized, or exaggerated, or merely misunderstood what rape or torture is about; those who preached, authoritatively, righteously, against revenge, but envisioned no justice.

Women and men can survive the rape/torture: if they are believed; if others are outraged on their behalf; if others denounce and attempt to stop the atrocity. Thus, the victims of rape and torture are more upset by what “good” people fail to do than by the crimes actually committed by the “bad guys.” Sins of omission are psychologically experienced as greater than sins of commission. (The mothers who stood by and did nothing as their daughter or son was being incestuously abused are “hated” even more than the abuser.)

Women’s hearts, men’s hearts, are irretrievably broken when “good” people default on the dream of a common, moral humanity (we are all connected; what happens to one happens to all) and do nothing, or promise to help, then do nothing. At the Beijing conference, Bosnian Munira Hadzic said: “It’s the shame of the world. We were promised U.N. protection and we were abandoned.” New Yorker writer David Rieff quotes a Bosnian: “For me, the U.N. is worse than the Serbs. At least, the Serbs admit they are our enemies… Don’t write any more books about us, you bastard. Give us back the guns the U.N. took from us.”

Everyone watches, no one stops the male violence. It’s the Kitty Genovese phenomena. It’s also something new: namely, rape as spectacle, entertainment, warning. For example, the gang-rape on the pool table in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the male onlookers cheered the rapists on. As City University of New York Law Professor Rhonda Copelon writes: “War tends to intensify the brutality, repetitiveness, public spectacle, and likelihood of rape.”

When I was young, I believed that if “good” people only knew about the atrocity-in-progress, surely they’d stop it; that reason, sanity, justice would prevail. I’m older now and I understand that stopping the atrocity is rare, miraculous, difficult; that “good” people—you and me—have our own sorrows, limitations, crushing responsibilities to contend with; we earn our daily bread, fall in love, fall ill, reach for joy, die, while Auschwitz smokes, Rwanda hacks itself to death, Bosnia surrealistically destroys itself.

Indifference is worse than hate. Evil flourishes when it is ignored. If we each do what we can do it will make a difference.

Because stopping the atrocity-in-progress is so difficult, it is crucial that women learn how to defend ourselves, not wait for others, men, to “protect” us. How many women (and men) need to be raped and killed before women and/or feminists are ready to start thinking strategically, militarily, planning ahead for the rape-free survival of the coming generations? There is no point in waiting for the “good” men to rescue us. The information is in: they can’t. We may even have to rescue them. There is no point in baring our throats to the rapists as a way of showing them that we won’t “stoop to their level”; our self-sacrificing example fails to educate them.

I think of Phoolan Devi, the real-life Indian Bandit-Queen who, in 1980, was gang-raped for three weeks by 22 higher-caste men who then paraded her naked through the village; Phoolan became a bandit and killed all 22 gang-rapists. Phoolan: We need your fighting tiger-spirit! As yet, not a single raped Bosnian woman is known to have picked up a gun to defend herself—although many have wanted to. (Also, there is an arms embargo on.) Some Bosnian women have joined the armies, but most have children and aging parents to take care of. One woman said: “I cannot pick up a gun but I can tell about what happened.” This is a very brave thing to do.

More important: Not a single feminist organization has organized a military and/or a pacifist raid into Bosnia (or Algeria, Iran, Pakistan, Thailand, Korea, the United States) to rescue raped women being held hostage in rape-and-death camps and brothels.

Most white middle-class women I know, myself included, have been carefully taught to prefer being hit to having to hit. We’d rather die than kill—even in self-defense. Worse, some of us are convinced that our inability to defend ourselves somehow constitutes a free choice, a moral virtue, a political philosophy. We don’t know the first thing about how to hit, disarm, or kill someone who’s attacking us; we’d have to be carefully taught.

Only someone who lives in her body, who occupies it fully, who knows how to fight—but refuses to do so—can freely choose to practice pacifist politics. That’s not most raped women, feminists included. They’re possessed, colonized. They’ve chased most of them right out of their bodies; they’re nothing but bodies, but they are not in there anymore; they’re elsewhere, in a fog, in a fugue state, disassociated: Hitler’s Housekeepers, Stalin’s Sweeties.

Pacifists are not passive; they put their bodies on the line, actively, aggressively; they risk poverty, illness, jail sentences, beatings, even death, in unarmed political confrontations. They are physically very brave. Gandhi’s followers chose to stop the British trains with their bodies, not with bullets. They acted vigorously and collectively and hoped that the train engineer’s humanity would, at the last moment, compel him to stop the train.

Three million pacifists did not converge on Bosnia, lay their bodies down, refuse to move until the men put the guns away, their penises back in their pockets, their heads in their hands, and a terrible lamentation was heard in the land….

Given how prevalent rape is, in both war and peace, why do we resist teaching women how to defend themselves? In Bosnia, not only are Serbian soldiers raping women, Muslim, Croatian, and U.N. soldiers (!) are also raping vulnerable “enemy” women. Attorney Catharine A. MacKinnon noted: “This pointedly poses a problem women have always had with male protection: Who is going to watch the men who are watching the men who are supposedly watching out for us? …the U.N. [male] presence [in Bosnia] has apparently increased the trafficking in women and girls… Perhaps intervention by a force of armed women should be considered.”

A note of realism: OK, let’s think globally, act locally. Bosnia really is far away. But here in New York where I live, why don’t feminists, both male and female, form neighborhood patrols against rape? Why don’t we help the police keep Central Park and Prospect Park rape-free for joggers?

It is up to us to stop the rapists. I am not suggesting that civilians form illegal vigilante “revenge” squads. I am suggesting that women begin to understand—really understand—that no one will rescue us but ourselves. And we don’t know how to do that. And we’d better start thinking about it. And about what constitutes justice in the matter of rape.

Let the Criminal and Civil Tribunals begin. For the first time in history, rape is being defined not as the “spoils” of war but as a weapon of war and a war crime. An International Criminal Tribunal, convened by the United Nations, is meeting in the Hague to hear evidence of the mass rapes, rape-impregnations, and other genocidal atrocities in Bosnia. Some people hope that our global perception of rape may shift, radically, once it becomes known that rape is not merely a “personal misunderstanding” between a rapist and his victim but is, rather, a crime against humanity and a war crime.

Even though the U.N. Tribunal does not have the power to impose the death penalty or to ensure that those who gave the genocide and rape orders do not remain in power, it’s crucial that the U.N. Tribunal indict and convict rapists as war criminals. Rhonda Copelon noted that “the recognition of rape as a war crime is a critical step toward understanding rape as violence.” Harvard Law School professor Nancy Kelly said: “If we can get an international body to recognize rape as an act of torture, that could change things for women all over the world.”

Clearly, the evolving legal status of women may influence our global views of rape. Women were once expected to marry their rapists; this is no longer true. Women were once advised to “keep quiet” about being raped; this is no longer true. In the past, when women attempted to have their rapists prosecuted, they were rarely believed or treated humanely in the courtroom—where most were “raped” again, this time legally. This is somewhat less true today.

Some people believe that the entrance of women into military, religious, athletic, corporate, and blue-collar trades, i.e. into previously all-male arenas, will either inspire more fear or more respect for women as a class or caste; and that this, in turn, might decrease the incidence of rape; others have said that “backlash” rape is upon us precisely because women are daring to enter previously all-male professions. Some say there is no “backlash,” only more reports of rape and better record-keeping.

Let’s look at the historical record: Neither the Nuremberg trials nor Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem made the world genocide-free. At a 1995 conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, Walter Rockler, a former Nuremberg prosecutor said: “The principles established at Nuremberg had important symbolic value, but no substantial impact.” Henry King, Jr., pointed out the “value of finding that slaughtering Jews, Gypsies, and homosexual and mentally retarded people was not an internal matter for the German government. National sovereignty was no defense.”

Simon Wiesenthal, in Justice, Not Vengeance, has written: “Hitler not only murdered millions of Jews and millions of his adversaries, he also morally destroyed millions of Germans and millions of Austrians—what’s more, for generations to come. To belong to the victims is terrible—but it is even more terrible to belong to the victim-makers.” In addition to the civil and criminal prosecution of war criminals, Weisenthal recommends a “constant coming to terms with the past, and learning from it.”

What do raped women and men experience as essential to their survival and dignity?

Bearing witness is important; being supported, not punished for doing so, especially by other women, is also important. Putting one’s suffering to use—educating and supporting other victims—is important; drafting, passing, and enforcing laws is important, as is continuing to hope that law is indeed a civilizing force.

Some say that there can be no justice without honor, and no honor without memory—without the literal creation of memorial monuments both to women victims and heroes. More than a decade ago, grassroots feminists tried to found a Rape Museum; for a number of reasons, the attempt foundered. Nevertheless, many artists have begun and continue to explore this subject.

Some victims of rape and torture want to see their tormenters die; after all, these are men who, quite literally, enjoyed their victim’s pain and suffering; that’s precisely what they were after. Perhaps irrationally, some raped women want their torturer or rapist to understand the meaning of what he did—and admit it, apologize, repent.

Some raped women want to see their attackers/rapists go to jail, whether or not they’re repentant. In addition, some raped women want to sue for money damages, for both symbolic and practical reasons (e.g. as a way of paying their medical and psychiatric bills). Some raped women, especially survivors of serial and gang rape or prostitution, have begun to arm themselves with mace, knives, and guns. Some have even saved their lives this way.

To sum up:

We need ongoing, well-funded, international criminal tribunals on crimes against women, with enforcement powers. The Hague Tribunal is in urgent need of additional funding. In August 1995, Dr. M. Sherif Bassoni, a leader of the U.N. Commission on War Crimes, told a U.S. Senate hearing that once they testify, the “privacy” of Bosnian rape-survivor witnesses “will be shattered” and their “safety seriously compromised.” The survivors have requested “relocation” and other “support services.” Bassoni stated that the “Tribunal needs more resources to protect the witnesses properly.”

Ideally, we also need: compulsory self-defense training for girls; compulsory military training for girls; swift, effective prosecution of rapists; civil suits, for money damage, in addition to but separate from criminal prosecution. (I suspect that cities and countries may begin to do something about rape when they are sued, successfully, for money, for having failed to prevent the rape.) We also need rape victims or would-be rape victims exonerated for killing their rapists in self-defense; rape prevention education.

A women is brave when she knows what can be done to her but despite such knowledge resists, helps other women anyway. A woman is brave when she resists the “good little girl” within; the voice that tells her to mind her own business, tend her own garden, don’t do anything that will get you in trouble, you’ll get caught, you’ll be sorry, you’ll be punished, no one will like you…

Women are safe if I am brave; I’m only as safe as other women are brave.

Otherwise, it’s open season on us all.

One reader’s important comment. She was unable to post this and has asked me to share it with other readers.

I urge you to read the powerful statements of Phyllis Chesler on misogyny, rape, anti-semitism and the abdication of moral and social justice by today’s so-called feminists and liberals.

Their refusal to acknowledge, much less confront, the demonstrable evils that have destroyed the lives and futures of women all over the world - from Bosnia to Pakistan to Saudi Arabia to Sudan to Turkey, to the religious Mormon brothels in the western US; and most recently in western Europe where islamic patriarchy and misogyny have been allowed to take hold in the UK and Netherlands - is a blot on this country and on all of those who preach human rights and then avert their gaze.

These issues are not issues of Left or Right but of humanity and its struggle to preserve civilization from the forces of evil. Tragically, these forces have their “useful idiots”: middle class women who shun victims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali; the male gender in virtually its entirety as it seeks to preserve its privileges; the post-modern deconstructionists who deny truth and believe evil is a relative and culturally dependent term; religious leaders pleading for peace but refusing to identify those who commit violence; and, not least, those in this country who every two years elect white collar male liars, louts and lechers to congress and then lash out at Hillary Clinton for (purportedly) being no better.

The double standard by which Clinton is judged - or Israel - or Islam - or all women - is rampant and detestable. But it is undeniable, and those who do not speak out as Chesler does bear responsibility for the continued lies and atrocities committed in the name of religion and male dominance

On a final note: the tremulous hesitancy of the world, and the UN, before the Myanmar government that is allowing its people to die, was prefaced by its refusal to confront Sudan, Rwanda, the Congo; the decision, finally and belatedly, to bomb Serbia and acknowledge its atrocities, is still decried by leftists in this country, led by the tribal chiefs of hypocrisy, Ramsey Clark and Noam Chomsky (the latter well known for his apologia for the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, the former for his unflinching defense of Milosevich).

Lorna Salzman