[WCUSP] ME women's worst problem = "the militarization of our men"

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

Mideast News Vivifies Women's 'Worst Problem'

By Pamela Ann Smith -  WeNews correspondent

July 20, 2006, Women's  ENews
http://www.womensenews.org/

LONDON (WOMENSENEWS)--Little noticed  among the vast media
coverage of the latest Middle Eastern crisis were a  couple of
dispatches by journalists highlighting the actions of  an
admittedly few women in Israel.

Given that it is an act of  considerable bravery to protest in
the streets at a time when their fellow  citizens were so up in
arms about the Hezbollah rocket attacks, I knew the  sentiments
of this handful of protesters would be shared by many  more
Israeli and Palestinian women who could not be there. After
all, I  had spoken during the past 30 years of covering the
Middle East to many of  these women--Israelis, Palestinians,
Arabs, rich and poor alike--who have  told me again and again
how appalled they have been at the seemingly endless  number of
wars in the region.

Tamara Traubman and Ruth Sinai-Heruti,  both correspondents for
the leading Israeli daily, Haaretz, pointed out at  the bottom
of their July 17 article "More Than 500 Protest in Tel  Aviv
Against Israeli Defense Force Raids in Lebanon, Gaza" that a
"woman's  protest was also held Sunday morning next to the
central Haifa train depot  where a Hezbollah rocket landed
early Sunday, killing eight people." The  women, they added,
"said that in the coming days they would be assembling a  new
group of Arab and Jewish women against the war."

Rory McCarthy of  the United Kingdom's Guardian daily, in a
dispatch the same day entitled  "Israeli City Shaken by
Hizbullah Rocket Attack," noted that "as the sirens  continued
to sound, a small group of women stood outside the entrance  to
the train depot to lodge a small protest against the fighting.
Yana  Knoboba, 25, a psychology student from Haifa University,
sat on the pavement  holding a banner that read in Hebrew: 'War
will not bring peace.'"

"We  don't want a great war in the Middle East," McCarthy
quoted Knoboba as  saying. "We want Israel to negotiate to
bring back our soldiers and stop the  re-occupation of Gaza. It
isn't about showing strength," she went on. "I  think strength
is making peace, not war."

Quaker House  Meeting

Three years ago, here in London, I was a guest at the  local
Quaker meeting house where a panel of eight women from Israel
had  been invited to speak. Having spent so much of my life
covering "men's"  activities in the Middle East--investment and
trade, oil and politics as well  as outright war--I thought it
about time I took a look at what women were  doing. The panel
included four Palestinians and four Israelis, all  from
divergent backgrounds: a poet, sociologist, historian, social
worker,  Christian, Muslim and Jew.

There were some quite direct, pointed  questions from the
audience about where truth, justice and progress lay.  Would
Israelis be better off without the occupation of the West Bank
and  Gaza? Would Palestinians agree to end suicide bombings?
The answers varied,  both among the Palestinian and Jewish
women, and amongst themselves, whatever  their nationality.

But when the moderator put the final question, "What,  in your
opinion, do you think is the worst problem you face?" the
answer  was surprising. One would have expected the Palestinian
women to say, "the  occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by
Israel since 1967." For the Israeli  women, one would have
thought the answer would be "security, a right to live  in
peace with Israel's neighbors and, above all, an end to
suicide  bombings."

Surprise Answers

Surprise, surprise. One by one, the  eight women stood up,
faced the 70 or so in the audience of mostly women  and
declared: "The militarization of our men." For the
Palestinians,  seeing their sons subjected to the cannon-fodder
rhetoric of ignorant  sheikhs, the test of manhood their teen
sons were exposed to when it came to  throwing stones, or the
death and injury of their fathers, sons and brothers  were the
key points. For the Israeli women, the brutalization of the
men  they must live with, their sons, brothers and spouses in
the Israeli Defense  Forces, was the main point. And, unlike
the Palestinians, Israelis are  required to serve in the
Israeli Defense Forces unless they can prove they  are
conscientious objectors or members of certain Jewish  religious
denominations.

Shades of Vietnam here? Just as then, members  of the peace
movement in Israel have highlighted the comments of  former
members of the Israeli military who have spoken out against
the  climate of opinion in the forces which, in their view,
disregards the value  of civilian life, whatever the faults on
the other side may be.

But  such sentiments must often be put aside by their fellow
draftees, they say,  resulting in a dehumanization of the
attacker as well as the attacked. The  result: as in the U.S.
in the 1960s and 1970s, there is a growing refusal by  some
Israelis to serve in the military, particularly when it comes
to  fighting in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Women Linked in  Conflict

What I wondered, yet again last Monday, were the Jewish  women
in Israel doing, and feeling? Were those women at the Quaker
meeting  house representative of their compatriots? And how had
the peace movement  there affected the willingness, of women as
well as men, to accept  conscription into the Israeli military
forces?

Further south in Tel  Aviv, Rory McCarthy's article gave me a
clue, and a sense of what might  really be wrong.

A quote he published from Abir Kobti, an activist in  Israel's
Coalition of Women for Peace, who was on the front line  in
Israel's capital city when Israeli police broke up their
peaceful  protest on July 16, said it all:

"We have learned from history that  military solutions don't
bring anything other than death and destruction. We  are
calling on the government," she added, "to regain its
composure, come  down from the tree, and solve these problems
with negotiations to save us  from more deaths on both sides."

In other words, cave men, of whatever  ideology, are no longer
needed.

[Pamela Ann Smith is an American  writer and journalist based in
London who has written about the Middle East  since 1968. She
is currently updating her book, "Palestine and  the
Palestinians, 1876-1983," and working on a new one: "Palestine
and the  Jewish Diaspora: A Woman's Point of View."]

Women's eNews welcomes your  comments. E-mail us at
editors at womensenews.org .

For more  information:

Israel's Coalition of Women for Peace  -
http://coalitionofwomen.org/home/english

"Palestinian, Israeli Women  Push Bilateral Talks"  -
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2753/context/archive

"Women's  Gathering Gives Peace a  Chance"
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2704/context/archive



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