Pogrebin focuses mainly on the suffering of Israel’s women at the hands of Israeli and Jewish patriarchy. The women are suffering. Pogrebin is not wrong about this. But I despair when her emphasis suggests that only such evils are worthy of her deepest concern. To her, there is no “larger” jihadic war that has targeted Israel, Jews and the West, there is only the war against women waged mainly by – men? Jewish and Israeli men? American, Republican, warmongering men?
Pogrebin speaks for many American Jewish feminists who wish to escape the burden of being associated with an increasingly defamed Israel – with an Israel that has, in their eyes, failed to hear the cries of its most vulnerable female citizens.
Such Jewish left-feminists are reluctant to criticize the far greater barbarisms of the Islamic world, including its system of gender and religious apartheid, lest they be viewed as “racists.” But if Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, and al Qaeda have their way, the secular feminists of Haifa and Tel Aviv will be blown to smithereens together with their haredi and right-wing opponents.
To Pogrebin I say: Let us agree to balance our feminist criticism of Israel with similar criticism of other countries – and to never forget that such criticism will invariably be used against Israel.
(This article is dedicated to the memory of Isaac Meyers, z”l, who was hit by a truck in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while on his way to an early morning shiva minyan.)