LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN
LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN In Middle East politics, has "peace" become a dirty word ? Is it a red flag that makes mainstream Jews uncomfortable ? Amid all the contentiousness over Middle East politics,...
...Item: Discussing Middle East politics with an old friend, I argue that, for the sake of security, democracy and Jewish ethics, Israel should trade land for peace...
...Item: When an ad hoc group of Jews working toward dialogue with Palestinian Americans decides to give itself a name, a few organization titles are proposed and then rejected out of hand because each includes the word peace...
...We've got to stop thinking like ghetto Jews...
...Keep talking peace...
...We must not let them get away with it...
...I'm not a feminist but...
...I haven't heard the word traitor since the 1960s, when the search for peace was called treason and people who supported an end to U.S...
...Running scared from words like dyke, ballbreaker, manhater, and libber, we let the opposition redefine us, and we lost our political moorings...
...But none of these accommodations has made it any easier for men to renounce misogyny or for women to achieve their goals...
...Self-censorship is the beginning of the end of political discourse...
...These days, peace is a red flag," says one of the planners...
...Couching a political attack in a challenge to one's gender is a pernicious but proven strategy to which many Jews seem vulnerable...
...It makes mainstream Jews uncomfortable...
...Traitors...
...LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN In Middle East politics, has "peace" become a dirty word ? Is it a red flag that makes mainstream Jews uncomfortable ? Amid all the contentiousness over Middle East politics, you may have missed one subtle but ominous development in the American Jewish community: Peace is becoming a dirty word...
...Let's call a spade a spade: You people are sell-outs...
...And if it's childish to want an immediate start to the peace process, does that mean the glacial rate of Likud's foot-dragging epitomizes maturity...
...Traitor-baiting censored Vietnam peace activists and if that didn't work, the guardians of patriotic patriarchy rolled out their big guns—symbolic emasculation...
...POCREBIN continued from page 59 To every Jew who still believes that the pursuit of peace is not an expression of sexuality but a courageous search for nonviolent solutions—this is a warning...
...Rabid critics of sexism were eclipsed by polite petitioners for "equality...
...The pattern is familiar...
...Peace is just another word for surrender," interrupts my friend with uncharacteristic impatience...
...And while our side has begun to cave in, shying away from words like due process, free elections and negotiated settlement, their side has begun saying aloud formerly unspeakable words like transfer, expulsion and annexation...
...If peace-seeking is arrogant, what do we call Shamir's stubborn rejectionism...
...What is surprising is the transmogrification of their fury into sexual slander...
...Anyone who hasn't succumbed to historical amnesia ought to recognize the syndrome and nip it in its noxious bud...
...Jewish men scream, "whores of the Arabs," "All you girls need is a little rape" and far worse obscenities...
...In the mid-1970s, after years of sexual bullying and ridicule, some women gave up the fight and others softened their radicalism...
...snarls a man with a face like a fist...
...became the disclaimer of the cautious reformer...
...Softies...
...The others readily agree...
...Can it be an accident that Ezer Weizman's book title, "The Battle for Peace," employs a warlike term to toughen up the "p" word...
...Don't do the hardliners' work for them...
...You can't win for losing...
...Today, in some quarters, those of us who promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians are being similarly castigated, and support for an end to the occupation of the West Bank is branded anti-Zionist...
...In Israel, some men have even turned violent and the police have been less than protective of the demonstrators...
...We've got to stop compromising...
...It's no surprise that such protests infuriate the right...
...Just as male peaceniks are not real men, female peaceniks are not real ladies...
...At a time when napalm was mother's milk to macho men, the ultra-right attacked the anti-war movement as a bunch of soft, sentimental, sissified, timid, cowardly, lily-livered liberals...
...Women are not immune to attack, either...
...Item: Leaders of American Friends of Peace Now entertain the idea of changing that group's name on the grounds that demanding peace now sounds "arrogant and childish...
...The Jewish right has already accomplished the impossible: they've marginalized our centrists...
...Item: At a meeting sponsored by a Jewish organization, I am introduced as someone active in several Mideast peace groups...
...they are whores...
...Feminists learned the hard way that the first step in retreat is to accommodate one's language to the criticism of one's opponents...
...For example, despite the ravages of the intifada, inflation, unemployment and depressed morale, they've insisted that only whiny, self-hating Jews would focus on Israael's problems or flaws...
...They've made moral introspection the province of wimps, and media-bashing a badge of Zionist honor...
...Red-baiting silenced progressives of the 1950s...
...What do you mean, peace groups...
...The National Organization for Women disowned lesbian issues...
...Today, we're beginning to hear the same litany of "feminized" adjectives applied to Mideast peace activists, as if an end to bloodshed can only be the daydream of a "girly-man"—as if "real men" don't seek peace...
...involvement in Vietnam were investigated by the FBI...
...Those who protest Israel's occupation of the territories by standing in vigil with a group called "Women in Black," whether in New York, Jerusalem or Haifa, have been subjected to incredibly abusive language, much of it sexually defamatory...
...The feisty label, "women's liberation" was replaced by the innocuous "women's movement," and women's demands were made less "selfish" and more palatable by calling them family issues...
...They've made peace activism seem impotent and intransigence virile...
Vol. 15 • February 1990 • No. 1
