I could write my own opinions down. In fact, I do, with startling (to me, at any rate) frequency. But Phyllis Chesler does it so well….
[…]Instead, I took a deep breath and said that I did not respect people who hijacked airplanes or hijacked conferences or who, at this very moment, were trying to hijack this lecture. I pointed out that the subject of my talk was not Israel or Palestine. I did not want us to lose our focus. She grew even more hostile and demanding. “Tell this audience what you said on WBAI. I heard you on that program.” Clearly, she wanted to “unmask” me before this audience as a Jew-lover and an Israel-defender.
I took the question head-on. “If you’re really asking about apartheid, let me talk about it. Contrary to myth and propaganda, Israel is not an apartheid state. The largest practioner of apartheid in the world is Islam which practices both gender and religious apartheid. In terms of gender apartheid, Palestinian women–and all women who live under Islam–are oppressed by “honor” killings, in which girls and women who are raped are then killed by family members for the sake of restoring the family “honor;” forced veiling, segregation, stonings to death for alleged adultery, seclusion/sequestration, female genital mutilation, polygamy, outright slavery, sexual slavery. Women have few civil, legal, or human rights under Islam.”
I continued; “Islam also specializes in religious apartheid as well. All non-Muslims (Christians, including Maronites and Melkites, Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants, Jews, Assyrians, Hindus, Zoroastrians, animists) have historically been viewed and treated as subhumans who must either convert to Islam or be mercilessly taxed, beaten, jailed, murdered, or exiled. The latest al-Queda attack in Saudi Arabia was primarily directed against Lebanese Christians and Americans.”
I continued. “Today, the entire Middle East is judenrein, there are no Jews left in 22 Arab countries. And, the Arab leadership has backed the PLO strategy in which the 23rd state remains under constant and perilous siege. Historically in general, but specifically since 1958-1956, Arab Jews were forced to flee Arab Islamic lands. Most are living in Israel, the only Middle Eastern state in which Jews are allowed to live. Jews cannot become citizens of Jordan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, for example and yet no one accuses those nations of apartheid.
I said that Israel was not an apartheid state. I talked about real gender and religious Apartheid, as practiced by Muslims. I told the truth. Clearly, they had not heard it before. The audience collectively gasped. Then, people went a little crazy.
Someone muttered darkly, coarsely, in a near-growl: “What about the checkpoints? What about the fence?” As if checkpoints and fences are the same as being killed by your brother or father or, most recently, in Ramallah, in the Rofayda Qaoud case, by your mother (!) for the crime of having been raped–in the Qaoud case, both raped and impregnated by your mother’s two sons. I asked the audience if they thought that being detained at a checkpoint was really the same as having your clitoris sliced off, the same as being stoned to death for alleged adultery. The only response I got was from the first questioner who demanded that I denounce Ariel Sharon–but not Yasir Arafat–as a murderer.
I absolutely refused to do so.
[from Israpundit]
white pebble 