(from my e-mail)
Dear Friends,
What sad times these are, and the string below reflects them. It begins, however with 2 items of interest apart from Gaza. The reports conclude with a seemingly calm voice from Gaza amid the upheaval and calamities occurring, although I hardly believe that anyone can be calm while experiencing what the Gazans are.
The initial item below is a notice published in Ha’aretz yesterday by the Israeli Department of Industry, Commerce and Employment, and informs us (by implication) that the State of Israel is by no means planning to leave the OPTs. Rather, the government is inducing more people to come, settle, and open up industries and businesses. True, the document below does state that “the Department has not yet decided whether or not to extend the grant to business enterprises relocating to Judea and Samaria , and this announcement is solely intended to gather data on which basis the Department will consider follow-up actions on this subject,” but presumably if a sufficient number of positive responses are received, the Israeli government will indeed encourage more to settle and establish businesses that employ Israelis. Note, by the way, that agricultural enterprises are excluded. In other words, the government is primarily interested in establishing industries and businesses, rather than agricultural communities. This suggests, as I have said before, that the Israeli government is planning to turn the West Bank from being predominantly rural into an urban copy of what Israel has become.
The second item is a report from Ynet about “a girl who bombed Gaza.” This report reflects the meaning of the term ‘feminism’ that most Israelis hold. The ideal of such ‘feminism’ is equality among the genders in the sense that females become copies of the Israeli ideal male, i.e., the Rambo type male—one who has been in the front lines in an elite combat unit. The ideal also includes not only this male image, but also the hierarchical structure of the military, and since the air force is the top of the ladder in the Israeli military, a woman who has become a fighter pilot, by implication, has reached the upper rungs.
All of this is contrary to New Profile conceptions of feminism. We do not believe that feminism means that females adapt to the current Israeli ideal of the male, or to any male ideal. Rather, we believe that feminism must have a different agenda entirely, and include males as well as females. We do not believe that women should strive to kill better, harder than, or as well as men. Why kill at all! Nor do we accept the hierarchical structure that Israel’s militaristic male world imposes on Israeli society.
But, before I get carried away into a lengthy description of New Profile ideals, let me return to the reports below, which deserve attention, since they update us on current events. The report that follows the one on the first female fighter pilot in the IAF informs us that the IAF this evening killed 3 teenagers playing soccer. I wonder if the first female pilot in the IOF was the pilot who killed the 3 teenagers, or perhaps she was the pilot that killed the family having tea in its backyard? I wonder if she feels good about committing crimes, just as does our present Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, formerly the Commander of the Air force, who when asked if he felt remorse about having a one-ton bomb dropped on an apartment complex to kill a single individual, murdering many others along with that individual (mostly children as well as a mother of 12, who was in her last month of pregnancy), stated that when he dropped a bomb all that he felt was a click as it left the plane, and that he slept wonderfully well at night. I wonder if Halutz is this female’s ideal, if she is striving to imitate the Halutz image. I wonder—well, in a brain-washed society, is it any wonder that the Halutz’s are the ideal!
Following the update on the 3 teenagers killed while playing soccer, are 2 more reports on Gaza. Then, finally, is Mona’s day-to-day life at home. If you enter her blog you can also read her experiences in the hospital (she is a doctor) and see pictures of patients in the hospital, too.
Wish I could say “enjoy.” But the least that we can do is to keep informed and also to inform others. We owe that to Palestinians and also to people in Sderot and surroundings who, though to a vastly different degree from Palestinians, do experience fear, and possible damage to structures, and evn the possibility of death from Qasams. Those of you abroad, please badger your politicians to pressure Israel to change! I don’t know when or how this is going to end. But it’s horrid, and promises to get worse.
Dorothy
[Go here to read the reports that Dorothy cited.]
[ Go here to view the notice published in Ha’aretz. ]