by Hillel Fendel
(IsraelNN.com) A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers' committee prize finds that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.
...
"In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences - just as organized military rape would have done."
The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers' eyes.
This is patently ridiculous. First, no amount of dehumanization can hide a woman's breasts and hips from a man's leer, no matter how racist he is. Second, studies show that most rapes are motivated by egotistical desires for power, not sexuality; therefore, dehumanization of Arab women would tend to increase the rate of rape, since the soldiers would have more occasion to champion their superiority and power.
If anything, then, the paucity of rape of Arab women by IDF soldiers shows that the soldiers view the Arab women as more human than other world armies view their enemy's women.
Even if not, it instead shows that if the IDF soldiers do view the Arab women as non-human, these soldiers have been, at least, conditioned to not act upon their racism, since one would naturally and reasonably expect dehumanization of Arab women to lead to their rape.
So either IDF soldiers are not racist, or they are but control their racism and do not act upon it; this is what the paucity of rape shows.
Cf. comments #1, 10, 13 there.
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5 comments:
Sorry, but you're out of your depth here. Nazi rape of Jewish women in WWII were absurdly low, precisely b/c of racial purity laws and dehumanization (l'havdil). Moreover, military rape is a different phenomenon than rape in a civilian context. Military rape is often ordered by commanders as a type of terrorism, or is the result of undisciplined soldiers breaking out into a blood-lust. Military rape is strongly connected to the sex-drive, whereas civilian rape is more based on power dynamics than sexuality.
As to the Hebrew U paper, I think you should read it. Hillel Fendel's Arutz Sheva "journalism" is no substitute for actually knowing what you're talking about.
I'll have to check in Nazi rape of women. Could it be discipline, however?
So if military rape is ordered as a type of terrorism, then why wouldn't the sadistic and racist IDF leaders order precisely that? They're already destroying homes and committing genocide, so wouldn't rape fit into this quite well?
And you say that military rape is sex-drive-related. If so, then again, the rapes would be higher; no amount of dehumanization can hide her physical contours.
As for reading this paper, I've got better things to do; the Protocols probably have more scholarly value. I'd like to know how the author determined that the soldiers' moral conscience and discipline wasn't a factor. Oh right, because thanks to unquestionable Orwellian Newspeak, it is unconscionable to question the truism that Israelis are racists committing genocide. The logic is so authoritarian and circular, it'd make the movie "Idiocracy" proud. (See this scene:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zUUUrMr4F8.)
It's also apodictic. I just learned that word from Rabbi Yuter's essay on Haredism, but it seems quite applicable here as well. Everything the Haredim do, in terms of stifling free thought (and relying rather on the regnant authoritarian wisdom), and in taking legitimate values far out of their proper proportions and values, is just as applicable to many leftists.
For example, I find it endlessly amusing that Bush was accused of being worse than Saddam, and yet it is deemed heresy in America today to even utter so much as a mild disagreement with Obama. Perhaps Obama is in fact a better president than Bush; that isn't the point. When Bush is compared to a mass murderer, and Obama is treated as the Messiah, legitimate free argument is not facilitated. Rather, matters are so ridiculously exaggerated, and taken out of proportion to the point of caricature, that free, independent, critical, and nuanced discussion is made impossible. It's rather intolerant, as well.
We're talking about the same sorts of leftists who indict IDF soldiers for firing warning shots in the air, after Arabs start stoning Jewish children.
What should the soldiers have done instead? Shoot the Arabs' bodies? Nothing? Thrown stones back? Join the Arabs in stoning the children?
It's things that this that make puzzle in amazement.
Rejewvenator, you need to do your homework. Nazi rape of Jewish women during the Holocaust was widespread. You may be thinking of the 1935 Nuremberg law that prohibited “extramarital intercourse between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood.” This was part of the Nazi ideology, which condemned rassenschande, or race mixing, but facts on the ground demonstrate that despite this ideology, Nazi soldiers perpetrated countless acts of individual and gang rape throughout the war as one of many ways of emphasizing their dominance and superiority. Note that this may partially have been directed at Jewish men to taunt them for being unable to protect their wives and daughters, and several Holocaust survivors have testified to being raped while their families were forced to watch.
Furthermore, your statement about so-called “military rape” makes no sense. Rape perpetrated by soldiers has no more connection to sex drive than does rape perpetrated by civilians. What sexual interest would anyone have in emaciated, flea-ridden concentration camp victims? Yet history shows that SS officers in concentration camps frequently raped their inmates. In one case, Dr. Hermann Stieve actually managed to pass off rape as medical research, justifying his atrocities in the name of science. He authorized junior officers to rape Jewish women, then executed the women and extracted their reproductive organs in a supposed attempt to “track the migration of sperm”. (It is unclear whether Stieve himself raped any of the women, but he did at least order others to rape them. After the war, he went on to enjoy a distinguished career and was looked up to as a respected physician.) The rape of female concentration camp inmates by Nazi soldiers was rampant, and in addition to outright rape, there are many documented instances of women who bartered sexual favors for food and other basic necessities. In most cases, the officers, not the inmates, solicited this bartering.
Anyway, this Hebrew U. paper is, as Michael so eloquently put it, "patently ridiculous." Did anybody notice that the author only interviewed 25 soldiers, and that she found them "randomly" through friends? What kind of research is that? Never mind the absurdity of her claims- I can just picture the Palestinian women holding a protest. "They don't even respect us enough to rape us!" You know the world must be coming to an end when the supposed pursuit of civil rights and equality leads to a demand for greater atrocities and bemoans the lack of such atrocities among a particular ethnic population.
I think this satire article says it all. http://israelisatirelab.blogspot.com/2007/12/sociologist-uncovers-new-israeli.html
Gila, thank you.
I didn't know any data on Nazi rape, one way or the other, so I didn't comment there. Thank you for enlightening us here.
There is a halachic concept that witness testimony is nothing, unless the testimony is accompanied by data of the time and place that the witness saw it. This is so that the witness can be made into an "eid zonen", a witness who was not there at the time and place of the supposedly witnessed events. That is, if "A" gives testimony, and "B" comes and says "A" was not there at the event (but rather, "A" was with "B" elsewhere), then "A" is an impeached "eid zonen". Now, if "A" never gives data on where he was, then his testimony is not testimony in the first place. Why? Because in order for testimony to be valid, it must be "zonen"-ifiable, if I may coin a word; "A" must have provided enough data that he can be impeached as an "eid zonen", in order for him to be a valid witness.
Similarly, it seems to me that the initial basic legitimacy of a claim can be established by comparing it to the claim that would be made in opposing circumstances, where the present claim is not applicable. For example, if people complain that IDF soldiers do not rape Arab women enough, then, this claim is valid, IF they'd cease complaining once the rape rate increases. That is, since they are complaining that there are too few rapes, then they should abandon their complaints, once their (apparent) desire is fulfilled. But if, come changed circumstances (in apparent satisfaction of their first claim) they'd make a different complaint (but still a complaint; eg., now that soldiers do rape Arab women, it shows they lack respect for the women), then this shows that the first claim was disingenuous. If the defendant is "damned if you do, damned if you don't", with the accusation, then *all* accusation is baseless, and it does not even warrant investigation by the judge; the claim is immediately baseless, and can be summarily dismissed, with neither trial nor investigation.
So, I'd like to see: how would this "scholar" respond to an increase in the rape rate? Would she be satisfied? If not, then her study is baseless from the outset.
Similarly, to establish a claim, we must examine what evidence there is, and what the difference in evidence would be were that wrong not present. This is actually the scientific method; if you want to examine the effect of a factor on a phenomenon, then you must first clarify what you are measuring, and how the measurement might differ. For example, if you want to measure the effect of temperature on plant growth, you must clarify how you will measure plant growth. If you don't know what to measure, what signs to look for, then your experiment cannot but fail to produce results. So here: the complaint is that soldiers fail to rape, due to a lack of respect for women. But everyone agrees that if the soldiers did respect Arab women, they still wouldn't rape! So where is the change in evidence? In both cases, the soldiers are not raping! So how can we tell the difference, in measurably objective quantifiable terms? This experiment has failed to clarify the method of measurement.
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