Are the FEMINISTS protecting WOMEN? Or are they just listening to the hysterical Jew haters?

The way the feminists went after the Orthodox is a crime. My mother did a lot of "Get" work. She was on the other side... and no doubt she is down stairs eating her pork, but I know in her heart she knows there is no safer place for women then in the Jewish community because Jews honor difference. Jewish women have a lot of power, not because of physical strength, but rather because community is where women's power comes from. Judaism creates a framework for goals and expectations. It is very clear and honest. Feminists take power through female supremacy. To think in terms of individualism is to deny the nature of women. Females are natural to a collective. The Jewish family is a collectivism that works.

Every few months, we are presented with media reports about Jewish women rescued from their Muslim husbands in the Palestinian Authority or within Israel.

The stories are always similar. The women were tortured by their husbands, often locked in their homes or under constant guard by members of their husbands' families. Either with or without the help of their Jewish families, they reached out to Yad L'Achim which rescues Jewish women and their children from Muslim husbands. Yad L'Achim volunteers plan and carry out often dangerous rescue operations and bring these women and their children to safety.

In January, Channel 10 presented live footage of one such rescue. Viewers saw relatives of a mother of four named Dana waiting anxiously at the Erez checkpoint as she and her children fled her husband and his family in Gaza and took their first steps of freedom.

During their courtship, Dana's husband showed her every courtesy. After their marriage, he began regularly beating her and kept her under around the clock surveillance. A visit to Yad L'Achim's website makes clear that her story is anything but unique.

Yad L'Achim's work in saving Jewish women from violent Muslim husbands is especially notable given the nature of the organization. It is an anti-missionary haredi organization led by Rabbi Dov Lipshitz. It is not feminism that motivates its members to save these women. It is Jewish law. And specifically, the halachic command of the ransoming of Jewish hostages. According to the organization, it carries out scores of rescue missions like the one that rescued Dana every year.

The question naturally arises, why do haredim dominate what by rights ought to be a field occupied by secular feminists? Why aren't Israeli and American Jewish feminists at the forefront of efforts to save these women from their violent husbands? Where, for instance, is the New Israel Fund? Its website brags, "The New Israel Fund founded or funded most of Israel's women's rights organizations and networks."

Obviously Yad L'Achim, which defends these women's right to live without fear is a women's rights group. So why doesn't NIF fund it? Yad L'Achim and other religious groups have been pilloried with allegations of racism in recent months for their public calls for Jewish girls and women not to date Arabs. In principle, these attacks seem fair. Blanket denunciations of Jewish- Muslim dating and intermarriage are problematic, even if they are justified from a religious perspective.

But whether one agrees or disagrees with the religious precepts that guide Yad L'Achim's actions, the fact is they are not saving a principle. They are saving women and children. Shouldn't that be enough to earn them the respect of the Left that is supposed to be motivated by concern for the weak and downtrodden? 

IN HER interview with Channel 10, Dana said that in Gaza, "what they do is curse the Jews 24 hours a day."

The fact is that both misogyny and Jew-hatred are facts of life throughout the Muslim world. This state of affairs renders marriage to Muslim men a particularly dangerous prospect for Jewish women.

But the feminists throughout the Jewish world are silent on this issue. And this isn't surprising. The egregious mistreatment of Jewish women by their Arab husbands involves two issues that the Left - which encompasses most feminist groups - is intent on ignoring: Islamic misogyny and Islamic Jew hatred. Just as the Left ignores, underplays, trivializes or justifies the fact that hatred of Jews is the most universal sentiment in the Muslim world today, so it systematically ignores, underplays or trivializes the endemic brutalization of women and girls throughout the Islamic world.

Take a purportedly feminist discussion of the impact of the Arab revolt on the position of women in the Arab world from ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour on Sunday. In a segment that lasted roughly 15 minutes, Amanpour said essentially nothing about the appalling lives of women and girls under Islamic law.

When Newsweek editor Tina Brown mentioned "the barbaric custom of child brides," in Yemen, Amanpour didn't ask her to elaborate. In accordance with that Yemeni custom, little girls are routinely married off to grown men.

When Iraqi women's rights activist Zainab Salbi noted that the key issue for women in the Muslim world is changing the family law that governs their societies, Amanpour didn't ask her what she meant.

What she meant was that under Islamic family law, women and girls are considered the property of their male relatives. And their "owners" can legally beat them and rape them and genitally mutilate them and force them into marriages they object to. If the women and girls are "disobedient," their male relatives can expect little or no punishment for murdering them.

Rather than discuss the real, truly life-threatening dangers faced by women and girls throughout the Islamic world, Amanpour presented her viewers with a superficial and false depiction of recent events in which a few well-dressed, perfectly coiffed, pretty young women in Egypt and two Western dressed women in Libya are supposedly transforming the position of women in their societies one tweet at a time.

It was a complete lie. But it wasn't shocking. It would have been shocking if Amanpour had provided her viewers with any relevant facts about the subject she was purportedly discussing.

The contrast between Yad L'Achim and traditional feminist groups and icons worldwide is statement on the state of the free world today. Whereas the feminists obscure the plight of women living in the Muslim world, a haredi group is saving women living in the Muslim world.

For years the New Israel Fund and countless other Jewish and non-Jewish leftist organizations have waged a culture war against the haredim for what they allege is their mistreatment of women.

Many women - both Orthodox and non-Orthodox - disagree with the position of women in the haredi world. But it cannot be denied that today haredim are the only ones rescuing battered Jewish women from their abusive Muslim husbands.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post 

via carolineglick.com

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BDS sewer system

This week (actually it's two weeks - from March 7-20) is 'Israel Apartheid Week' on college campuses around the world. 'Israel Apartheid Week' is designed to depict Israel as an apartheid state and to promote the BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement against Israel.
To help college students respond to 'Israel Apartheid Week,' NGO Monitor has mapped out the BDS sewer system (pictured above). Here are more details about it.

The “Sewer System” responds to the needs of Israel advocates, especially on college campuses, representatives from NGO Monitor said. “Students and faculty need accurate and relevant information to combat Israeli Apartheid Week and other delegitimization campaigns they face on campus,” says Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, a research institution that tracks NGOs. “IAW essentially is a series of ‘mini-Durban’ events – based on the strategy adopted at the 2001 Durban Conference that exploits human rights language to isolate and demonize Israel. This “Sewer System” map details and explains the complex network of non-governmental organization (NGOs) and their funders that lead this campaign. Most importantly, it is a tool for students to demonstrate the illiberal and ‘anti-human rights’ nature of the movements they face on campus.”
...
The Sewer System analysis presents a visual, connecting network of pipes between funders, NGOs, and tactics that sustain the BDS movement, NGO Monitor explained. Explanations are provided for each aspect of the movement, including the Durban Strategy, the history of BDS, and how this information can effectively be used.
The graphic of the Sewer System depicts the European Union, various governments, foundations and religious charities as providing the incentives and funds for NGOs, who then spread their ideas through mainstream, fringe, unionized and church group outlets.
“In some instances, the funders share the anti-Israel political agendas of their grantees,” the literature reads. “In others, the governmental and private sources assign funds ostensibly to promote human rights, humanitarian aid, democracy and civil society. However, NGOs divert this support to bolster BDS activity and pursue their own political agendas. Due to an absence of strict guidelines, oversight, accountability and evaluations of decision making, the funding continues year after year.”

Read the whole thing.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

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Best Mugshot Ever!

Half-cut: David Davis, of Newhaven, Connecticut, fled a barber shop after attacking a fellow customer with scissors, police allege

via dailymail.co.uk

Stamford Connecticut. Isn't that where Jerry Springer is filmed?

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Piers Morgan is Scum

before Piers Morgan was picked by CNN as Larry King's replacement, he was working as the editor of the Daily Mirror, and in that capacity he published more fake photos of UK soldiers torturing Iraqis. That got him fired from the Daily Mirror, but made him amply qualified for a high profile hosting gig at CNN, which suffers from even lower standards than the UK's trashiest tabloid. by Daniel Greenfield via docstalk.blogspot.com

Dictators' Wives

Bashar Al-Assad's wife, Asma...

Elena Ceauses

During the last few weeks, much has been said about dictators in the Arab world, but not as much about their wives. All of them have been living, and still do, next to their husbands, and playing a role similar to that of some European dictators' wives of the past, such as Elena Ceausescu, who, under her husband's regime, became a major Romanian political figure and, to prop up her image, even pretended to have made new scientific discoveries.

The wave of protests that shook the Middle East has put under the spotlight some first ladies of the region, many of whom, until recently, competed in who was the most elegant and the most socially engaged. Now, however, some of them have been forced to flee (taking with them tons of gold); others continue to live their golden lives, although with the fear that street protests might topple their husbands' regimes.

Bashar Al-Assad's wife, Asma, in Syria has been recently been crowned with a controversial article in Vogue magazine as an outstanding "glamorous, young and chic" woman. Notwithstanding her trendy status, she never showed any uneasiness about being the wife of a dictator who succeeded his father power in 2000, and is responsible for the torture and death of countless political opponents.

Libya’s first lady owns 20 tons of gold: reports via alarabiya.net

In Qatar, the beautiful Emir's wife, Sheikha Moza,

Sheikha Moza

is travelling throughout the Middle East and to New York to speak about democracy and reforms, when her own country does not even have an elected Parliament.

After the fall of the 23 year old Tunisian regime of Ben Ali, the international media have spoken at length about the former rais's wife, Leila Trabelsi, who started as a hairdresser,

Leila Trabelsi

and eventually reached stardom as "Carthage's Regent". While many of her countrymen do not have the means even to buy the daily bread, she bought a coat at Dior's in 2000 for 30.000 Euros and had the bill sent to the Tunisian Embassy in Paris as if it was her office.

Suzanne Mubarak

Sa'ad Eddin Ibrahim

Losing the title of First Lady just after Leila, was the Pharaoh's wife, Suzanne Mubarak. She has always tried to portray herself as an intellectual and socially engaged woman; she studied with Sa'ad Eddin Ibrahim, an eminent Egyptian sociologist, and an opponent to the regime. Even though she did not hold any official position, Suzanne Mubarak headed various "charitable" organization;. however, no public figure could become part of this sector without her consent. According to the French magazine Paris Match, Mrs. Mubarak received annually from the Egyptian for her activities US $5 billion, part of which – as reported by the French weekly – went directly into her personal bank account.
Egyptians contend that Suzanne Mubarak's campaigns were only meant to give her good publicity, particularly in the West, where she was widely celebrated. The most prominent Egyptian activist for Women's Rights, Nawal Saadawi, a medical doctor and a political dissident, said that Suzanne Mubarak, just like other dictators' wives, suffers from the same complex as her husband: she would like be the leader. According to Saadawi, Mrs. Mubarak killed the feminist movement in order to lead it, thereby impeding any possible progress for women's rights. During the uprising of Tahrir Square, she was often compared to Queen Marie Antoinette of France for her lavish lifestyle and for failing to be in touch with the reality of her country.
In the meanwhile, on YouTube, can be found a parody of a phone call from Leila Trabelsi in Saudi Arabia to Suzanne Mubarak: "We are one family," says Leila. "Take your stuff and come over here. But, before leaving, don't forget to stop at your bank; you will need some cash to save your bottom.".
Abdelmajid Mahmoud, the Egyptian General Public Prosecutor, must have taken this call seriously: he decided to forbid the Mubarak family to leave the country, froze their real estate assets, their bank accounts and their stocks. However, this satiric invitation of Lelila's may come handy for other first ladies in the Middle East, who may soon have to face the revolt of their chauffeurs and servants.

via hudson-ny.org

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NPR honcho begs media to help her keep the taxpayer-paid gravy train rolling down the tracks

so what is the public missing? The Israeli hate rhetoric and the speaking voices that sound like they are on Quaaludes. Goodbye and Good riddance.

The nice thing about riding on the gravy train is that someone else always pays for your ticket. At least that’s how we interpret comments made by NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller.

If Republicans have their way, Vivian Schiller is about to get her ticket punched on the gravy train

The Huffington Post has the details:

In a rare move, National Public Radio President and CEO Vivian Schiller appeared at the National Press Club on Monday to make a public case against Republican efforts to cut federal funding for public broadcasting.
The NPR chief executive not only argued that her outlet fills a void left by a wave of cuts to private media companies, she claimed that public-radio listeners in rural areas would have no other access to news if their stations stopped broadcasts.
As for the bottom line, Schiller noted that while government funding is just one source of revenue — approximately 10 percent, she said — it is a “critical cornerstone” and its removal would seriously hamper the outlet’s operations.
“We take this very, very seriously, it would have a profound impact, we believe, on our ability . . . to deliver news and information,” she said during a question and answer session following her prepared remarks. “If in fact federal funding were cut . . . then we would be going backwards and retreating on this 44-year investment that the American people have made in this incredible institution.”

So on one hand, Schiller argues that taxpayer subsidies are insignificant. A mere trifle. A few dollars here, a few cents there. And on the other hand, they are absolutely vital and losing those tiny little subsidies would be absolutely devastating.
Make up your mind, Viv. Which one is it?
Source: HuffingtonPost.com

via ihatethemedia.com

NPR made their bed. let them sleep in it.

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UN Watch's Hillel Neuer slams Libya on al-Jazeera

Here's an interview with UN Watch's Hillel Neuer on al-Jazeera English slamming Libya and the United Nations' treatment of Libya.  via israelmatzav.blogspot.com image via rnw.nl