Saturday, November 25, 2006
FEMALE ACTIVISTS MOBILIZED
An Hamas granny may have blown herself to pieces, but, as Associated Press reports, Palestinian feminists still face many years of struggle before liberation is achieved:
A grandmother-turned-suicide bomber, a small army of women marching into a battlefield, thousands of veiled volunteers hitting the streets in an election campaign - the Islamic militant group Hamas is increasingly mobilizing its network of female activists.
Correction to my intro: the grandmother wasn’t blown to pieces. She was mobilized.
Yet the Hamas women, known as the Sisterhood, say such high-profile missions have not changed how the group is run: the men make decisions, the women have a supporting role, at best.
It’s so unfair. Why should men get to kill all the Jews?
But even in the rigidly conservative [ahem—ed] movement, whose manifesto defines women as “manufacturers of men,” some female activists are demanding a say in politics and in Hamas’ military wing, which has carried out scores of deadly attacks against Israelis in recent years.
Say it loud, sisters! Say it explosively loud!
A suicide bombing on Thursday by a 64-year-old grandmother who blew herself up [was “mobilized”—ed] near Israeli soldiers in Gaza was an exception, not the rule, said Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’ military wing. He suggested she was chosen because it would have been more difficult for a man to approach the target.
Mere tokenism. True equality will only come when the Sisterhood lies dead and bleeding all over the Middle East. Also, what’s with the sexism of that 72 virgins deal? (By the way, note the hilariously mild headline on this piece: “Hamas women seek bigger political role”.)
UPDATE. Oh, this is just lovely. LGF reveals that AP’s writer, Diaa Hadid, is Australian—and so hateful of Israelis she can’t stand to look at them:
The intensity of Hadid’s involvement over the last nine months has had a strong impact on her views. When she first arrived in the Middle East, Hadid expressed a desire to make more Israeli friends. Now she has trouble separating the personal from the political.
“I can’t look at Israelis anymore. I can’t separate your average Israeli citizen from the occupation, I don’t want to be friends with them, I don’t want to talk to them,” says Hadid.
Allowing Hadid to report from the Middle East is like allowing a Klansman to report from Alabama in 1963.
UPDATE II. Canada’s National Post on Hamas’s gran-based terror tactics:
The good news is that al-Najar was unsuccessful: She didn’t kill anyone except herself. And we suppose it’s also good news that Hamas is so short of recruits that they must now resort to brainwashed grandmas—much as the Nazis conscripted young boys and old men in the waning days of the Second World War.
The bad news is that—well, the bad news is that there are Muslims on this earth who think Allah wants them to turn grandmothers into walking bombs. It seems the harder Israel and the rest of the world try to give the Palestinians their own country, the harder they try to prove that they don’t deserve one.
Some grandmothers choose life.