Palestinians Compensate for Lack of Jew-killing Opportunities by Turning Against Their Women

... because their husbands won't let them.

Er... I mean: all they need is another way to vent their energy, like more sports and hooliganism. Doesn't Palestina have a soccer competition?

More on the need to maintain honour: A fatwa against George Galloway and Big Brother.

this article is absolutely hateful. it's obviously motivated by a desire to demonise Muslims and Palestinians rather than any concern for the victims of honour killings.

Another article by Ms. Lapkin.

Her point in that other article: "The number of rapes committed by Muslim men against women in the last decade is so incredibly high that it cannot be viewed as anything other than culturally implicit behaviour."

or: "it's their culture, stupid!"

When you were inventing a comparable Christian story, archer, you used the term "Christian fundamentalist", ie extreme, non-representative Christians. This article just condemns Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians as all sharing a murderous, backwards culture.

If you actually want to talk about the plight of women in the Arab world, post a reasonable article. I suspect, however, that you don't.

The authoress of this article did not stoop to explain the word "lucrative" in this sentence. This doesn't speak well for her professionalism and tends to cast doubt on the fairness of everything that follows.

Somehow I didn't expect this thread would generate the same kind of outraged response...

Heavens! These Palestinians! If they insist on acting like animals, then we ought to round them all up in cattle cars, put them in cages, then slaughter and eat them. It is only reasonable.

That better?

I think I make an interesting point, but you're free to dismiss it.

xpost

one can be right and be a troll at the same time.

Something tells me the facts of this event have been simplified into a grotesque caricature, in the service of promoting misunderstanding. Nothing says "propaganda" like attributing motives to actions, without sufficient foundation.

In fact, this one sentence (presented as a stand alone paragraph) is a marvel of interesting technique. The victim is a "toddler", which is an emotionally-laden adjective chosen to promote sympathy. Nothing wrong with that.

However, the rapist is described quite neutrally "a 25-year old man" with no other attributes given, as if the mere drab fact of being 25 years old was the only worthwhile thing to convey about him.

Finally, the family of the victim is specifically described as "Palestinian" and they are lumped all together as a faceless, unanimous group who collectively "let" the toddler bleed to death.

This last bit is really lovely. That construction manages very artfully to imply that the entire family was equally responsible and equally heartless. They appear as a collective entity only, without individual thoughts or conflicting judgments. It even manages to imply that the death of the toddler was foreseen as the consequence of their actions, and therefore the choice was not to "treat the child at home", but rather "to let the child die".

archer, you've been had. This thing, the more I look at it, is a concoction, a recipe, a contrivance, a trap laid for the uncautious reader. You fell in.

-- StanM (Stan10...) (webmail), January 21st, 2006 2:15 PM. (StanM) (later) (link)

Well, Nabisco has to move to Massachusetts first.....

you're not making anyone a service by making such ridiculous comparisons.

there is no reason to try and equate them.

This paragraph says 'Arabs'. I'm confused - which group should I be outraged at - Arabs or Muslims??

but that doesn't mean that honor killing is the same as isolated murders. they're different in very important wasy, such as that there are justifications for honor killing, that it can be socially acceptable or encouraged, and that it sometimes goes unpunished. driving your kids into a lake in the us doesn't work that way.
honor killing is not something made up by racists who hate islam, even though this particular article is bullshit. it's really unfair to the women hurt by it to be so relativistic as to say that we can't say anything negative about it until our society is perfect and all inequalities between countries and ethnic groups vanish.

http://www.diamondtalk.com/forums/images/smilies/83/fite.gif

Too late.

(Give It Wings And A Quiff)

http://www.ffuniverse.nu/ffta/img/04.jpg

"Someone call for a good servicing?"

But black American culture doesn't celebrate the rape of white girls. Palestinian culture DOES celebrate the slaughter of Jews. It would be a good analogy otherwise.

No disrespect was intended, because his intentions were directed elsewhere.

Arf, yeah but see how everyone here is arguing against phantom liberal positions that no one has ever expressed? I haven't seen a single soul here claim to be so sensitive to culture that he or she approves of honor killings. My guess is that most people here would favor any practical actions that would bring them to an end; "cultural sensitivity" is not making anyone okay with this practice, or even making them suspend judgment.

But by analogy: I feel similarly (if to a different extent) about the death penalty in my own country. And -- similarly -- I wouldn't hesitate to point out that the reasons we have a death penalty involve a lot of pervasive culture stuff that's wound into every one of us: not "a few bad apples," but a way of thinking -- a way of thinking that I myself am a product of! So what do I condemn: the entire project of American culture? Including myself? No, I criticize the strains of thinking in this culture that create that stuff, the parts that make our culture "worse." This is the only way you can deal with culture, because you can't make it go away -- you can't replace it with some kind of neutrality, and you can't embarrass and condemn people into choosing a new one! The only fair rhetoric here is to condemn actions first and strains of thinking second; the only fair approach is to hope to advance and reshape a culture. Because when you tell a populace that its culture is simply wrong -- that you condemn each and every pocket of its thinking -- then you are implying that there's only one solution: you're implying that the culture needs to go away. And since the culture is inextricably linked with the people, you are advocating -- by a series of extensions -- something a little bit like genocide. This is the extreme of the project that Archer has going, see?

Yes. See my first post in re: cattle cars.

"Islam ... should be proscribed"

"should be banned"

"they should be barred from contact with more civilised people"

"there is NO alternative ... other than refusing to tolerate the presence amongst us of large Islamic populations"

how exactly this could be done s/he won't say, but history provides plenty of unfortunate examples.

(xpost HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA yes)

I find that completely ridiculous, considering the praise heaped on people who derailed the thread with accounts of their evening, recipes, etc. I was addressing Nabisco's points very precisely. And I still find his position shaky. For instance:

What I'm talking about is not an issue of "bad apples" or "a few troublemakers." It's about the difference between cultures and aspects thereof.

What does that mean, the difference between cultures and aspects thereof? Especially as Nabisco then proceeds to agree with my "warp and weft" definition of culture? Rather than explaining, Nabisco simply attacks a straw man version of me, dragging in "neutral cosmopolitanism":

What I think is peculiar is that your rhetoric is a bit baby-with-the-bathwater revolutionary; it presumes the possibility that people can abandon their cultures entirely and become a part of the supposedly "cultureless" western-cosmopolitan world you're consistently in favor of... What you're asking for should be cultural change, not cultural death

Where am I saying that people can or should abandon their cultures? Pure projection!

Nabisco's second statement is more reasonable -- I'm glad that he's abandoned the idea that condeming actions and not cultures, ideas and not people is "basic". It isn't basic at all, but extremely problematical. By agreeing to the "warp and weft" idea Nabisco seems to have retreated from the view that it's a simple separation to make. But his reformulation

The only fair rhetoric here is to condemn actions first and strains of thinking second; the only fair approach is to hope to advance and reshape a culture.

is wishy-washy in the extreme. The separation between actions and ideologies is less firmly stated, but persists as some kind of time gap. And it's still untenable. And how does a culture reshape itself when it's already expressing itself in everything it does? We know how cultures reshape other cultures; by invading them and imposing new governments on them: the US in Iraq. But is that "fair"? And didn't it involve, precisely, a certain amount of the genocide Nabisco is trying to discredit the cultural determinist position by associating it with?

I'd recommend this discussion about relativism, which touches on a lot of the issues in this thread (but not the recipes).

Momus makes an interesting point here - for the past, say, twenty years or so, right-wingers have had to 'package' their arguments through 'liberal' appeals. Why no one bothers to point this out to them, I dunno...

What this has done, in effect, is make the 'hard right' rather bitter and isolated, since to make any sort of argument that (superficially) validates personal freedoms and women's rights is somewhat emasculating to them.

But look, I'll clarify one thing. This thing should be fairly obvious, I'd think: it's quite possible to separate one aspect of culture from others, no matter how pervasive that aspect is. This is why abolitionists didn't need to argue that, say, men shouldn't wear pants, or American music should use a pentatonic scale: most pragmatic people start with the bits that are directly related to the problem, and work from there.

The bit where you're saying that people "can or should abandon their cultures" is the same bit where you think it's useful to "condemn" a culture based on its negative aspects. I mean, what the fuck, dude: what's the alternative? Usually when we "condemn" something it means we'd like people to stop doing it; apart from that the word is meaningless. And this is the difference I'm talking about: do you condemn the culture (and theoretically ask people to do the impossible, to abandon their culture), or do you condemn the specific strains of thinking you find problematic? Do you ask e.g. Palestinians to rethink their ideas of the roles and rights of women, or do you ask them to rethink the entire fact of their being Palestinian?

And yes, this means condemning actions and ideologies, not culture -- i.e., making the slightest bit of effort to separate the problems in people's ways of being from the entireties of their ways of being. (Just because this is "problematical" doesn't excuse us from the work of attempting it.) One thing you're gonna have serious trouble demonstrating to me here is how the latter has ever been anywhere near as effective in producing change as the former has.

When a person says "Israel does X" he means something specific -- the actions and policies in question are being carried out by a democratic state, a single entity. When a person says "Palestinians do X," he is talking about nothing at all.

You're only an "entity" if you have a specific form of government? Otherwise you're nothing, and nobody can say anything about your culture?

"if you really want to talk about 'liberal values,' one of those is to avoid condemning whole national or ethnic groups for some behavior that exists within them"

We can't talk about cultures, just individuals?

people of the same color and nationality as you are not the only ones on the planet who are separable as individuals... it does very little good beyond demonizing people to aim vague condemnation at a "culture" of separable individuals

Paradox: you're obsessed with judging individuals rather than cultures because you belong to the culture of the US!

(That bit was x-posted with your "simpler way of putting this".)

in most cases where cultures advance beyond their worst tendencies

Right, so we're getting to the idea of cultural condemnation here. But "worst tendencies" for whom? For you, outside the honor killing system, and outside the culture. Within Palestinian culture it may well be seen quite differently, as the word "honor" implies. So who is "stamping it out and working your way in"? It's a projected you, as you would be if you lived in that culture; a fiction, an impossibility. You from that culture would not be you as you think as an American today.

the fact that cultures consist of various individuals, all of whom can and do believe completely different things -- which has nothing to do with this "few bad apples" notion, and everything to do with Momus's strange hivemind notion that a culture cannot produce its own critics.

It's not a hivemind notion, it comes from the deconstructionist idea that language thinks us. And I don't think cultures consist of individuals who can and do believe "completely different things" -- as I said above, the fact that that's a specifically American view, and that you're an American saying it, tends to suggest otherwise.

I dont give a fuck about cultural sensitivity - the women themselves do not want to be raped by their own father and then killed because she dishonours him. They dont want their clitorises sliced off and vaginas sewn up. Please lets put this in a context of HUMANITY and not intellectualism or culture.

To be completely glib: won't someone PLEASE think of the women???

Killing yourself is also honor killing, alas.

Afghan women in the driving seat is a BBC news story in which a "liberated" (in every sense) Afghan woman takes a driving test. Her driving instructor, an ex-Taliban, fails her. She is then called a "prostitute", a "bitch" and an "un-Islamic whore" by some men who've gathered to watch.

"We have freedom now," she said. "But we are not free to enjoy it."

It's a sad story, and of course we "condemn" the men. But by invading this nation and offering a freedom which may finally only be illusory (because it's our conception of freedom, and at odds with the culture -- the freedom to drive around in cars rather than to get on well with one's fellow citizens), perhaps we've "condemned" it too.

And what would it take for this woman to become free to enjoy the freedom the Americans have given her by invading and restructuring Afghanistan? Isn't there a tiny hint of genocide in the idea that what stands between "having" and "enjoying" freedom is... Afghan men? Or, if not genocide, culturecide?

In other news --

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/01/22/international/22comics.xlarge1.jpg
Five of "The 99," from left: Mumita (speedy), Dr. Razem (a gem expert), Rughal (mystery powers), Jabbar (expandable) and Noora (sees truth).

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/international/middleeast/22comics.html

"The 99" is a new comic book with superheroes who embody the 99 virtues most Muslims believe God to possess. We can only assume that one will be called "Maher Shakirat (Palestinian woman killer)"

xpost Momus I have to say that last bit is brilliant

Invading countries wont fix it; declaring "our democracy" the solution wont fix it.

Women can, should, and will be the ones who will create their own empowerment and freedom, as we have always done and should never become complacent about.

I'd like to see more people far better versed in feminism than I obviously am not, put some of that focus on this issue, instead of going on about racism and culture and obscuring the real horror, the actual issue, as men always like to do.

"Let us refine your terms". No - let us, thanks.

Brilliant? Yeah see this is the part where I fail to see why Momus thinks he disagrees with me. My entire point of argument on this thread has been that putting "Afghan men" -- or even "Afghan culture" -- after those ellipses can lead minds toward genocide or culturecide, and even when it doesn't is completely useless in terms of solving the problem in question. My entire point of argument has been that what sits after those ellipses is something more like "ideas and behaviors pervasive among Afghan men/women and Afghan culture." And my entire point of argument has been that these problems get solved not by getting rid of Afghan people or Afghan culture, but by excising, as neatly as possible, the ideas and mentalities that are causing the problem.

but a part is not a whole, afghan men are made of more than oppression of women and so is afghan culture - for heaven's sake, afghan women are part of afghan culture too. yes, it is anti-relativist and probably insulting to people of a certain culture to attack certain types of behaviors or relationships, but i think it's ridiculous to imply that you can't separate that from the culture as a whole and therefore you must be attacking the culture as a whole. attacking discrimination against women in the us doesn't mean calling the entire economic, religious, and cultural history of the west worthless, it means trying to fix one element. it's wound up in many other things, but that doesn't mean it's monolithic and unchangeable.

But that is what I said! What I meant, in any case. I wasnt commenting against anything Nabisco said at all, I dont want to remove anyone from anywhere. I want women to gain empowerment.

I agree muchly with your post, all told, Maria :)

But this is a bit like saying "I want to increase public spending and decrease tax". If women are given more power than they currently have, it must come from somewhere. It must diminish someone else's power. Some forms of power might also diminish other forms of power.

For instance, the Afghan woman learning to drive gains the power of mobility (assuming she can ever pass the test) but loses the power a non-combative relationship with Afghan men gave her. Cost benefit analysis is required! And part of that calculation will be the question "Can the post-invasion administration guarantee the conditions under which I enjoy American-style empowerment, even when my fellow citizens, the men with whom I need to collaborate if Afghan society is to continue, resist it?" She might also ask: "Is the West really committed to my freedom, or is that just a figleaf used to conceal ethnocentric hatred of Afghan culture and religion and concern for the West's own strategic interests?"

"We don't like the way we treat women" = feminism.

"We don't like the way they treat women" = imperialism using feminism as a figleaf.

Just as

"We struggled to get the vote" = democracy.

"We bombed them to give them the vote" = imperialism using democracy as a figleaf.

The article that started this thread makes it very clear: criticizing other cultures (especially when backed up by superior military force, and actual invasion) is right wing aggression, whatever faux-liberal arguments it uses.

It's perfectly liberal to make moral judgements about cultural-ideological blocs (which might indeed sometimes correspond with national or ethnic groups), and indeed it's a moral obligation at times. If we don't do this we can't fight the things we disagree with; we become political eunuchs.

Yes, I'm conflicted on this. The relativist, non-interventionist part of me is at odds with the judgemental-political part of me. But I did follow that statement with a proviso:

But I also disagree (of course) with Archer's position. He fails to understand why "asymmetrical multiculturalism" (or "double standards") are necessary. They're necessary because we have to take into account all the power relationships in a situation.

This is where it comes down to "tough choices". Given the choice between Palestinian men oppressing Palestinian women, and Israel oppressing Palestine, the latter trumps the former. It is a vastly more worrying asymmetry, and what's truly offesive about the article at the top of the thread is that it not only fails to condemn the greater aysmmetry, but uses the lesser one to justify it. ("This... demonstrates the senselessness of blaming Israel’s Jews for the barbaric and primitive behaviour of Palestinian society.")