Enough from the men!

Wahat al-Salam Neve Shalom (Oasis of Peace Israel) – Maram Masarwi- 5 Jan, 2009

Maram Masarwi is a longterm resident of Wahat al-Salam - Neve Shalom.

ISRAEL: The appalling scenes on television have left some of us dumbfounded. What is happening in Gaza is a human tragedy and a war crime beyond comprehension. Another killing campaign from Barak’s death factory: “Cast Lead.” Evidently the stock of heroic phrases in the songs of the Maccabees was not enough for Barak, since he felt obliged to lay his pianist’s hands on a poem for children by Bialik, who is turning over in his grave at the crude brutality of using a classic children’s poem as the name for this bloody struggle. Such a gross incursion from the adult world – Cast Lead – into the innocent world of children is only one part of the masculine discourse that knows no boundaries, neither territorial nor national. Perhaps Barak was thinking about some particularly horrible revenge. If once they measured an eye for an eye, Barak, Olmert and Livni now weigh the lives of 300 Palestinians against the disruption of daily life among residents of southern Israel.

Indeed if we are dealing with a war, then once again the men are marching out in front, both on the battlefield and in the parade of commentators across our television screens. And once again the women – mothers and wives – are conspicuously absent from the decision-making process and banished from any chance of influencing the intolerable reality unfolding before us. We women are not bombing anyone from the skies above Gaza and we are certainly not launching missiles toward Sderot. . .

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