By Phyllis Chesler

In the former Yugoslavia, men were not usually gang-raped. Many were tortured, and many were genocidally slaughtered. This happened on President Clinton’s watch and it took a long time and a great deal of persuasion before Clinton allowed America to become militarily involved. Europe did not come to the aid of its immediate neighbor. No Arab or Muslim country came to the aid of their Muslim brethren trapped in this treacherous war-zone.

The public and repeated gang-rapes of both girls and women had become a weapon of war and was no longer merely a “spoil of war.”

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By Phyllis Chesler

This was my first piece for Frontpage Magazine and I gave it to them only after both the New York and LA Times turned it down. A group of Israeli feminists wanted to show a film. The Swedish filmmaker absolutely refused his film to be shown in Israel. Within 48 hours of posting my article, Lukas Moodysson, the filmmaker, changed his mind and allowed his brilliant anti-trafficking film, “Lilya-4-ever” to be shown on a one-time basis at an anti-trafficking conference in Israel. Moodysson knew my work in Swedish and he wrote to me, furious that I had challenged his reputation as “prejudiced.” But he changed his mind.

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By Phyllis Chesler

How do we cut down on honor murders in the West? According to some people, you do whatever it takes to keep the girls from dishonoring their families so that their families do not have to honor-murder them.

According to the New York Times, “home schooling” the girls in America, re-creating a feudal, rural, parallel universe in California in which girls and women are kept hidden and apart, is the sensible, merciful alternative to honor murders in The New World.

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By Phyllis Chesler

I am perpetually stunned by how successfully the propaganda about Palestine-the-occupied-country has swept through the minds of educated western people and left nothing else in its wake but false images of Palestine besieged by Israeli “Nazis.” The “humiliation at the checkpoints” and the faux “murder of Mohammed al-Dura” burn brightly as eternal mental images while the relentless barrage of Kassam rockets against the civilians of Sderot remain non-existent images.

Yesterday, I wrote about Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s Orwellian defense of Ms. Magazine for having rejected the AJCongress’s pro-Israel ad.

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By Phyllis Chesler

In June of 1982, in the pages of Ms. Magazine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin earned her reputation as a Jewish feminist by writing about anti-Semitism among feminists. She did so by standing on the shoulders of other Jewish feminists who had been wrestling with this “problem without a name” since the early 1970s and whose cries Pogrebin finally heard.

Pogrebin’s article in Ms. Magazine was brave and she was, at the time, both attacked and disbelieved. But she was also respected for writing the piece. By 1991, Pogrebin had expanded her article about Jew-hatred among feminists into a book about Judaism and feminism, Deborah, Golda and Me. The book’s index contains at least 30 references to anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism and the women’s movement. There is also a whole chapter titled “Special Jewish Sorrows and Women and Anti-Semitism.” Since Pogrebin published her book, she has risen to prominence as a spokeswoman for all things Jewish and feminist.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Texas-born Patricia (”Tissie”) Said, formerly of the Owens family, is the mother who lured her two teenage daughters, Sarah and Amina, to their deaths at the hands of their own father this past New Years Day in Dallas. How can a mother do such a thing? Even if her own life was threatened, even if her husband Yasser had literally held a gun to her head and told her to trick her daughters into returning, isn’t a mother supposed to sacrifice herself for her children? Or at least to protect them? What can explain such a perversion of maternal instinct and of the life force itself?

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By Fern Sidman

Jewish Press Op-Ed contributor, Dr. Phyllis Chesler was the recipient of the 2008 Kehillah Award for Distinguished Public Service, bestowed upon her by The Academy For Jewish Religion at their gala dinner on Monday evening, March 10th. The resounding message of this year’s dinner was the call to continue to create an atmosphere of respect and unity amongst all branches of Judaism and was aptly entitled, “Embracing All Voices”. The dinner which took place at Manhattan’s elegant Harmonie Club was attended by several hundred people.

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By Phyllis Chesler

“I have been warned to shut up. But when Yasser Abdul Said killed those girls he did not just spill Muslim blood on American soil. He shed my blood. I am not going to be quiet. I made a promise at their funerals that I would speak out.”

I am talking to Gail Gartrell, the great-aunt of Amina and Sarah Said who were honor-murdered by their father, Yasser Said, on New Year’s Day, 2008. (I have written about this tragic case before for Pajamas Media HERE.)

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By Phyllis Chesler

There was a time when feminist groups did high concept performance art/political theatre as a way of shocking, enlightening, and entertaining us all. That time has not passed. In the past, the late, great art critic, Arlene Raven, kept me apprised of whatever Suzanne Lacey and others were doing—and they did great things.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I always suspected those communist murderers of being touchy-feeling feminists — you know, in a misogynistic, paternalistic kind of way (I’m being sarcastic). Seriously, these recent revelations about Mao Zedong only add further proof of what an evil megalomaniac he was:

Amid a discussion of trade in 1973, Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong made what U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called a novel proposition: sending tens of thousands, even 10 million, Chinese women to the United States.

“You know, China is a very poor country,” Mao said, according to a document released by the State Department’s historian office. “We don’t have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them, we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands.”

A few minutes later, Mao circled back to the offer. “Do you want our Chinese women?” he asked. “We can give you 10 million.”

After Kissinger noted Mao was “improving his offer,” the chairman said, “We have too many women. . . . They give birth to children, and our children are too many.” …

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By Phyllis Chesler

On Friday, February 8th, I wrote about Professor Noah Feldman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times in which he viewed a long-standing Turkish ban on the wearing of head-scarves in universities as a ban against religious “freedom.” On Saturday, February 9th, I noted here that on the very next day, February 9th, the New York Times (page A4) featured an interview with a Turkish woman lawyer, Fatma Benli, titled: “Under a Scarf, a Turkish Lawyer Fighting to Wear It.”

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By Phyllis Chesler

My headscarf is giving me a headache! What I mean, is that the issue of the Islamic headscarf is a tricky, thorny one with no hard-and-fast solution in sight precisely when one is required. Just yesterday, a dear friend challenged me on this very subject.

She said: “How can you favor the state forbidding women from doing something that they want to do for religious reasons?”

A fair enough question.

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By Phyllis Chesler

The East is much wilder than the Wild West of yore and once again, an infidel “do-gooder,” 49 year-old Syd Mizell, who taught English and embroidery to Afghan girls and women and helped them with “income-generating” projects , has been kidnapped in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Mizell worked for the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation. The fact that she wore a burqa and spoke Pashto did not keep her safe. The Afghan government is currently hunting for her and her 35 year-old driver, Hadi Mahdi, but as yet, no group has taken responsibility or issued any demands.

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By Phyllis Chesler

According to Las Vegas ex-prostitute Jody Williams, founder of Sex Workers Anonymous, we should compare the “promotion of prostitution with the way the tobacco companies market cigarettes. “They’re taking advantage of your ignorance of the industry,” she told the Pahrump Valley Times on September 7, 2007 at a press conference.

Williams said ex-prostitutes came to her organization suffering from a variety of physical and emotional disorders. “Women in prostitution suffer from the same combat stress that Vietnam and combat vets do, but they have fewer services than vets do,” she said.

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By Phyllis Chesler

The Grey Lady editors just slipped it right in there—the magazine spread was so big (eight pages,with eight huge color photos), and so unbelievable, that I actually missed it. I am talking about the Sunday New York Times magazine article about female genital mutilation in Indonesia.

Not until Dr. Andrew Bostom called it to my attention, did I stop, look, and let the headline sink in: “A Cutting Tradition.” I probably thought it was a rather long article about a recipe—not for a lifetime of agony, but for another way to cut and prepare a meal. Something Asian, maybe Fusion. The women’s faces were Asian faces.

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