Israel and Palestine: self and other, positive and negative; 2023
11 Gender and Family
FIRST DRAFT (2 pages)
Women and war
Women, religion and the Hamas attack
Conceptions about gender and family
Women and war
Women experience war differently from men. Members of the military forces are preponderately men. So when two military forces engage directly with one another the perpetrators and the victims are preponderately men. However when a military force engages with a civilian population then the perpetrators are preponderately men and a substantial proportion of the victims may be women. More specifically military forces have a preponderance of able-bodied youngish men and civilian populations include substantial proportions not only of women but children and older men and less able-bodied men. These general remarks apply to the current war, both to the initial attack by Hamas and to the subsequent actions of the Israeli Defence Force.
Women, religion and the Hamas attack
There has been particular attention to the Hamas attack on women on October 7th. The Times ran an editorial:
December 6th: “Rape culture. Hamas terrorists used sexual violence as a deliberate terror tactic on October 7.”
Reuters:
November 29th: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-commission-investigate-hamas-sexual-violence-appeal-evidence-2023-11-29/ Navi Pillay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navi_Pillay
UN Women
New York Times:
December 4th 2023:https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html
December 28th 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html;
Guardian:
December 5th: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/05/un-hears-accounts-of-sexual-violence-during-7-october-attacks-by-hamas
UN:
December 21st: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/12/1145032
Pramila patten https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/profiles/zainab-bangura
https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/about-us/about-the-srsg/
Conceptions about gender and family
The Times suggests that fundamental Islam has a particularly negative approach to women. This leads us to enquire about the approach of Islam in general and indeed the approach of all Abrahamic religions. Within each religion, there is a distribution of opinion and a major dimension seems to be the balance between tradition and modernity. In substantive terms at issue is the balance between liberalism and conservatism, in relation to social arrangements. In particular there are different conceptions about the appropriate forms for gender relations, and for family and household relationships …
In the section on the Nation I noted that the film Fiddler on the Roof and the earlier story in 1893 of Tevve the milkman and his three daughters. The father (and mother) sought to have their three daughters marry in the traditional way, an arranged marriage, where the parents, particularly the father, related to others in the community in order to arrange a husband for each of their daughters. The father as head of the household felt tradition granted him authority to choose on behalf of his daughter. However, each of the three daughters had chosen to form a relationship of love with another young man and persisted in marrying him … respectively the village tailor, the revolutionary and a Christian. Notably in the film, the father becomes reconciled with the first two daughters but not with the daughter who marries outside the faith.
Early on in the film, a song firmly establishes the notion of tradition:
Tradition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPEyTl_gRWs
Tradition in relation to gender and family involves the role of a matchmaker:
Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59Hj7bp38f8
Later, the three daughters argue for love. Towards the end the father and mother reflect on this idea in relation to their own marriage:
Do you love me?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSF8l_Yh_gY