Women who fan the flames of hatred

Often it’s nothing but word salad—a stringing together of propagandized soundbites meant to elicit cheers, applause and return engagements.

by Phyllis Chesler

Have you noticed how many of Israel’s loudest defamers are women? And women from cultures or families that have either forced them to or rewarded them for wearing hijab? (And here I include the Western academic and media world, which has increasingly upheld a politically correct version of Sharia law.)

I am thinking of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), political activist Linda Sarsour and Fatima Mousa Mohammed, who delivered a hate-filled, anti-Israel speech at the May 12 graduation ceremony at CUNY Law School.

What these three women have in common is how they’ve used the word “Palestine” as an insurrectionary soundbite in order to climb up the greasy academic, political and media poles. Bare-headed women, such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Professor Lara Sheehi at George Washington University are similarly fanatical and strategic about their use of Palestine as a symbolic bludgeon to bash Israel, Jews, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, racism, the police, etc. Some of these women also curse nonstop; dare I say, even more than the proverbial sailor.

I find it curious that such defenders of All that is Right and Good rarely condemn sexism, either in the West or in “Palestine;” nor do they try to boycott those countries in which forced child marriage; forced marriage to a first cousin; forced pregnancies; honor killing, polygamy; and FGM are pandemic. As yet, none of these women are denouncing or trying to influence American government policy vis à vis the way in which the most heroic Muslim women are being jailed by Muslim governments, sometimes for decades for their dissident writings on social media; for allowing their hijab to slip; or for risking their lives in order to attend school.

None dare describe Muslim countries as the greatest practitioners of both religious and gender apartheid. Like so many others, these Western-educated Arab, Muslim or Druze women, who live safely in the United States, only accuse Israel of the crimes that their own people are committing. Psychologically, this is called “projection.”

Many white leftists, including feminists and lesbian feminists, are also riding the Palestine train to glory. Is this simply conformism to a “woke” post-colonial version of Marxism or, since they themselves claim discrimination, is this an attempt to elevate their victim status by identifying with the most sacred victim of the moment—Palestinian Arabs who are allegedly oppressed by Israeli Nazis? Is this also a way of gaining approval from those who might otherwise dislike or even persecute them?

Funny. Homosexuality and homosexual pederasty are epidemic in the Muslim world—and yet Western LGBTQIA groups rarely focus on it. Nor do they congratulate Israel for granting asylum to homosexuals from “Palestine” or to Palestinian women who have fled a potential honor-killing.

Watching, reading, listening to both Sheehi and Mohammed, what you’ll find is nothing but word salad—a stringing together of propagandized soundbites, each of which is meant to elicit cheers, applause and return engagements. Hitler used such signage in order to whip crowds into a frenzy. Yet today, in America, such hate speech is usually protected as “free speech” or “academic freedom. Such brainwashing—the creation of cults—has always led to mobs with pitchforks followed by—you name it: massacres, prison, ethnic cleansing, genocide—and to exile and poverty if you’re lucky.

We really have lost the cognitive war against the West, against Western values and against Israel. We must do everything in our power to reverse the hold that big lies have on the popular imagination.

First published in Jewish News Syndicate.