Letters to the Editor

by the Readers

John Loftus' opinion piece (Slant, "Bin Funding," June 13) alleging that the Saudi government has laundered money through Florida-based charity organizations to support al-Qaeda is implausible at best. He uses the shield of having access to "highly classified information" to convince the reader that his claims are credible. It is a well-publicized fact that the Saudi government itself is worried about the growth of militant Islamist organizations, including al-Qaeda, that threaten to topple it. In order to convince us why the Saudi government would fund al-Qaeda against its own self-interest, Loftus traffics in some of the most dangerous and pervasive myths about the situation in the Middle East.

For example, he states that "Israel is the only place in the Middle East where an Arab woman can vote." In fact, women can vote in the majority of Arab countries, and many have had that right since these countries gained their independence. To name a few: Egypt, 1956; Syria, 1949; Tunisia, 1959; Algeria, 1962; Morocco, 1963; Libya and Sudan, 1964; Yemen, 1970. There is a tendency to assume that the strictures placed on women in the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (where women recently won the right to vote) apply to the rest of the Arab world. Not only does this tendency negate many of the battles won by Arab feminists, but it also casts Israel and Western countries as bastions of women's rights. In fact, feminists in Israel have long been battling discrimination against women in the country's religious laws, which continue to govern many personal status issues, especially marriage and divorce. Jewish women in Israel still do not have the unilateral right to a divorce without their husband's approval. The requirement of a husband's approval has resulted in thousands of "agunot" -- women who are unable to remarry because their husbands will not release them in a religiously sanctified manner. Meanwhile, Israel has become notorious for illegal trafficking in prostitutes and domestic servants. Unlike Mr. Loftus, Israeli Jewish feminists working alongside Arab feminists (from Israel) and elsewhere recognize that women everywhere are discriminated against and oppressed in different ways.

These joint groups of Jewish and Arab feminists also fight together against Israel's discrimination against its Arab citizens, especially women. In his piece, Mr. Loftus has made another error in this regard. He writes that "Israel has created the first Arab class exposed to democracy," repeating yet again the spurious claim that Israel is the "oasis" of democracy in the Middle East. Actually, most Arab countries have elections, which send representatives to a parliament. They also have legal systems and constitutions largely built on the French or British models. The fact that elections often do not extend to the level of president or monarch, or that military courts suppress civil liberties, means that democracy is not complete in Arab countries, but not that it is nonexistent. Furthermore, local Arab activists struggling to replace the leaders of these countries will argue that it is the U.S. government's interests in the region that keep leaders like Hosni Mubarak and King Fahd in place.

But the problem with this rhetoric of the Israeli oasis of democracy is not so much that it misrepresents the situation in Arab countries, which it does, but that it misrepresents the situation in Israel. Israel is also not a complete democracy, for the simple reason that it is a Jewish state, and only Jewish citizens are guaranteed equal rights protection under the law. In addition to the uneven implementation of the law that allows discrimination against Arab citizens similar to that experienced by African-Americans, there are several well-documented examples of the un-democratic nature of the Israeli state. In the most egregious, certain Zionist organizations have special constitutional privileges and are considered quasi-governmental bodies. They benefit and represent Jews only, and they have authority over certain government functions, including, not surprisingly, the administration of housing and land. Arab citizens of Israel do not receive benefits from these organizations and are not accorded their own parallel institutions. Secularist Israelis have long argued that a state based on theology, and in which religious law governs many areas of life, can never be fully democratic. Non-Jews in Israel will remain second-class citizens.

Errors of the kind in Mr. Loftus' piece are repeated every day in the media and popular discourse, such that they have been elevated to pervasive myth. These errors not only serve to justify the ongoing aggression against Arabs in the Middle East, especially in Israel/Palestine. They also let Israel and the United States off the hook in terms of bettering their own societies -- particularly when it comes to women and minorities.

Jessica Winegar
Philadelphia




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