Two weeks ago, the National Women’s Studies Association voted to boycott the Jewish state. In doing so, writes Phyllis Chesler, its members displayed moral blindness not only about the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also about the systemic and often brutal mistreatment of women in numerous places where they have few if any rights:
The association doesn’t condemn, for example, the atrocities being practiced by Hamas, Islamic State, Boko Haram, and the Taliban against Muslim women, children, and dissidents, or against Christian, Yazidi, and Kurdish women. . . .
This women’s studies group isn’t [protesting] the honor killings among Arabs in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, and among Muslims in the West. They aren’t condemning the forced veiling of women in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, or the forced wearing of the hijab and heavy coverings in Iran and Nigeria.
The association doesn’t focus on the pervasive nature of female genital mutilation in Egypt or on the increase in child marriage across the Arab and Muslim world. There’s little mention of the terrible fate of women—even royalty—who dare to choose their own husbands.
Israel may not be flawless—what society is?—but it’s still a modern democracy that protects the religious rights of all its minorities. . . . [A]ccording to the Israeli feminist lawyer Frances Raday, Israel’s Declaration of Independence was one of the “earliest constitutional documents in the world to include sex as a group classification within a guarantee of equality in social and political rights.”
Read more on New York Post: http://nypost.com/2015/12/06/womens-studies-is-betraying-women-under-sharia-law/