For those of my readers, the great majority, who are not Israelis, here is a short reminder. Israel today is one of the world’s worst places to be a man. Hardly a day goes by without some more or less senior public (male) figure—heads of state, ministers, MKs, army officers, police officers, businessmen, actors, TV and radio announcers, physicians psychologists, teachers, and professors—being accused of sexual harassment at best and rape at worst. One day one leads a perfectly normal life. On the next, coming totally out of the blue, one finds oneself under fire as a serial sexual offender.
Let me make myself clear: sexual harassment does exist. It has to be dealt with by society and, where necessary, the public prosecution and the court system. But not in the way this is done in Israel, and to a lesser extent many other self-proclaimed “advanced” countries, today. Many of the accusations are anonymous. Coming out of nowhere on one of the social networks, they tend to snowball as other women, like the frogs in Aristophanes’ play of that name, join the unholy chorus. Most of the accusations carry no proof whatsoever; but no sooner do they surface than the man in question is done for, finished, liquidated. Often for life. Even if, as rarely happens, the investigation to which he is subjected ends by the charges being dropped.
Hitting men, especially well known men, with accusations of “sexual harassment” has become a favorite method to settle accounts with them, take away their positions and/or jobs, and wreck their lives. All this is part cause, part consequence, of an entire industry. Its members form a filthy coalition made up of female MKs, feminist organizations, lawyers and public and relations experts. Driven by envy, hatred, an, not least, sheer greed, their sole purpose in life is to punish male “sexual criminals” while assisting female “victims” to avenge themselves and also extort as much money as they can. If necessary by pushing them to complain even against their will.
Worst of all, when matters come to court the ordinary rules and procedures, which in Israel as in all other liberal-democratic countries were originally designed to protect the accused against arbitrary punishment, are violated. This happens not just as a matter of routine but as a matter of course. The accusers’ names may not be published. Evidence is taken from women who claim to have been “victimized” long before the statute of limitation, meaning years and years ago. A woman’s sexual history may not be brought up and used against her; a man’s may and almost always serves as the main basis for convicting him.
Alibis, even such as are produced by the state’s own secret service, are dismissed—as happened, for example, to former President Moshe Katzav who is currently serving a seven-year jail sentence for a “rape” he almost certainly did not commit. Dubious evidence based on “suppressed memory” is not only allowed but actively encouraged. There is no penalty for bringing false charges, not even the option of bringing a civil suit against those who do so. Briefly, the goddess of Justice has her eyes wide open and the scales she holds are heavily weighted on one side.
Why things have come to this pass in Israel of all countries is hard to say. At bottom, perhaps the real reason is that Israel is a country born and bred by war, an activity in which women have always played and still play a rather marginal part. Since only Israeli men can defend women against other men—Arab men, as it happens—this fact put a premium on masculinity and even on “male chauvinism.”
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The proof of this pudding is in the eating. When the famous feminist Simone de Beauvoir visited Israel just before the 1967 War, the gospel she tried to spread was met with total incomprehension on the part of Israeli women. Three years later Golda Meir, who as it happens was the first female prime minister in any country, gave an interview with the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci. In it she called feminists “crazy” and “nuts.”
As the frequency and intensity of the Arab-Israeli wars started diminishing after 1985 or so, though, Israeli feminists, some of the most prominent of whom were US-educated, raised their heads. With the result that, thirty-something years later, Israel has the dubious honor of being the country that leads the world in terms of the percentage of convicted “sex offenders” among all criminals.
But nothing lasts forever. While the situation remains far from satisfactory, over the last few weeks there have been some early signs that Israeli society (and hopefully others as well) is getting sick and tired of the snake it has so eagerly, and so foolishly, embraced to its bosom. The first indications may be found among the so-called “talk-backists.” In Modern Hebrew, a “talk-backist” is a person who responds to newspaper articles as published on the Net. Judging purely by the numbers, as well as by the way the people in question identify themselves, most Israeli men and many Israeli women now feel that things have gone much too far and that some sort of corrective action is urgently required.
There are also some other encouraging signs. Here and there an accused “sex offender” has being acquitted by the courts—something that, until very recently, was almost unheard of. One, held by the police for five days on suspicion of “rape,’ even got the state to pay him 1,000 NIS ($ 250) in compensation! The newly appointed chief of police has announced that, from this point on, anonymous accusations would no longer be looked into. He also refused to fire a policeman accused of “harassing” a woman (who was not part of the police force) before his trial had even started. Notwithstanding the storm of criticism that followed his decisions, he stuck to his guns. And the attorney general, who like the chief of police is new to his job, has said he would look for ways to punish women who had falsely accused men—something which, as things are at present, cannot be done.
And how did the various feminist organizations react to these early attempts to re-institute some kind of sanity? By threatening that, should any of the measures go into effect, women will stop complaining.
To which one can only say, Amen.