by Dror Eydar
The discourse this week over integrating women into the IDF's infantry and armored tank units highlights the conflict that exists in Israel and the West between supposedly "liberal" values and the freedom to disagree with them.
1.
Are we at war? War for freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, freedom of thought.
I don't think so. But it behooves us to be
careful. People who describe their opponents as stuck in the Dark Ages
expose themselves as not only intolerant of other options and trying to
silence the public debate about values, but also as imperialists whose
main claim, in various forms, is this: Our opinion is the right one and
therefore the one that decides and controls things, and anyone who veers
from it will be hung out to dry by the media until he loses everything
and his basic rights.
The truth is that when you see the people who
silence different opinions and castrate the public discourse foaming at
the mouth, it becomes clear to everyone that we aren't talking about
liberals who hold sacred the right of others to think differently, but
about fanatics who are using liberalism as a violent, contemptuous whip
on their opponents. In any case, "liberal" opinions certainly can and
even should be challenged, without fear of the stupid name-calling on
the part of the militants on the other side.
War hero Avigdor Kahalani, speaking on Kalman
Libeskind's program on the Galei Israel radio station, expressed an
opinion against integrating women into the Israel Defense Forces'
infantry and armored units. He is in favor of integrating women into the
military, but only up to the point "where a woman would have to face a
person and pull the trigger." He doesn't want women to experience what
he did.
But that wasn't the end of his transgression
in the eyes of the guards who have appointed themselves soldiers in the
thought police. That came when he said, "I think that a woman's role is
to be a mother and bring children into the world." Of course, he didn't
mean that was all a woman should do, but that this is something that
only a woman, not a man, can do.
Then the feminist warriors and their leading
front turned their wrath on him. In just one example, IBA radio
presenter Keren Neubach scolded him: "You can't say something like a
woman's role is to be a mother. You can't. Do you understand that you
can't? Do you understand?"
Luckily for him, Israeli society is mostly
conservative and traditional and does not embrace all the nonsensical
ideas the liberal elite has forced on society in other countries. The
attack on Kahalani should be condemned, just like the attacks on other
people who expressed opinions different from the ones accepted in
certain sectors of our society, because the fear of healthy argument is a
recipe for cultural sterility. Yes, Kahalani can say what he said.
2.
About 20 years ago, Professor Ruth Wisse wrote
in The Washington Times that "women's liberation, if not the most
extreme then certainly the most influential neo-Marxist movement in
America, has done to the American home what communism did to the Russian
economy, and most of the ruin is irreversible. By defining relations
between men and women in terms of power and competition instead of
reciprocity and cooperation, the movement tore apart the most basic and
fragile contract in human society, the unit from which all other social
institutions draw their strength."
Here, too, Weiss wasn't referring to sending
women back to the kitchen or revoking their rights, but to how we
address the difference between the sexes and how they relate to each
other. The root of the argument lies in how we interpret reality.
Whether when it comes to relations between the sexes, we are talking
about a struggle and war, or about mutuality and roles that complete the
partnership and the family unit.
For the most part, there is an amusing match
between extreme feminism and political extremism. But while feminists
talk about everything having to do with relations between men and women
in terms of war and power struggles, when it comes to the political
arena, the fears vanish, and the possibility of making peace overcomes
other considerations (but the militant approach remains, toward the
Israeli side, of course. The Palestinians take on the role of the woman,
and Israelis the role of the man).
3.
Toward the end of World War I, historian
Oswald Spengler published his great book "The Decline of the West" ("Der
Untergang des Abendlandes"). Spengler discussed the way in which
civilizations grow and die in history and concluded that the West was in
decline. Modern, urban life cut people off from an existence that was
based on wisdom that had coalesced in a long process, and it weakened
the "sense of purpose" and the need that had been taken for granted for a
person to exist on his own land and perpetuate himself through blood
ties and family. The intelligentsia was no longer satisfied with this
natural flow of life and demanded clarification and explanations for
existence. At the peak of the process, when simple existence got tired
and was rooted out, the historical process that had long lurked under
the surface rose up: "the sterility of civilized man" -- not literal
sterility, but the lack of desire to have children. Spengler observed
that a society in which the most natural matters of establishing a
family and having children turn into issues to be debated demonstrates a
"metaphysical turn toward death."
"The last man of the world-city no longer
wants to live -- he may cling to life as an individual, but as a type,
as an aggregate, no." The continuance of blood relation and the destiny
of being the last of the line are no longer seen as an obligation, and
children aren't born, not because they have become impossible, but
because intelligence cannot find a reason for their existence.
Spengler pointed to the plays of Henrik Ibsen
as a gauge for understanding the new process. He spoke of the appearance
of "the Ibsen marriage," which consisted mainly of high spiritual
attraction and in which both sides were free of the animalistic need to
continue the family line. The Ibsen woman is free from her womanly
obligations and becomes a "friend," as opposed to the "mother" of a
previous age. A friend doesn't necessarily bear fruit. Spengler wasn't
familiar with the fighting feminism in which even the "friend"
disappears and is replaced by an activist who sees a man as a
representative of the oppressive class and motherhood as a possibility
to be treated cautiously. In such a situation, Spengler concludes,
civilization will reach the point of continual population loss until it
falls apart and reverts to its previous desolate state. Look at Europe
and the liberal society in the U.S. and you'll discover the depth of the
crisis in the West, which Spengler identified almost 100 years ago. And
as if he'd been granted the gift of prophecy, he wrote that at the end
of the process, the fellah waits patiently.
The debate that broke out this week about
integrating women into the IDF's armored forces, and the simple fear of
harming a woman's purpose as a mother, cannot be detached from the
spiritual and cultural process that Western society in general and
Israeli society in particular is undergoing. These informed the recent
election in America, the Brexit referendum, and controversial matters
here in Israel -- all of which have to do with the battle between
centrifugal and centripetal forces, forces of dismantling vs. forces of
integrating, in society and culture.
Dror Eydar
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=38309
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