Here’s a new survey of male chauvinism in Israel reported in the Israeli press:
“Over half of Israeli men – 61 percent – do not consider forcing sex on an acquaintance as rape, a study conducted by Tel-Hai Academic College recently found. Moreover, 41 percent of Israeli women share that view.”
Four points:
1) This is rape. Forcing sex, even if the women does not resist much, is a form of sexual assault and rightly called rape. Apologists may tie themselves in a knot to press a point otherwise, but any force in sex is rape no matter if the person is your wife or girlfriend.
2) I believe this is a consequence of Israeli militarism and the cultural ethos it breads. Due to the mandated conscription into the occupation army, most Israeli youth are forced into an a brutal occupation army for several years where they are given a free remit to abuse and seek to subdue the Palestinians as they wish; men, women and children. Let us remember the moral depravity of the Israeli occupation army and how its occupation terrorists soldiers behave: YouTube is littered with videos of Israelis forcing humiliation on Palestinians, cheap taunts, and abuse of even children is widely documented (see photo for an illustration of the mainstream Zionist thuggery).
It is not surprising that an individual used to that lifestyle for at least 2 years of service, where he gets to impress his force on another human being with impunity, would get used to it and then even when he returns to normal life he returns with this embedded mentality. Thus if he wants something from someone he has learned from the Israeli way of dealing with Palestinians: not equality or peacefully, but just force. Because Palestinians understand only force, and this mantra then becomes: women understand only force. He, the Israeli occupier, has learned that if he wants something – in this case sex – he can just employ his force.
3) Of course, if this was a survey of Arab and/or Muslim men it would be accompanied with all the cliches about Arab masculinity and sex in the Arab world, and how this is a reflection of the alleged (and false) Islamic degradation of women. Blah, blah, blah… you know the buffoonish talking points.
4) Lastly, of course, many men in the Arab world (and everywhere, including in the West and especially in the United States [and especially in the armed forced]) do harbor the same views toward sex. That it is okay to force it upon someone who shares a relationship with you. That is wrong and abhorrent and worthy of prosecution. And when men anywhere do this it should not be a matter of religion or culture (in the sense of poetry, ect…) as is often the case with Arabs in the media. I do not blame Judaism or Jewish culture for the Israeli poll, but the militarism which is a different level of culture. Just like America’s armed forces record higher levels of rape because of the same Alpha male mentality which pervades the army. So this is not a question of culture per se in any country, including Israel. But the difference between, say, the U.S. military and Israel’s military is that in the case of the latter the entire society, almost, is conscripted and the military is a major political and cultural institution with an abnormal role and influence in Israeli society that simply does not exist in other nations.
But that is the choice Israel has made: to ruin itself because it wants to further colonize and oppress the Palestinians and their land.
This approach does inflict great suffering on the Palestinians, but in the end they will reclaim their land and their freedom. But in the end what will be left of Israeli society to claim?
