Category Archives: women

More on Remote Warfare: Spot & Shoot

Posted on July 15, 2010 by | 1 comment

Israel continues to lead the way arm in arm with the United States when it comes to state of the art remote warfare tactics.

It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick.

The aim: to kill.

Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army.

Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people – Palestinians in Gaza – who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.
The female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza…..

The Spot and Shoot system – officially known as Sentry Tech – has mostly attracted attention because it is operated by 19- and 20-year-old female soldiers, making it the Israeli army’s only weapons system operated exclusively by women.

Female soldiers are preferred to operate remote killing devices because of a shortage of male recruits to Israel’s combat units. Young women can carry out missions without breaking the social taboo of risking their lives, said Mr Brom.

The women are supposed to identify anyone suspicious approaching the fence around Gaza and, if authorised by an officer, execute them using their joysticks…..

The Haaretz newspaper, which was given rare access to a Sentry Tech control room, quoted one soldier, Bar Keren, 20, last week saying: “It’s very alluring to be the one to do this. But not everyone wants this job. It’s no simple matter to take up a joystick like that of a Sony PlayStation and kill, but ultimately it’s for defence.”

Audio sensors on the towers mean that the women hear the shot as it kills the target. No woman, Haaretz reported, had failed the task of shooting what the army calls an “incriminated” Palestinian.

from The National

Perhaps an under examined aspect of remote warfare is its possible feminist “benefits”, allowing women to serve on the front lines of battle as pilots and infantry. However, since they themselves are not at immediate risk of death (unlike the Palestinian wandering into an unmarked “no-go zone”) can we really call it feminist, if even defense as Ms. Keren mentions? More interesting would be the mentality behind the idea that sitting in a room in Nazareth and killing Palestinians hundreds of kilometers away can be considered and internalized by the participants as “defense”.

Regardless, by allowing women to participate in killing without being subject to the horrors of war, we further eliminate possibilities of international female solidarity while also implicating first world women as equal-opportunity participants in extrajudicial remote warfare.

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Posted in death toll, gaza, human rights, israel, occupation, palestine, the future, war, warfare, women

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Safe & Legal

Posted on April 14, 2010 by | Leave a comment

As we approach the first anniversary of the brutal and tragic assassination of Dr. George Tiller (May 2009), we are constantly reminded that a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion in this country is in perpetual danger. With only a handful of doctors left in the country who are able to perform the kinds of procedures Dr. Tiller gave his life for, we need a new generation of doctors who are willing to protect women like these good doctors have. Despite death threats, terrorism, physical assaults, and even death, these brave souls have fought back simply by going to work and doing what they do best.

How American conservatives view women & their personal agency

Regardless of your personal feelings about abortion, you should support women being able to seek safe medical care. Abortions happen no matter their legality. The only difference is that women become injured and even die when not given access to safe medical care and proper facilities.

It’s yet another shame on America that our women must seek medical care behind layers of bullet-proof glass and through a crowd of vicious protesters who have no empathy for their personal situation, nor any right to judge. Sometimes these protesters become patients at the very clinics they protest against!

Only 14, she came with her mother. “What brings you here?” Dr Hern asked. “I have to have an abortion.” “Why?” “I’m not old enough to have a baby.” “But you told the counsellor we should all be killed?” “Yes, you should all be killed.” “Why?” “Because you do abortions.” “Me too?” “Yes, you should be killed, too.” “Do you want me killed before or after I do your abortion?” “Before.”

Now that Dr. Tiller has been murdered, there is only one doctor in the United States that performs the same procedures in a professional, reliable manner.

“It is my view that we are dealing with a fascist movement. It’s a terrorist, violent terrorist movement, and they have a fascist ideology…” Dr Hern goes on like that for some time. Long before the first doctor got shot back in 1993, he was warning that it would happen. He was getting hate mail and death threats way back in 1970, just for working in family planning. They started up again in 1973, two weeks after he helped start the first non-profit abortion clinic in Boulder. “I started sleeping with a rifle by my bed. I expected to get shot.” In 1985, someone threw a brick through his window during a protest by the quote unquote Pro-Life Action League. He put up a sign that said THIS WINDOW WAS BROKEN BY THOSE WHO HATE FREEDOM. In 1988, somebody fired five bullets through his window. In 1995, the American Coalition of quote unquote Life Activists put out a hit list with his (and Tiller’s) name on it. The feds gave them protection for about six months, then left them on their own.

“People don’t get it,” he says. “After eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 406 death threats, 179 assaults, and four kidnappings, people are still in denial. They say, ‘Well, this was just some wingnut guy who just decided to go blow up somebody.’ Wrong. This was a cold-blooded, brutal, political assassination that is the logical consequence of 35 years of hate speech and incitement to violence by people from the highest levels of American society, including but in no way limited to George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Bill O’Reilly, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Reagan may not have been a fascist, but he was a tool of the fascists. Bush was most certainly a tool of the fascists. They use this issue to get power. They seem civilised, but underneath you have this seething mass of rabid anger and hatred of freedom that is really frightening, and they support people like the guy who shot George – they’re all pretending to be upset, issuing statements about how much they deplore violence, but it’s just bullshit. This is exactly what they wanted to happen.”

As if on cue for this tragic anniversary, Nebraska has passed a recent set of draconian laws restricting their state’s residents from obtaining abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, arguing that the fetus responds to pain at this point. However, this is a hypocritical stance because America is a country where we routinely slaughter animals who feel a great deal more pain and possess higher cognitive functions than fetuses under abortion. The woman is merely an afterthought of this legislation, and lawmakers callously push aside her pain and suffering in deference to the cluster of cells in her abdomen. A woman taxpayer is again reduced to the role of “baby-machine” in this society. No matter her own opinion, when viewed as a “baby-machine”, all other personal agency is ripped away despite America being “the freest place on earth”.

Links:

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Posted in america, choice, Feminism, human rights, terrorism, women

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Why the obsession with our enemy’s “weak women”?

Posted on April 11, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Recent recantations in the news have included an American Special Forces report of 3 women victims of an Afghan “honor killing”. As it turns out, the women were killed by US Forces who then proceeded to dig bullets out of their bodies, stab them, and stage a cover-up. Yet it had been an easy story to swallow. Aren’t we all familiar with the weak image we have in our minds when thinking of Afghan women? Honor killings – a unique cultural/religious attribute – must be a widespread phenomenon indeed.

Another story that’s been circulating since the recent tragic Moscow subway bombings has been of female suicide bombers and their possible motivations. Women have been suicide bombers since the documented creation of the tactic. Women from all cultural backgrounds have perished as suicide bombers. Considering the diversity of the subject, wouldn’t it be difficult to pin down enough common motivations to write a short Salon article about it?

Don’t worry, our friends at Salon have written a very embarrassing article all about female suicide bombers, calling them victims, abused, depressive, mentally ill, etc… everything but politically motivated. The truth is that studies show suicide bombers don’t fit the profile described in Salon at all.

Existing research reveals a marked absence of major psychopathology among “would-be” suicide attackers; that the motivation and dynamics for choosing to engage in a suicide attack differ from those in the clinical phenomenon of suicide; and that there is a rational “strategic logic” to the use of suicide attack campaigns in asymmetric conflict.    Silke (2003/91) argues that “as with other terrorists, there is no indication that suicide bombers suffer from psychological disorders or are mentally unbalanced in other ways. In contrast, their personalities are usually quite stable and unremarkable (at least within their own cultural context)” (p. 94). Israeli psychology professor Ariel Merari is one of the few people in the world to have collected systematic, empirical data on a significant sample of suicide bombers. He examined the backgrounds of every modern era (since 1983) suicide bomber in the Middle East. Although he expected to find suicidal dynamics and mental pathology, instead he found that “In the majority, you find none of the risk factors normally associated with suicide, such as mood disorders or schizophrenia, substance abuse or history of attempted suicide (92).”

– From Psychology of Terrorism by Randy Borum, p.33

In contrast, the Salon article articulates:

Berko’s study, which is previewed in today’s Haaretz, paints a disturbing tableau of the inner world of female suicide bombers, the vast majority of whom “were exploited by the terrorist organizations, by close friends or even by their own families, and were pushed into carrying out terrorist attacks.” It appears that women’s motives for such attacks are rooted less in ideology than in histories of physical, mental, and sexual abuse within their own families. Their motives rarely involve free will, but rather blackmail or the hope of redemption for sexual indiscretions through violence and self-sacrifice.

…..

In Berko’s view, female suicide bombings have as much to do with a sort of proactive “honor killing” as they do with classic (and stereotypical) “Islam vs. the West” terrorism.

Back to the honor killings, back to putting women in a box and taking away their agency. Back to portraying them as reactionary members (victims) of society. At the heart of “honor killings” is the heart of all other domestic violence we in the West are often too familiar with. We do not consider domestic violence survivors to be reactionary members of society, do we?

Of course, the truth is that these women possess much more agency than the  imperial apologist can bear to consider. Part of our continued violent presence in that area of the world requires us to “dehumanize the enemy”. Turning female suicide bombers into reactionary actors by “humanizing their suffering” (never at the hands of foreign aggressors!) is dishonest. The Salon articles and others like it never delve into the political motivations of the women. We must assume they have none. Therefore, the most tragic and disastrous act of their political resistance becomes de-politicized.

Links:

What Drives Suicide Bombers?

Psychology of Terrorism by Randy Borum

Afghan women were killed in bungled raid, Nato admits

Inquiry puts spotlight on U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan

Second Bomber in Moscow Attacks is Identified

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Posted in america, Discussion, Feminism, human rights, orientalism, war, warfare, Western perspective, women

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Hijab and Public Participation of Women in Western Society

Posted on April 9, 2010 by | Leave a comment

What about hijab so intrigues the Western observer? Muslim women wearing hijab are the flag-bearers of Islam when outside private or gender-separated space. There’s a click-click sound on your Aunt’s tongue as she walks by a visibly-Muslim woman in public. The very idea of bringing a non-Western religion into a public space is one that shocks and appalls most Westerners. There are some, even, who object strongly to any show of religiosity. Hare Krishnas at the airport are one thing, but here is a religion seeking to integrate itself within society completely. So before we even consider the hijab as a feminist subject, we must first address it as a religious one. To be anything other than respectful and adherent to the dominant culture is considered strange and inappropriate. Take the African American community, for example. Despite being just as indigenous to the continent as their European-descended compatriots, they are still required to mimic their white neighbors in the style of their hair, for instance, or else face scrutiny and disapproval from the dominant class of society. The African hair-care industry is a billion dollar industry (1).

Muslim women choose willingly to separate themselves from the dominant class. A recent parliamentary candidate in France, Ilham Moussaid,  was ridiculed not because of her politics, but because her politics were presented in coordination with her hijab. It was thought to be impossible to be a feminist and wear hijab – the French citizenry are not completely comfortable with the concept. Therefore she is ridiculed at her “hypocrisy”, and the rest of France must gently remind her to reconsider her oil-and-water mixture of politics and religion (2).

Asserting one’s rights in Western society has become atheistic in nature. This is perhaps why the revulsion of religion is on the upswing. If a Muslim woman explains that she wears hijab because “God has commanded me to,” the listener recoils, unwilling to be reminded that God can micromanage such minutia in addition to the whole of reality. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights;” states the Constitution. Today’s reality in America is that our inherent and inalienable rights have suffered right along with the acceptance of where they come from – an authority you can’t bargain with.


The second subject is feminism as it relates to hijab. Despite the news stories, shock politics, and open ridicule, I’ve had more than a few women confide to me that they believe hijab is a good idea. There are even women who observe hijab without being Muslim! The relief in going out without exposing your flaws and your vulnerability is a pleasure I’ve enjoyed since my youth. Perhaps I thought I’d grow out of my shyness and discomfort and one day feel perfectly comfortable putting my breasts, thighs, and ass on display. Some feminists argue that the hijab indicates that the hijab is used to make women and society in general feel shame about a woman’s body. On the contrary, I think the opposite is true. Without lanky models on billboards being sold like meat in the market, the incidences of anorexia and bulimia are lower in Middle Eastern or Islamic countries – though this trend is curiously on the rise, perhaps due to the cultural globalization of Western values (3)?

A woman in hijab claims herself as a public actor who has side-stepped the requirement of appearing to conform to Western visual orthodoxy, as discussed above. Women in the West are still reprimanded at work for not wearing makeup or high heels, they are pressured to expose parts of their bodies that men are not pressured to expose. Compare a teetering businesswoman in an A-line skirt, high heels, coiffed hair and flawless makeup to her male counterpart, who stands tall and firm in his suit and tie. Instead of worrying about whether his eye makeup is running, the male counterpart is worrying about his work. Likewise, the Muslim woman in the West who observes hijab is exempting herself from a whole gambit of requirements and worries. Herein lies the real danger of hijab in the West: instead of being a consumer and a sexual object, the woman observing hijab is admitted into public society without being subject to these requirements. By showing women in the West that it is not necessary to dress for public consumption in order to participate in public society, the hijab represents a refuge from Woman-as-Consumer, one of our leading billion dollar industries in the United States and other Western (or Westernized) societies.

Links:

(1) http://clutchmagonline.com/beauty/taking-back-the-black-hair-care-industry/

(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/french-election-headscarf-candidate

(3) http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/487413

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Posted in Discussion, Feminism, Islam, Western perspective, women

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