# A pointless article from the National Post:



## Ex-Dragoon (14 Feb 2008)

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/02/13/barbara-kay-on-lack-of-rape-among-israeli-soldiers.aspx

Barbara Kay on the 'Lack of rape among Israeli soldiers'
Posted: February 13, 2008, 5:35 PM by Yoni Goldstein 
Barbara Kay
I really don’t know how much longer satire can expect to carry on as a genre, given what passes for “scholarship” in the topsy-turvy world of academia. This pinch-me item just crossed my desk and of course I assumed it was a spoof. But I Googled the names of the academics involved and to my astonishment they are real, and this excerpt from the Israeli Shalem Centre newsletter is not a joke:

Prize Winning Sociology Thesis at Hebrew U.: Lack of Rape Among Israeli Soldiers Achieves Same Aims as Rape
A Hebrew University Sociology department M.A. thesis entitled “Controlled Occupation: The Lack of Military Rape in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict” notes that the relative absence of instances of rape by Israeli soldiers is an alternate method of achieving the same kind of degradation of Palestinian Arabs that would be achieved through a directed policy of raping Arab women. The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that "the absence of directed military rape constitutes an alternative way of realizing the same political goals [usually achieved by directed military rape]. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we can see that the rarity of military rape only strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies inter-ethnic differences, just as directed military rape would have done.” The thesis, selected for publication by the university’s Shaine Center for Research in Social Sciences, was supervised by Hebrew University sociologist Eyal Ben–Ari and a senior lecturer in education, Edna Lomsky-Feder.

I’ve heard sociologists apeak of “status anxiety,” but for originality and chutzpah, I have to admit that this thesis takes the cake.  (“You seem gloomy, Fatima.” “What self-respecting Palestinian woman wouldn’t, Hamid? The Israeli soldiers were here to search the house – by the way, they found those rockets you hid in the baby’s toybox, sorry about that, but they didn’t make a single move on me. No rape, not even a lubricious wink or a pinch on the buttocks. Being non-violated like that, I feel so - I don't know - degraded. What am I to tell my friends…?”).

What’s next from Alice-in-Wonderland University? “Controlled Occupation: The lack of Random Bombings of Pizza Parlours in the West Bank”? Oh, those sly and underhanded Israeli soldiers. They certainly have psychological torture down to a fine art. 
bkay@videotron.ca


----------



## CougarKing (14 Feb 2008)

Wow...just wow.     :


----------



## The Bread Guy (29 Feb 2008)

W

T

F

 ???


----------



## Jager (29 Feb 2008)

wha????


----------



## The_Falcon (29 Feb 2008)

??? ??? ???

Ummmm......  Not sure what to say to that, both that article and its source material are um... yeah. WTF?


----------



## FascistLibertarian (29 Feb 2008)

> the relative absence of instances of rape by Israeli soldiers is an alternate method of achieving *the same kind of degradation* of Palestinian Arabs that would be achieved through a directed policy of raping Arab women.



 ???


----------



## Flip (29 Feb 2008)

Yeh, That moral upper hand can be a real burden.... >


----------



## Panzer Grenadier (29 Feb 2008)

Whatever this guy is on - he needs to stop taking it right now.


----------



## scoutfinch (29 Feb 2008)

Let me get this straight:

Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women = bad
Israeli soldiers not raping Palestinian women = bad.

... this is only possible at grad school.

All I can suggest is that the author of this ridiculous thesis is unlikely to be a Palestinian woman.


----------



## FascistLibertarian (29 Feb 2008)

Not bad scoutfinch, racist!  :


----------



## blacktriangle (29 Feb 2008)

In my best Borat voice...

WHAAATT?


----------



## davidk (29 Feb 2008)

I keep reading it over and over, thinking I missed something that would cause it make sense...but it's just not there. What a strange argument.


----------



## BernDawg (29 Feb 2008)

???
I'm speachless...


----------



## The_Falcon (29 Feb 2008)

scoutfinch said:
			
		

> ... this is only possible at grad school.



At least we know that detachment from reality is not limited to academia in the Western world, its a global phenomenon ;D


----------



## scoutfinch (29 Feb 2008)

FascistLibertarian said:
			
		

> Not bad scoutfinch, racist!  :



This WANTS to have been a joke... otherwise I respectfully request that you qualify your response.

My comment had nothing to do with Israelis or Palestinians but with the stupidity of some grad students... and that I doubted that any fool that would write such comments had never been in the position of being a Palestinian woman potentially exposed to rape as a weapon in conflict... I am guessing that most Palestinian women are quite content with the fact that there has been a decrease in the incidence of rape.

If you didn't get that from my post, maybe you need to read it again.


----------

