Update
I sent this piece together with a letter to the editors at Lancet and to the authors whose emails were contained in the Lancet article. I offered to shorten the piece so that Lancet might print it as an article or even as a letter in their pages. I did this on Sunday. To date, I have received absolutely no answer. I also sent this article to Rita Giacoman at Birzeit University who introduced the study in Lancet.
I’ve heard nothing back but I know I’m on their radar. Why? Because I began to receive persistent, sarcastic, slightly hysterical, and fairly articulate, pro-Lancet comments at this site–comments which denigrate my article and my site’s “right wing” point of view. I have posted them all–but then stopped doing so at least in one case which involved someone who had been posting very long and very frequent comments.
Once Lancet agrees to publish my point of view in their pages, I promise to post these long and freqent pro-Lancet comments here. Let’s see what happens.
**I have just heard back from Lancet. They have asked me to submit my critique. I will certainly do so. Stay tuned.
I just heard from Lancet.
Lancet Study Does Not Mention Honor Killings, Forced Veiling, Arranged Marriages, etc.
It’s official. Britain’s premier medical journal
Lancet has been completely Palestinianized. It no longer bears any relationship to the first-rate scientific journal it once was. Perhaps
Lancet is no longer a standard-bearer but has become a follower in the global movement in which standards have plunged, biases have soared, and Big Lies now pass for top-of-the-line academic, scientific work.
The post-colonial academy is itself thoroughly colonized by the false and dangerous ideas of Edward Said (please read my dear friend Ibn Warraq’s most excellent book
Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism). However, I once believed that Said’s paranoid perspective had primarily infected and indoctrinated only the social sciences, humanities, and Middle East Studies. We now see his malign influence at work in a new article, just out today, by professors who work at the Department of Medicine at Harvard University; the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at Minnesota University’s School of Public Health; The Boston University School of Medicine; the School of Nursing at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; and at the School of Social Work and Social Welfare at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.
Their
study is titled: “Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study.” And yes, they have found that Palestinian husbands are more violent towards Palestinian wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation”— and that the violence increases significantly when the husbands are “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” exposed to political violence.
I believe that Arab and Muslim men, including Palestinian men, are indeed violent towards Arab and Muslim women. I also believe that war-related stress, including poverty, usually increases “intimate partner violence,” aka male domestic violence. But beyond that, how does one evaluate this study?
First, let’s follow the money. This study was funded by the Palestinian National Authority as well as by the Core Funding Group at the University of Minnesota. The Palestinian Authority is not a disinterested party. But even worse: The data was collected by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Palestinians are the people who once told the world that Israeli soldiers shot young Mohammed al-Dura, committed a massacre in Jenin, and purposely attacked Palestinian civilians (who just happened to be jihadists dressed in civilian clothing or hostage-civilians behind whom the jihadists hid).
Second, let’s note that the study has a political goal which trumps any objective academic or feminist goal. (These researchers claim to have a “feminist” perspective). In my view, this study wishes to present Palestinian men as victims even when (or precisely because) those men are battering their wives. And, it wishes to present Palestinian cultural barbarism, which includes severe child abuse, as also related to the alleged Israeli occupation.
Third, therefore, the study has purposely omitted the violence, including femicide, which is routinely perpetrated against daughters and sisters in “occupied Palestine” and has, instead, chosen to focus only on husband-wife violence and only on couples who are currently married. The honor murders of daughters and sisters by their parents and brothers is a well known phenomenon in Gaza and on the West Bank.
I have written about some high profile cases before. “Souad”
barely survived being set on fire by her West Bank family because she became pregnant out of wedlock by the man who promised to marry her; Israelis nursed her back to health and she fled the area for Europe, where she wrote a book about her near-death experience.
Asma’a al-Ghoul, whom I interviewed in 2008, was fired for writing a series of articles about honor killings on the West Bank and in Gaza. These barbaric, misogynist, and femicidal customs are not due to any alleged political, military, or economic “occupation” by Israelis.
Fourth, if one is completely serious about violence against women, the researchers would have factored in the role of Hamas, which has “occupied” Gaza both militarily and religiously. Since they have done so, more and more (previously modern) women have been forced to veil; more child marriages as well as arranged marriages are now taking place.
