Category: women’s rights

This time the Women’s March is serious: anti-Semite Zahra Biloo kicked off the board

September 20, 2019 • 8:30 am

I could find this news only on right-wing and Israeli sites, and I’m not sure why other Western media didn’t report it. As I mentioned the other day, after the Women’s March dumped (euphemistically called “resignation”) three of its former leaders, Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Bob Bland, they appointed a diverse but much less polarizing board of 15 women. The lone exception was Zahra Billoo, characterized as “a civil rights attorney and executive director of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.” The CAIR affiliation is worrisome, but far more worrisome was Billoo’s history of unhinged anti-Semitic and anti-Israel tweets, which was the reason the Women’s March (WM) fractured in the first place—and surely why they let Sarsour et al. go (Sarsour is now campaigning for Bernie Sanders, so much the worse for The Bern).

Here is some of what Billoo tweeted several years ago, and you can bet your tuchas that her views haven’t changed (she says as much in her response below):

This one is insane:

The details of Billoo’s deep-sixing can be found, among other places, at the Jerusalem Post (but not at the New York Times or Washington Post). Click on the screenshot:

Billoo responded with a Twitter tantrum. As the Post notes:

Billoo announced that she was voted off the board in a 25-tweet-long thread. “Since this is going to be in your newsfeeds in the morning – here’s a thread about me being voted off the board of @WomensMarch
tonight,” she started the series of tweets.

She described the reports about her as “an Islamophobic smear campaign led by the usual antagonists, who have long targeted me, my colleagues, and anyone else who dares speak out in support of Palestinian human rights and the right to self-determination.”

I won’t put up her entire defiant series of tweets (there are 25), except for three, one of which accuses the WM of letting her go because she was a Muslim woman of color:

Billoo’s Women’s March page is blank now.

Well, I’m heartened that the Women’s March is taking a stand for unity and against anti-Semitism, though I worry that it is too late. For the WM has fractured, with many branches having become independent of the original organization because of Sarsour et al.’s anti-Semitism and Mallory’s refusal to disassociate herself from hatemonger Louis Farrakhan.

I wish the organization well, and applaud them for being one of the more prominent groups to publicly act this way against the hatred of Jews.

The good news and the bad: Sarsour, Mallory, and Bland out as Women’s March leaders, but Sarsour in as a Bernie Sanders “surrogate”

September 17, 2019 • 8:00 am

After both Tablet and and the New York Times exposed the anti-Semitism present among some Women’s March (WM) leaders dating from the group’s formation in 2016, the organization has been racked with disunity and discontent. None of the leaders, including Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Bob Bland, were free from the taint of anti-Semitism, and I wrote a bunch of posts on the organization, urging that they dump these leaders in the cause of unity.

Well, that’s finally happened. As the New York Times (below) and Washington Post report, three of the four leaders (Perez is the exception) have “resigned”, though I suspect they were nudged to resign, since none of them previously showed any desire to leave in the face of criticism. (The official WM announcement is here.)

From the NYT:

The organization said in a statement that their terms expired and that 17 new board members had been appointed after a national search.

Their departure, earlier reported by The Washington Post, follows complaints from some local women’s march leaders that the New York-based group was too insular to lead a national movement. It comes after two of the earliest organizers of the march on Washington accused Ms. Mallory and a fourth co-chair, Carmen Perez-Jordan, of making anti-Semitic remarks.

. . . The group angered some activists in other parts of the country when members tried to trademark the name Women’s March in the wake of the 2017 march, which was put together by loosely connected volunteers, many of whom found one another on Facebook.

. . .Ms. Mallory’s close ties to the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who is respected in the black community, but is widely reviled in the Jewish community for virulently anti-Semitic remarks, had long raised eyebrows in New York.

The accusations, made public before the 2019 march, heightened a sense of infighting. In some cities, including New York and Philadelphia, two separate women’s marches were held.

There are many new board members, and nobody can accuse the WM of not being diverse. From the Post:

A diverse cast of 16 new board members that includes three Jewish women, a transgender woman, a former legislator, two religious leaders and a member of the Oglala tribe of the Lakota nation will inherit an organization recovering from a failed attempt to trademark the Women’s March name and fractured relationships with local activist groups and the Jewish community.

• Samia Assed, a Palestinian American activist from New Mexico who serves on the board of the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice and leads the organization’s New Mexico chapter.

• Zahra Billoo, a civil rights attorney and executive director of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

• Mrinalini Chakraborty, executive director of Men4Choice, who has been a Women’s March organizer and national field director, and founded Women’s March Illinois.

• Rabbi Tamara Cohen, who runs innovation for Moving Traditions, a national organization focused on teens and gender and Jewish identity, who spearheaded the creation of Tzelem, a group for transgender and non-binary youth.

• The Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter in Oklahoma.

• Sarah Eagle Heart, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and the former CEO of Native Americans in Philanthropy.

• Lucy Flores, a former Democratic state assemblywoman from Nevada who made headlines this year for accusing former vice president Joe Biden of inappropriate touching. She lives in Los Angeles, where she runs Luz Collective, an organization focused on empowering Latinas.

• Ginny Goldman, a political strategist who founded the Texas Organizing Project in Houston.

• Ginna Green, who runs the strategy arm of liberal Jewish group Bend the Arc and was among a group of Jewish women to lead the 2019 Women’s March on Washington.

• Shawna Knipper, an advocate for organ transplants who received a kidney donation in 2014 and an organizer with Women’s March Pennsylvania.

• Isa Noyola, a Latina transgender activist who serves as deputy director for Mijente, a national grass-roots hub for activism in the Latino community. She is the former deputy director of the Transgender Law Center and in 2015 organized the first national protest of violence against transgender people.

• Kelley Robinson of the District, who serves as Planned Parenthood’s national organizing director.

• Rinku Sen, an Indian American writer and civil rights activist who is the former executive director of racial-justice group Race Forward and publisher of Colorlines.com.

• Leslie Templeton, a youth activist who has focused on disability, health care and drug policy and has served on the Women’s March Disability Caucus.

• Lu-Shawn Thompson, widow of Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson. She has worked to get more black women elected to political office.

Among these, only Billoo (who works for the Council on American-Islamic Relations) poses a potential problem, as she has a history of pretty strong anti-Israel and anti-Zionist (ergo anti-Semitic) remarks, which you can see in this article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:
I suspect that any of the previous anti-Semitic shenanigans by the WM will be forestalled this time by the Jews on the board, who include a rabbi.

The bad news is that, according to several sources, including the Jerusalem Post (click on screenshot below), Linda Sarsour, whom I regard as an anti-Semite and an Islamist sotto voce, has been chosen by Bernie Sanders as a “surrogate”. What’s that? According to the Jerusalem Post, it’s “another politician, celebrity or person of influence, campaigning on a candidate’s behalf.”

Sanders appears to be like me: a nonbelieving Jew, and that will garner some of the Jewish vote in 2020. But using Sarsour as a surrogate, while not a good way to get votes from Jews (we know what she’s about), may be a good way to get votes from the anti-Israel Left. This choice alone is enough to make me not vote for Sanders in a primary (I would of course vote for him if he ran against Trump), but I don’t think there’s much chance of Bernie being a Presidential candidate next year.

In the meantime, Sarsour is already acting as a surrogate:

h/t: j. j.

International Women’s Day in Iran

March 8, 2019 • 12:00 pm

It’s International Women’s Day, and in the international spirit I present some women who are fighting very serious oppression—by religion. These are the women who are deemed by Iran and other such countries to be second-class (if not third-class) citizens, and who must adhere to antiquated morality, including covering themselves in veils and sacks lest they excite the lust of men. It’s very odd that the responsibility for this rests on the women rather than the men, but it’s Islam, Jake. Before the revolution in 1979, the women were much freer, and demonstrated against veiling when that regulation was quickly put in place. Now, beneath the covering, burns a spirit of equality. Who knows what these women could achieve if they were given full equality?

I find the video below very touching, and the women, who have broken the law by removing their hijabs, are very brave. If anybody can understand Farsi, please give us a sense of what the women are saying in the video. (When you click on the tweet, you’ll be transferred to Twitter to watch the video. Be sure to turn the sound up.)

From Masih Alinejad, the Iranian-born activist who started the “My Stealthy Freedom” campaign. She was of course jailed, and now lives in exile in America. Again, Farsi translation much appreciated.

Watch the video below by clicking on the tweet, which takes you to the Twitter page. This one has some pretty distressing scenes (not gore but misogyny).

Here’s an article from Foreign Policy, and I give one excerpt below (click on screenshot):

Forty years on, Iranian women—still on the streets making the very same demands—have turned into Tehran’s most indomitable opposition. Young and old, veiled and unveiled, they are staging the boldest acts of civil disobedience the nation has seen since the heady days of 1978. Last year, dozens of unveiled women mounted benches throughout the country and waved white scarves in peaceful defiance of the mandatory dress code laws. Peeling off their headscarves, girls walk on the streets filming themselves and their confrontations with busybodies and morality police. When two such women were arrested in Tehran and forced into a security van to be taken into detention, crowds surrounded the vehicle, took the door off its hinges, and set them free. What is taking place in Iran today can best be described as a rebellious sequel to the suffragettes to gain the right to dress just as their predecessors had helped women get the right to vote. Millett saw this trend decades ago, when she presciently said, “All the things we have fought for since the commencement of the women’s movement in 1847 are in great jeopardy in this society.”

Today, ordinary Iranian women, fed up with their second-class status, are refusing to obey the laws that do not protect them. . . Why are the feminists who so fervently defend the rights of Muslim women to don the hijab in Western countries silent about the plight of Iranian women who demand to have choice? As the leading voice of the anti-mandatory veiling movement, Masih Alinejad once eloquently said before the European Parliament, “We’re not asking you to come and save us. We’ll save ourselves.” Instead, she wanted Western leaders, especially women, to see that Iranian women simply want the same right that European women take for granted: the choice to dress as they wish.

And the money paragraph:

Defending the right of Muslims to don the veil is perfectly appropriate in Western societies where nativists and xenophobes are gathering political momentum. But failing to speak against the veil as a symbol of gender apartheid in countries where it is enforced by law is the betrayal of all the feminist and democratic values they hold dear. Often those who keep silent do so in the name of cultural relativism. Citing the sins of colonialism, they argue that meddling in the matter of the veil is meddling in the indigenous traditions of another people. But if the chief moral flaw of the colonial perspective was its inability to see those whom they ruled over as equals, then the current tolerant liberals can be accused of the same. They fail to see that freedom of choice—in this case, to dress—is not a luxury belonging only to those in the West but a universal right for all. As long as a group of powerful Iranian men impose their will on half of the nation, the right to choose how to dress must remain a global human rights struggle.

 

Masih Alinejad talks about “My Stealthy Freedom”, “White Wednesdays”, and other travails of women in Iran

May 31, 2018 • 11:00 am

Reader J. J. sent me a link to a National Public Radio interview which, if you have a spare half-hour, will both make you angry (at the oppression of women in Iran and what happens to those who protest), but also happy (at the cheerful and optimistic personality of the subject). But let me just copy J. J.’s email, adding a few comments and links:

Perhaps other followers of WEIT have already sent you the link to today’s “Fresh Air”, but in case not, it’s here.

Terry Gross interviews the exiled Iranian journalist, Masih Alinejad, who started “My Stealthy Freedom” campaign on twitter, against compulsory hijab [JAC: She also started the White Wednesdays campaign in which Iranian women wear white one day a week to protest oppression], and who has just published her memoir, The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran. Given the nature of her campaign, the import of the title is obvious.  I’m listening right now and must get back to it because I don’t want to miss a second, but I can listen again online. You absolutely must listen from the very beginning to the end (it’s just over 30 min).  She is is amazing.  What a rebuke to Sarsour and all those odious pseudo-feminists with their through-the-looking-glass morals and ethics and sense of freedom (not to mention fashion). She starts off with her experiences wearing the hijab, and goes on from there.

Yes, this is definitely worth a listen. Alinejad, though she’s suffered exile, the inability to see her beloved mother, and the disapprobation of her strict Islamic father (she now lives in the U.S.), not to mention arrest and death threats that continue, is relentlessly upbeat throughout. She’s also a wonderful singer, and gives us two examples of songs. (I didn’t realize that women aren’t allowed to sing in Iran.)

No doubt she’ll be written off as a “native informant” by over-the-top defenders of Islam like Khaled A. Beydoun (if you want to see an unhinged hit job on people like Maajid Nawaz, Asra Nomani, and other reformist Muslims, see Beydoun’s new Guardian article), but to me she’s a hero. As I said yesterday, some people just carp about oppression to flaunt their moral bona fides, but Alinejad has sacrificed her country, her family, and her safety by standing up for women’s rights.  Why aren’t people like Linda Sarsour using her as a role model instead of bigots like Louis Farrakhan? Well, you know the answer to that one.

Here’s Alinejad singing in her car.

Ireland repeals its 8th amendment

May 26, 2018 • 10:30 am

by Grania Spingies

When I look at the video of Savita Halappanavar dancing in the streets of Galway back in 2011, it brings tears to my eyes, because she will never dance or smile or laugh again. Ireland killed her. When she miscarried a year later, Ireland’s draconian position on abortion prevented her from getting the medical intervention she so desperately needed, and she died a few days later from septicemia.  I cannot even contemplate the anguish and anger of her husband and parents. This should never have happened in the 21st century.

Savita’s harrowing story was by no means unique, however it sparked a nationwide conversation in Ireland, one that was many decades overdue.

The campaign to repeal Ireland’s 8th Amendment has steadily grown in numbers and intensity from a time when few thought that a referendum would ever happen, to the point when the Repeal Campaign not only had the support of Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar, but also the leader of the major opposition party Micheál Martin.

Only a few years ago this seemed unthinkable, not because many people did not want provision to be made for abortion, but because people genuinely feared that there would be little support in a country where traditionally so many of the laws were written under the influence of the Catholic Church. Under Irish law, a rape victim who procured an abortion was liable to serve a longer jail sentence than her rapist.

In recent years however, the Catholic Church has lost nearly all of its influence over the people of Ireland, in spite of still nominally being the majority religion of the country. The scandals of child abuse by the clergy, the exploitation of women in “Laundries” and the steady march of modernity and socioeconomic affluence has caused the Church to steadily lose members. More importantly, the Divorce referendum in 1995 and the Same-Sex Marriage referendum of 2015 showed that Irish Catholics no longer took their cues from the clergy.

 

So tarnished is the Church’s reputation that they deliberately tried to play a muted role in the No campaign, although they just couldn’t quite contain themselves, and the Bishops had Pro-Life letters read out in as many parishes as they could manage during Sunday Mass a couple of weeks ago. There is no such thing as separation of Church and State over here. The No side has fought a vigorous if at times bizarre campaign over the months leading up to the referendum. It’s been marked by unapologetic misinformation, scaremongering and outright lies that have had to be combated by doctors who publicly campaigned to repeal the amendment. I don’t mean to be glib. I am sure that there are anti-abortion people who have honest arguments for their position. The No campaign, however, chose to go with sensational and lurid schlock and horror instead, displaying crimson photos of unborn fetuses and an outright denial of medical reality.

There’s also been a visible presence of Pro-Life American evangelicals who blagged their way into Ireland for the purpose of trying to sway the vote against Pro-Choice. This may unintentionally have done more damage than good to their cause. Ireland is a small country, and it doesn’t take much for news to spread across the entire land. In addition, American-style religious witnessing and testifying doesn’t play well over here. Not only does it not generate a currency of respect, it is regarded as bad manners at best and more likely as the sign of an unhinged mind.

 

A sample of the No campaign’s supporters on Twitter: short on facts, high on melodrama, incapable of hiding their religious roots. Many of the below are also not Irish accounts which created a false impression of how much support the No side had. Tactically this isn’t smart as it generated a sense of urgency on the side of the Yes campaign to ensure maximal turnout at the voting station.

A final verdict on Friday night once the Exit Polls were published, and that verdict is Dances With Goats.

Some points worth noting:

Although the older demographic was expected to be guaranteed to vote ‘No’, a surprising number publicly chose to support the Yes to Repeal campaign. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising at all, as they—more so than anyone else—have lived through the worst human rights horrors in Ireland.

 

Around 40,000 Irish ex-pats are still eligible to vote and many of them returned to cast their ballot, as they did during the 2015 Same-Sex Marriage referendum. There are a multitude of stories of people crowd-sourcing the funds to purchase tickets to travel from all over the world, many of them Millennials who largely supported the Repeal campaign.

People also posted thoughts as they voted.

Final tallies of the vote confirm what last night’s exit polls promised. Ireland has voted to repeal its Eight Amendment allowing for legislation to make provision for abortion to be passed. The No campaign has conceded defeat. The mood is triumphant but emotional: the cost of reaching this point has been high and the cruelty of the past can never really be undone.

https://twitter.com/b_m_hughes/status/1000336866867138560

On a more long-term note, the Catholic Church has lost another major battle for the hearts and minds of the Irish people. Two last places remain to it: schools and hospitals. I predict that at least one of those will fall too once the Church tries to undermine abortion procedures (and it will) carried out in hospitals that it claims authority over. Just to be clear, the hospitals are entirely funded by Irish taxpayers. However the Catholic Church still has control over some hospitals as members of Boards of Directors. Legislators are going to have to address this in the coming months.

Grania explains today’s Irish referendum on abortion

May 25, 2018 • 8:30 am

Today Ireland is at last holding a referendum on abortion. Grania, who of course lives in that country, explains it to us concisely:

Today Ireland is holding a referendum to poll whether the people wish to repeal the 8th amendment. Here’s some background.

Article 40.3.3, known as the Eighth Amendment, was voted into the Irish Constitution by referendum in 1983. The amendment states: “The state acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.:

The amendment equates the life of a pregnant woman with that of an embryo or foetus, and has created an unworkable distinction between a pregnant woman’s life and her health.

The amendment was set in place specifically and deliberately to prevent abortion in Ireland. As a direct result, pregnant women were denied life-saving medical interventions if such interventions could interfere with the health of the fetus. In addition to this, it meant that nobody could obtain abortion under any circumstance—not rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormalities.

Women in Ireland have only one option, to travel to the UK where they could obtain an abortion—dependent of course on whether they are physically or financially able to do so.

In 1992, Ireland held a referendum to try to ban women from travelling outside of Ireland to obtain an abortion. Fortunately, this attempt failed and Ireland was left with the hypocritical, dangerous and bizarre position of having condoned abortion so long as it happens outside of the country’s borders.

The need for the referendum is because the Irish Constitution cannot be amended unless ratified by a simple majority.

The effect of the referendum is only to repeal the Eighth Amendment. Later legislation will have to be enacted. Currently proposed legislation would allow for unlimited abortion up to 12 weeks, and afterwards only for medical reasons.

Grania will report tomorrow on the outcome, but people are hopeful it will pass. The Catholic Church, of course, is weighing in heavily on the “no repeal” side, but polls show that more than 50% of voters are in favor of repeal.  I am heartened by the many people on Twitter supporting the repeal. This one, in particular, warmed my heart: these people all met at the airport; they were independently returning to Ireland just to vote:

Grania found these tweets and pictures; three Twitter hashtags are Together for YES, Repeal the Eighth, and Home to Vote (see also here).

Did women chess players’ wearing of the hijab help Iranian women? A reader weighs in

February 21, 2017 • 11:30 am

The Women’s World Chess Championship is underway in Iran, and, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, the country (and the World Chess Federation) is requiring that all women wear hijabs. This is not only an infringement on women’s freedom (both the foreign players and the Iranians themselves), but I can imagine that playing in a hijab could be an annoyance if you’ve never worn one before.

In response to World Chess Federation’s (FIDE’s) refusal to contest the hijab requirement, several important players have pulled out of the tournament, most notably U.S. champion Nazi Paikidze-Barnes, who simply refused to wear the covering because she saw it as a symbol of women’s oppression.

Reader Will G., whose words were previously posted in a piece on the Women’s World Champion, took the time to write me an email discussing whether forcing women players to wear hijabs actually advanced the cause of Iranian women, as some people maintained. It appears that it didn’t. I am publishing his email with permission, and note that Will is himself an accomplished amateur chess enthusiast, ranking in the upper 5% of players, so he knows something about the game. And now to his email:

***********

Sibling Teen Chess Masters Banned In Iran For Going Unveiled and Playing An Israeli

Yeah, so that change.org petition to FIDE about moving the Women’s championship from Tehran had the expected effect. It’s good that so many people made themselves known (17,000+ signed!), but the train went a-rolling along anyway. Right now, we’ve reached the quarterfinals in Tehran. (Just look at the pics. Is there anything more depressing outside of war zone photojournalism?)

Remember some of the arguments made for why the free women of the chess world should swallow their pride and play in Iran?:

“It’s not right to call for a boycott. These games are important for women in Iran; it’s an opportunity for us to show our strength.”

“I am firmly against the international community using the compulsory hijab as a means to put pressure and isolate Iran.”

“If Iran can host this event, it will be a big step for us; it will help our women chess players and it will boost women in other sporting fields. It will pave the way for them, too.”

“Calls for a boycott will only disappoint Iranian women and destroy their hopes.”

So, now that some of the strongest female players have shown up and shown they can fianchetto with the best of them, things are looking up for women in Iran right? At least, the ones who play chess?

Golnaz Esfandiari of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty writes:

The Iranian National Chess Team dismissed 18-year-old Dorsa Derakhshani for appearing at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival 2017, which ran from January 23 to February 2, without the Islamic head scarf that became compulsory in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Her 15-year-old brother, Borna Derakhshani, was banned for playing against an Israeli opponent at the same event. . . 

“Unfortunately, what shouldn’t have happened has happened. Our national interests have priority over everything,” [Iranian Chess Federation Head Mehrdad] Pahlevanzadeh said. He added that there would be no “leniency” for those who trample on Iran’s “ideals and principles.”

“Our national interests have priority over everything. . . ” In these days when a stubby-fingered Caligula occupies the White House, I take solace in the fact that a totalitarian statement like this still has the power to shock me.

Here’s a video of the offending temptress, doing her wicked post-match interview after holding International Grandmaster Damian Lemos to a draw, in a disgraceful attempt to undermine the Islamic State of Iran’s good reputation.

And here’s the offending game her little brother played against an Israeli Grandmaster. To an onlooker, it looks like a painfully dull French defense exchange variation with a significant blunder in a probably drawn endgame (85. g3??), but apparently the real blunder was showing up like some kind of competitor and not feigning illness.

So I ask the pious folk quoted in The Guardian, and everyone who thinks they may have a point: What the hell is wrong with you? How many women’s championships will have to be held in Iran before the misogyny and antisemitism ends? When would you say we are no longer reaching out in love and understanding, but enabling intolerance and hatred?

And finally, I think that the Derakhshani siblings should be made automatic American citizens, if they so wish.

***********

Happy Western chess players, advancing the cause of Iranian women (LOL):

r_20170218_teheran_wwc_r3g2_6789-anna-muzychuk-ukraine

screen-shot-2017-02-21-at-10-21-43-am