Watch: Is rape a political tool in Israel?

“Is rape used as a political tool in Israel to demonize and dehumanize Arabs and Palestinians?”

The Electronic Intifada contributor David Sheen appeared on The Real News Network on Tuesday to discuss this question.

In a recent article for The Electronic Intifada, Sheen shows how lawmakers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition try to “deflect attention from sex crime scandals involving the highest echelons of Israeli society by making false allegations against Palestinians and other non-Jews.”

Sheen told The Real News, “Unfortunately, what we see is that in Israel, instead of the government saying this [rape culture] is a major problem … what we have is top members of the government committing these crimes.”

Sheen added, “Sadly the only time it ever gets mentioned by Prime Minister Netanyahu is if he thinks he can somehow blame rape on non-white, non-Jewish people, specifically Palestinians and African refugees and other non-Jewish folk in the country.”

Watch part one of Sheen’s interview above, and the second part here.

Here are related articles by David Sheen for The Electronic Intifada:

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Anyone remotely familiar with attitudes and customs of the American South will recognize the dynamic at work. It's one intimately associated with racial oppression of a severe order. We don't have to search the German archives, though it's well to keep in mind other examples. But good old all-American Jim Crow lynch-law tallies pretty closely with what David Sheen describes in this interview. Perhaps if instead of alluding to South African apartheid or the Nuremberg rallies, we tried to remind Americans that they're being asked to support a regime whose tenets they wouldn't dream of endorsing for their own country, moreover a close approximation of which they'd already rejected in the 1960s and 70s, then progress could be attained at a faster rate.

Indeed, with white supremacists like Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions installed at the highest level of government, anyone wanting to oppose this onslaught of racism should recognize that backing Israel is the equivalent of waving a Confederate flag and beating Freedom Riders. Zionism can have no place in a progressive coalition.

Maureen Clare Murphy

Maureen Clare Murphy's picture

Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada.