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Feminist FB group bans women who deny ‘Occupation’

March 16, 2016

An administrator in Israel’s largest and most dominant radical feminist Facebook group, “Feminist discourse” (“Siah feministi” in Hebrew), has announced a ban on “deniers of the Occupation.”

“My patience has ended,” wrote an administrator in the group, according to a screenshot provided by Sapir Barabi, who was a member but left in protest. “Deniers of the Occupation will be deleted without warnings or further explanations.”

“Yes, this is exactly what you just read,” wrote Barabi. “The group that is supposedly the most accepting and the most understanding and the most inclusive. The most non-racist, the most anti-discrimination…

“Radical leftist feminist discourse; radical anti-Zionist, anti-religious discourse,” she mused. “Feminist Discourse has pushed politics into a place where it should not be. Feminist Discourse cannot include me, an ‘Occupation denier,’ as a member. It turns out there is no such thing as a religious, Zionist, right wing feminist. There just isn’t. According to the rules of the group and the administrator, people like me need to be denounced. Deleted, without further explanations.”

Hotbed of radicalism

Feminist Discourse boasts over 17,500 members and is known as a hotbed of radicalism where dissent is not accepted. Things have gotten so bad there that one former member recently complained that it seemed women have exchanged the old patriarchy for a new one.

While the ultra-leftist nature of the leadership of the radical feminist movement is hardly a secret, many religious and right-wing women nonetheless identify with the movement and seek to join it. Barabi is not the first to be painfully disillusioned.

Last week, on March 8, a delegation of women from the Jewish Home attended the International Women’s Day event in the Knesset, only to realize that they were not really welcome there. One of them, Dafna Etzion, wrote afterward: “How is it possible that the Committee for Advancement of Women initiates such an event, and a sizable part of the committee’s members do not take part in the event? And how can it be that women from all of Israel, and all parts of the political spectrum, are invited, yet they leave in the middle because of lack of interest and relevance? How did Women’s Day turn into a political tool of the Left and the Arabs? Most of the time I felt ashamed for the state of Israel in its present predicament.”

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