Ten Steps Backward for Afghan Women

Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a law in February, curtailing the freedoms of Shiite women. Karzai supported the law to gain Shiite support in the upcoming presidential election. What would the law do?

• “Unless the wife is ill, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband.”
• Wives are obliged to have sex with their husbands at least once every four days.
• Women can only leave the house if they have "a legitimate purpose."
• Wives cannot work or get an education without their husband's permission.

The law triggered a firestorm of criticism, both international and Afghani. In response, Karzai ordered a review of the proposition to verify that it does not violate Afghanistan's constitutional protections. Even if though it had been passed by Parliament and signed by Karzai, the act does not become law until it is published in the official gazette.

However, Karzai also defended the measure, saying it had been "mistranslated" by the Western media.

The law only applies to Afghanistan's Shiites, who make up between a tenth and a fifth of the population. But women's rights groups are worried that it could influence pending legislation concerning Sunni families and violence against women.

About 300 women took to the streets of Kabul on April 15 to protest the law. They were taunted as "enemies of Islam" and, oddly, "whores." Some women professed their support for the law. Other women were members of the police force separating the two groups.

I would like to see more of them.

Israel Update

[Programming note: There are a fair few topics that I have wanted to cover but have been unable to. Hopefully, as the semester winds down, I'll be able to get to them. So if it seems slightly anachronistic that I'm talking about Israel, it's because it's the oldest project.]

Last time we talked about Israel, they were bombing Gaza. A lot has happened since then.

Details of the War Come Out

"If you want to know whether I think that in doing so we killed innocents, the answer is, unequivocally, yes." ~Tzvika Fogel, a brigadier-general in the Israeli reserves

Testimonies from Israeli soldiers were published in Ha'aretz in March. The soldiers were given the impression that Palestinian lives were "very, very, less important than the lives of our soldiers." A commander told them "to write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls...just because you can." Then, there's this story:

There was a house with a family inside ... We put them in a room ... a few days after there was an order to release [them]. There was a sniper position on the roof. The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was OK, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders.

The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them ... In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.

International Responses

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International condemned Israel's use of white phosphorus (pictured above) in densely populated areas. White phosphorus is often used as a smokescreen, but can also be used as an incendiary. It is particularly lethal because, in addition to being burned, the body absorbs the phosphorus, leading to organ failure.

Based on these accounts (and another where a Palestinian boy was used as a human shield), the United Nations concluded that Israel committed war crimes and violated human rights. The Israelis accused the UN Human Rights Council of bias.

The Human Rights Council recently named Judge Richard Goldstone to head an investigation into the conflict. Judge Goldstone is of Jewish descent and was an important architect of post-apartheid South Africa. According to an anonymous government official, Israel will not cooperate with the inquiry.

Parliamentary Elections

Elections for the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, were held on February 10. The elections were contentious. Both Tzipi Livni, of the centrist Kadima Party, and Benjamin Netanyahu, of the more conservative Likud Party, claimed victory on election night. It was not known which party won more seats until February 12. Kadima led by one:

However, the 28 seats won by Kadima was well short of the 61 needed for an outright parliamentary majority. A coalition was needed, and both Livni and Netanyahu could make arguments for the premiership. Livni's Kadima had won a plurality, but conservative parties won 65 seats, and Netanyahu was well-placed to form a coalition.

The ultra-right Yisrael Beiteinu placed third, and its head, Avigdor Lieberman, was proclaimed the kingmaker. Lieberman, however, is a controversial figure. He advocates a loyalty test for Arab Israelis and maintains that "the peace process is based on...false...assumptions." But achieving the premiership without his support would be either difficult or impossible.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Ehud Barak led the fourth-place, left-wing Labor Party into the Netanyahu coalition. Said Joe Klein, "The decision removes the last wisps of credibility that the Labor Party--the party of Ben Gurion, Dayan, Meir and Rabin--had in Israeli politics." Barak became defense minister; Lieberman, foreign minister.

Odds & Ends

Joe Klein says Netanyahu "is mostly blowing smoke" in his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg on Iran.

Lieberman is being investigated for "bribery, money laundering and breach of trust," upholding a longstanding tradition among Israeli politicians. After all, accusations of corruption led former PM Ehud Olmert to step down last September, which led Livni to take the reins of Kadima and the former coalition to fall apart, requiring the election in February.

Op-Ed: R E S P E C T

Is anybody else sick of Michelle Obama being judged day to day on her appearance, fashion, arms, and nothing more? What about the fact that she is an extremely intelligent, capable, successful, driven woman who has a lot more to contribute to the world aside from being somebody's wife? It's disgusting that already society has tried to define and contain her sphere of influence to the realm of women's fashion, as if to say that a woman cannot be beautiful, a mother, or an intellectual all at the same time. This is ridiculous. She's the First Lady, and the first black First Lady. Get over it and let her define herself and what she wants her role and influence to be.

Upon winning his Oscar for best leading actor in 1964 (the first black American to do so for a leading role), Sidney Poitier had this to say when confronted with all the media hype about what this win in particular meant to him: "I am artist, man, American, contemporary. I am an awful lot of things, so I wish you would pay me the respect due."

So please, America, pay Michelle Obama the respect she's due, too.

~J-Mad


*Not that by acknowledging a blog post as an op-ed piece is too different than what the blog format is all about in the first place, but I just thought I'd make it clear exactly what's going on here. This post is a little different than most other, headline-driven blog posts but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.