By Ted Belman
To my utter surprise, I received an email from an old Leftist who selects Yuli Tamir’s comment “My purpose, however, is not to justify clitoridectomy” to argue she doesn’t defend the practice of clitoridectomy. Before reading my reply please read the articles linked to in Yuli Tamir, Israel’s Minister of Education, supports clitoridectomy in a way.
Yes she said that, but she also equated western practices with clitoridectomy to show up western critics as hypocrites.
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But would our gut reaction to female circumcision be very different if it were performed on consenting adults? It is not unlikely that girls at the age of 13 or 14, who are considered in traditional societies as adults mature enough to wed and bear children, would “consent” to the mutilation of their bodies if they were convinced that marriage and children were contingent on so doing. Many women who followed the tradition of Sati seemed to do it as a matter of choice….
If that is not being an apologist for the practice, I don’t know what is? What I read is the leftist practice of moral relativism. She argues that since we go under the knife for “beauty†we should accept their value of clitoridectomy or we are hypocritical. She argues that so long as one does it as a matter of choice, it is OK. I beg to differ. If one martyrs oneself as a matter of choice it is not OK either. In both cases their culture counsels the practice. Thus the culture must be condemned. We condemn suicide even though it is a matter of choice.
But let me focus on the rest of the quote,
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‘My purpose, however, is not to justify clitoridectomy, but to expose the roots of the deep hostility to it — to reveal the smug, unjustified self-satisfaction lurking behind the current condemnation of clitoridectomy. Referring to clitoridectomy, and emphasizing the distance of the practice from our own conventions, allows us to condemn them for what they do to their women, support the struggle of their women against their primitive, inhuman culture, and remain silent on the status of women in our society.’
She wants to “expose the roots of the deep hostility to it “. Why so? Obviously she wants to attack western norms and she uses our condemnation of clitoridectomy as a tool. Leaving aside whether the comparison is odious, why not make her point independent of our condemnation of clitoridectomy. No, she prefers to accept clitoridectomy “to reveal the smug, unjustified self-satisfaction lurking behind the current condemnationâ€. While her purpose may not to defend clitoridectomy her purpose is certainly to attack western society.
We can and certainly do criticize our own culture for many things but to argue we can’t be hostile to clitoridechtomy because of our own practices is unacceptable. We may be guilty of something but we are still entitled to have hostility to clitoridechtomy.
The left finds common cause with Islam because they both attack the west. When doing so the Left turns a blind eye to the horrors of Islam. This is a case in point. Tamir thinks it more important to attack our smugness then their odious pratices. I bet she has never written an article attacking clitoridectomy.
To my mind we are right to be deeply hostile to it. What is her problem with that? We are right to prefer our culture to theirs. We are right to consider our culture better. What’s wrong with that?
My purpose in writing this is not to attack and condem clitoridectomy, though it should be, but to attack Yuli Tamir as a Leftist. I am horrified that she is the Minister of Education, no less, for the State of Israel. Get rid of the Kadima government which appointed her.
Note: My leftist friend brought to my attention that she also wrote this,
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Clitoridectomy is obviously a deplorable practice. It is, among other things, an extremely painful, traumatizing mutilation of young girls that leaves them permanently disfigured and deprived of sexual enjoyment. We should express no sympathy toward those who practice it, and support those who struggle to end it.
Good for her. I stand corrected again. But why use it as she does? Why apologize for it? Why enter the issue of consent as though it makes this practice acceptable. I don’t get it.
I sent this email to my leftist friend,
I spent the last hour reading about Tamir’s politics. The fact that she was a founding member of Peace Now tells me all I need to know.
Caroline Glick with whom I usually agree wrote an article on her and I posted it in August of this year. I have now reposted it as of today.
Tamir is undermining Israel as a state for the Jews or a Jewish state. Instead she is denuding it of its Jewish character and making it a state like any other.
She is using her ministry to do so.
In addition she is joined by the media, the academia and the Courts in pursuing this agenda. I do not believe that this is what the people of Israel want.
This difference of opinion is huge. I feel so strongly about this. I advocate civil disobedience or military insubordination. I do not advocate violence. The government must be stopped from undoing Zionism.
So that’s where I stand.
I received this email
Perfect arguments and presentation Ted.
The point of merely rising the subject with an even remote tint of understanding, categorizes Yuli Tamir. As if the latest “minister of education” from that origin would need further identification.
The rest is semantics. Consenting adult? Perhaps in Stockholm or Washington some of those dwelling in the margins may, during an hallucinatory trip consent to it, but in Islamic countries?
The process is demonic not just unwise. In Tamir’s sick proclivity perhaps eunuchs are also to be provided a choice as a consenting adult?
The same gruesome items of Islamic/pagan extraction, particularly in Africa, not only perform clitoris destruction but also castrate boys and use them as well as young girls as sex slaves or slaves period. There is a robust trade on those commodities… in Islam. And not only Islamics peruse the byproducts.
We have had a sequel of sickos as “education ministers” that created that infirm part of the post Jewish system that has formed the unJews and out of that miasma, the creme de la creme… To identify the ultimate by product of that “education system” look at the faces and body language of the “men and females” in YASSAM, GILBOA, Jewish Sektion of the GSS, border police and police. Look at close ups of those that disinterred Jews, performed the Pogroms, etc. Veritable monsters, violent beasts, criminals of the worse kind. Take a good look at the specimen leading the latest assault against Mrs.Nadia Matar and associates. Those gross items are capable of the most bestial acts one can imagine and they will do that if they are not lumped into prison pending trials.
But lets not forget the “tenured” professors also hailing from such education framework such as Gordon, Pappe, etc, etc.
As I mentioned in person to Ezra, ( then minister of internal security), during his visit to Karmiel canvassing LIKUD Seniors to support Sharon, (in fact he offered cash, indirectly), they are not much better than Pinochet’s ghastly murderers. I ended up with several police file constructions against me following my public denouncement of the post Jewish elements.
In my previous post, I called her a “leftist bitch”. Was I wrong to so characterize her. Plaut also said she is “supports cliteridectomy”. Was he wrong in this charge. Even if wrong, should he refrain from tarring her with this brush?
Anatomically the whole thing is a farce. To make circumcision of males equal to that of females, you need to cut the whole penis off, not even just the glans because that’s what they do to woman. I understand it goes further in some cultures, they also cut off the “labia” of the vulva. Goodness, how absolutely primitive and cruel! Some girls probably die from shock, or later from infection!