Yuli Tamir, Israel’s Minister of Education, supports clitoridectomy in a way

By Steven Plaut

But the New York Times reported Sept. 20, 07 that there are people in Egypt opposed to female “circumcision,” meaning female genital mutilation.

In Egypt the procedure is done under filthy conditions and sometimes results in the death of young girls (it is done to them when they are 13 years old). The Times reports:

“A nationwide campaign to stop the practice has become one of the most powerful social movements in Egypt in decades, uniting an unlikely alliance of government forces, official religious leaders and street-level activists. Though Egypt’s Health Ministry ordered an end to the practice in 1996, it allowed exceptions in cases of emergency, a loophole critics describe as so wide that it effectively rendered the ban meaningless. But now the government is trying to force a comprehensive ban.”

The NY Times article gets more graphic from there, but I will spare you the details.

Now why will this news upset Israel’s Minister of Education, Yuli Tamir, better known for introducing school programs in Arab schools that teach that Israel’s very existence is a “Naqba” or catastrophe?

She is a great fan of the “Clitoridectomy.” That word means what you think it means. Eleven years ago she published an article endorsing and defending the practice, and denouncing those narrow-minded Western racists who express disgust at it. The problem is not the “Clitoridectomy,” insists Tamir in that article, but the intolerable denunciations of it by patriarchal bigoted women-hating Westerners who fail to respect the cultural practices of The Other. For more citations from Tamir’s rant, go here:

You realize what this means? While Israel’s relations with Egypt are not very good, once Tamir starts denouncing the Egyptians who criticize and oppose female genital mutilation, this will enrage Egypt and could even trigger a new all-out Middle East war!! True, Egypt got very angry, diplomatically-speaking, when Israeli comedian Eli Yatzpen made fun of President Mubarak on TV, but that is nothing! Egypt might attack Israel with missiles to force Tamir’s removal if Israelis do not fire the educational airhead themselves!!