{"id":82891,"date":"2015-12-22T09:25:15","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T17:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=82891"},"modified":"2023-09-07T04:43:32","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T12:43:32","slug":"where-have-you-gone-betty-friedan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=82891","title":{"rendered":"Where have you gone, Betty Friedan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Betty Friedan was a twentieth-century American revolutionary who, in word and deed helped empower women everywhere. She was author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), founded the National Organization of Women (NOW), and \u201cmother\u201d of Second Wave Feminism that transformed the U.S.
\nWhat would have this feminist leader thought of the recent 653 to 80 vote by the National Women\u2019s Studies Association to join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement? The resolution condemned Israel for \u201cinjustice and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, perpetrated against Palestinians and other Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, within Israel and in the Golan Heights.\u201d
\nThe resolution contained nary a word about the Palestinians\u2019 current \u201cstabbing Intifada,\u201d most of whose victims have been Jewish women and children. Nor was there a single whereas about last summer\u2019s unprovoked massive rocket onslaught launched from Gaza\u2019s Hamastan using or about terror tunnels burrowed into Israel proper. Not a syllable about Palestinian curriculum and media, including cartoon anti-Semitism, venerating suicide bombers and enlisting youngsters into a culture of death.
\nWhat would Betty Friedan, that spunky Jewish housewife and mother who devoted her book and life to fighting what she called in the 1950s \u201cthe problem without a name,\u201d have thought about American feminists who \u201cinclude out\u201d Israeli women targeted by terrorists from their movement?
\nGil Troy\u2019s book, Moynihan\u2019s Moment\u2014about how then U.S Ambassador, Daniel Patrick Moynihan spearheaded the fight against the adoption of the infamous 1975 UN \u201cZionism Equals Racism\u201d resolution\u2014contains a chapter focusing on Friedan\u2019s realization that her fight for the feminist cause and commitment to Zionism were \u201cindivisible.\u201d
\nShe was not an outspoken Zionist until 1975 when she attended the International Women\u2019s Year World Congress in Mexico City, where she was shocked by the unholy trinity of \u201canti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Zionism\u201d among the delegates. In her article, \u201cScary Times in Mexico City,\u201d Friedan recounted how dissenting voices among American delegates had their microphones turned off and their speeches shouted down. Israeli prime minister\u2019s wife, Leah Rabin, was booed and boycotted, as the \u201cDeclaration on the Equality of Women\u201d became one of the first international documents to label Zionism as a form of racism. For those of us who later experienced the same tactics at the UN\u2019s Anti-Racism Conference in Durban in 2001, just days before 9\/11, Friedan\u2019s account reads like a piece of our own history.
\nFriedan declared that there a \u201clarger never-ending battle for human freedom and evolution. Women as Jews, Jews as women, have learned in their gut, \u2018if I am not for myself, who will be for me (and who can I truly be for). If I am only for myself, who am I?\u2019\u201d Back in New York, she formed an Ad Hoc Committee of Women for Human Rights in which Margaret Mead, Nora Ephron, Lauren Bacall, Beverly Sills, and Gloria Steinem, among others, joined her battle against the the odious \u201cZionism Equals Racism\u201d resolution which the UN finally repealed in 1991.
\nThe anti-Israel, anti-Jewish forces prevailed again at the 1980 International Women\u2019s Conference in Copenhagen\u2014where delegates met in a hall festooned with a larger-than-life portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini! \u2014but at Nairobi in 1985 Friedan and her allies succeeded in ensuring \u201cevery reference to Zionism was gone.\u201d
\nLater as the head of delegation of American Jewish women who participated in a US\/Israel dialogue, entitled \u201cWomen as Jews, Jews as Women,\u201d organized by the American Jewish Congress, Friedan inspired the founding of the Israel Women\u2019s Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman: Betty Friedan was a twentieth-century American revolutionary who, in word and deed helped empower women everywhere. She was author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), founded the National Organization of Women (NOW), and \u201cmother\u201d of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[142,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-israel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82891"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151294,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82891\/revisions\/151294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}