Why Did The Forward Give a Platform to an Anti-Zionist, Terror Sympathizer?

Julie Lenarz

[Photo: SJP Houston / YouTube]

Let’s play a game for a moment. Write down individuals least qualified to share their views on Zionism, the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination on their ancestral land; and feminism, the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. Chances are high that anti-semites, terrorists and their supporters feature prominently on your list.

Yet The Forward, which prides itself as the “fastest-growing Jewish media brand based in the US,” published a piece by a woman, who encapsulates all of those characteristics, to tell us: “No, You Can’t Be A Feminist And A Zionist.”

Mariam Barghouti is a prominent supporter of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement and was detained by Israeli forces in 2014 for stone-throwing and entering a closed military area.

In April of this year, The New York Times was forced to apologize, after it published an op-ed by another Barghouti without mentioning the abhorrent crimes that he had committed and described him in the by-line simply as a “Palestinian leader and parliamentarian,” as if he was just an average commentator.

Unfortunately, The Forward has failed to learn lessons from that absurd spectacle and has now given Mariam, innocently introduced as “a writer based in Ramallah,” a platform to spread her poisonous views without a mention of her shadowy activism. No one disputes Barghouti’s right to free speech, but there is no rule that say an anti-Semitic terrorist sympathizer has a right to publish her propaganda in a legacy Jewish publication, when there are more than enough Jew-hating outlets around the corner.

“I…feel betrayed as a woman,” Barghouti writes in her piece. I can relate to that. I remember the chills running down my spine when Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Carmen Perez were elevated to the nation’s favorite feminist sweethearts, after organizing the Women’s March on Washington, D.C. to protest the election of President Donald Trump.

These women are many things; feminists they are not.

“You’ll know when you live under Sharia law because all your loans and credit cards will become interest free,” Linda Sarsour gushed over the brutal legal system under which women can be stoned, crucified and mutilated in the Islamic World. Mallroy, meanwhile, has a soft spot for a convicted cop killer and communist dictators, while Perez openly shares her admiration for the Black Panthers.

And as if the Trio Terrible had not stained the reputation of feminism enough, Mariam Barghouti has now joined their ticket. What she writes is not revolutionary. In fact, it is just a lame imitation of Linda Sarsour’s comments from earlier this year, when she claimed that Zionism and feminism are incompatible.

Of course, this is nonsense. Zionism and feminism share the same challenges. Both movements represent groups that, throughout history, faced deep-rooted discrimination and profound hostility, simply for seeking equality among nations and people.

There are many countries and movements throughout the world that treat women as second-class citizens — and Barghouti, Sarsour and their ilk are part of that culture — but Israel is not among them. The modern Jewish state is a place where Zionism and feminism thrive side by side. The birth of Israel has not only given Jews a homeland, it has also created a space for women and men to live together as equals.

Israel is the country of Golda Meir and Gal Gadot, both superwomen in their own right. Women can serve in the IDF. They can become doctors, pilots or academics. Or they can stay at home and raise a family. Israeli women — and just to be clear, not only Jewish Israeli women, but all Israeli women — have, by law, the right to choose their own destiny. Palestinian women can only dream of such opportunities, restrained by the shackles of a deeply patriarchal and Islamist informed society.

Zionism and feminism, meanwhile, are both pillars of the liberal order and the intention to demonize Zionism stems from hatred of Jews, not feminism or any other desire to make the word a more equal place. Barghouti and Sarsour have been nothing but honest about who they are and their intentions. Not only do they engage in the worst kind of identity politics; they are aggressively trying to re-write the definition of anti-Semitism by questioning the Jewish right to self-determination.

Barghouti claims in her piece that one cannot be a Zionist and a feminist. That is untrue. True, however, is that one cannot be an anti-Zionist and not be an anti-Semite at the same time. Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism, disseminated every day by hundreds of Jew-hating individuals, groups, movements and outlets. It’s sad that The Forward felt compelled to join the club.