The other day I was driving around listening to public radio. Hanna Rosin was talking about her article about changing gender roles in the latest Atlantic, on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show with fill-in host Andrea Bernstein, when a caller, clearly a hasbarist, said that they were leaving out the “subjugation” of women in Muslim societies. Rosin picked up the segue and described the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia, and then host and author moved on quickly, to men’s changing roles… Neither sought to contradict the man’s prejudice.
A couple of things struck me about the exchange. If such prejudice had been expressed about women or gay men or black people or Jews, host and guest would have been quick to stomp on it angrily. No; this is an acceptable prejudice. A billion people around the world, or whatever, were written off with a devastating noun, and not a peep from the experts. (Myself I have often criticized the very-non-public role of women in several Arab societies I’ve visited, but the criticism has always been tentative; I’ve spent weeks in these societies, that’s all, and I’d never extend it to all of Islam.)
I see the caller’s comment as an infection that now pervades our culture. When the State Department warned the White House not to support Partition in 1947, it echoed Arab leaders’ concerns that establishing a Jewish state would sow alienation between the Arab world and the west for decades to come. This has turned out to be true. There has been great mistrust between the U.S. and the Arab world and a great deal of violence. Steve Walt has pointed out that we have helped to kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the last 30 years, and while I’m no social scientist, I wonder how much of this hostility/mistrust is rooted in the establishment of a Jewish state in the heart of the Arab world, and in turn how much of the radio women’s acceptance of the prejudice has its root in this now-60-odd year conflict and the bland acceptance that the U.S. is on the good side here.
Are the analytical women of that show even conscious of Zionism’s effect on American political culture and themselves? (And yes, there’s a Jewish identity piece in all this, Rosin grew up in Israel, Lehrer continually airs pro-Israel voices.)
