Anti-Semitism

Arutz Sheva / Israel National News 

Khamenei Tops SWC List of 2013 Anti-Semites

Labels: Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism in Iran, Ayatollah, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran, Khameini, Khomeinism, Persia

The Times of Israel

http://www.timesofisrael.com/terror-groups-aiming-to-hit-israeli-jewish-targets-worldwide-in-coming-weeks/

"Israelis ordered out of Sinai, told to avoid Jordan

Terrorists ‘aim to hit Israeli, Jewish targets worldwide’ in coming weeks

Counter-Terror Bureau issues strident warning, citing ‘concrete, very high’ threats in numerous countries 

Labels: Anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, Anti-Semitic acts, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism

Chavez calls Israel "murderous" U.S. arm

Wed Nov 25, 2009 8:48pm EST
By Frank Jack Daniel and Andrew Cawthorne
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Iran/idUSTRE5AO03520091126

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez used a visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday to brand Israel as a murderous agent of Washington.

Chavez and Ahmadinejad, on the last leg of a tour of three left-leaning South American nations, hugged, held hands, and praised each other as fellow revolutionaries.

The Venezuelan singled out a comment by Israeli President Shimon Peres during a visit this month to South America that his and Ahmadinejad's days in power may be numbered.

"We know what the state of Israel stands for -- a murderous arm of the Yankee empire," Chavez told joint news conference. "What the president of Israel said, we take as a threat."

Chavez broke relations with Israel this year. He won praise in the Muslim world after branding an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip as genocide.

His fierce speeches against Israel are taken by some supporters as a green light for anti-Semitism and walls in Caracas are often daubed with anti-Jewish slogans.

Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust and has called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

OPEC members Venezuela and Iran have grown much closer in recent years. Chavez supports Ahmadinejad's controversial nuclear program, while Iran is helping Venezuela map uranium deposits.

The two leaders signed a raft of business and industrial agreements relating to 129 joint projects that Chavez said ranged from assembling bikes and producing car-parts, to processing milk and building houses.

Ahmadinejad clinched a second term after a disputed June election brought the worst unrest in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution and a heavy-handed clampdown on opponents.

His trips to left-leaning Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela this week have helped cement ties with countries that back Iran's right to develop atomic power for peaceful purposes.

Iran is under pressure to accept a U.N. plan aimed at checking nuclear ambitions which it says are peaceful but the West fears could be intended to create atomic weapons.

"What do the imperialists say? That Ahmadinejad is here because we are making the atomic bomb here too," Chavez said.

"They're the ones with the atomic bombs, and remember the Yankee imperialists dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," he added, referring to the bombings of Japanese cities that ended World War II.

A leading Chavez critic and newspaper director, Teodoro Petkoff, mocked Ahmadinejad's visit, saying past cooperation deals had led to little of substance, not even the planned production of bicycles.

Karen Hooper, Latin America analyst for Stratfor consultancy, agreed that the worst fears in Washington about Venezuela and Iran's ties may be overblown.

"There is little danger of Venezuela being able to help Iran proliferate," she said.

"Although Iran is short on uranium and Venezuela might have some, even if Venezuela were to deliver sufficient quantities, the real problem for Iran is the enrichment process, which requires technology that Venezuela could not possibly wield."

(Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Alan Elsner and Walker Simon)"

[Note how Ms. Karen Hooper can't help herself from acting as an apologist for evil even when it's smacking her between the eyes!]

Labels: Anti-Israel, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Antisemitism in Venezuela, Chavez, Hugo Chavez, Jew-hate, South America, Venezuela, Venezuelan Anti-Semitism, Venezuelan Jews

Anti-Semitism 2.0 Going Largely Unchallenged

Old-guard groups seen slow in recognizing viral threat from Facebook, YouTube.

by Tamar Snyder
Staff Writer
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c37_a4553/News/National.html
02/20/2008

More than 35,000 people have joined the Facebook group “Israel is not a country! ... Delist it from Facebook as a country!”

Type “Jew” into the search function on YouTube, and you’ll discover a host of anti-Semitic videos, including “911 Jew Spy Scandal 3” and a video clip in which National Polish Party’s Leszek Bubel declares himself a “proud anti-Semite.”

And Google Earth, the satellite-mapping program, recently came under fire when officials from Kiryat Yam filed a lawsuit against Google after the Internet giant refused to take down a note posted by user Thameen Darby claiming that the northern Israeli town was founded on the remains of the Arab village of Ghawarina.

This is the new face of anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism 2.0. And it’s potentially more hazardous than the relatively straightforward smear campaigns and petitions of yesteryear.

Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Google Earth thrive on communities in which users generate and share information in the form of videos, photos and blog posts, which are subject to vague terms of service and seemingly arbitrary censorship.

This leaves the door open for anti-Semites across the globe to co-opt these applications to spread messages of hate, often failing to distinguish between Jews and Israel when comparing Jews to Nazis and Israel to apartheid South Africa, observers say.

“This phenomena is spreading anti-Semitism and acceptability of anti-Semitism in new and increasingly effective ways,” says Andre Oboler, a Legacy Heritage Fellow who runs ZionismOnTheWeb.org and is a post-doctoral fellow studying online public diplomacy at Bar-Ilan University.

“Now in the Web 2.0 world, the social acceptability of anti-Semitism can be spread, public resistance lowered and hate networks rapidly established,” Oboler said.

What’s worse, Oboler contends, Jewish organizations are behind the times and are not devoting the resources necessary to stop the hate virus from spreading.

Many at the helm of these large organizations have yet to sign up for a Facebook account, don’t spend much time on YouTube and aren’t all that sure what Google Earth is.

“Community leaders tend to be the sort of people who are too busy to spend time looking at YouTube videos,” Oboler says. “They are very, very focused on old media, which is a bit strange, since a lot of people their age are online.”

The average American YouTube viewer is 39, and 33.5 percent of Facebook users are between 35 and 54 years old.

The more tech-savvy among community leaders realize just how grave the situation is — but have all but shaken their heads at the impossibility of making a dent in the large volume of hate messages being spread. As Myrna Shinbaum, spokeswoman for the Anti-Defamation League retorted, “We can’t sit here all day monitoring YouTube and Facebook.” (The organization does report objectionable material to service providers. “But the minute they do the right thing and pull something down, another pops up,” says Deborah Lauter, ADL’s national civil rights director. “It takes constant vigilance and policing.”)

Yet we live in a world in which “truth” often belongs to the Web site with the highest Google ranking and the most hits, regardless of its credibility. Therefore, anti-Semitism 2.0 is arguably far more serious than its previous Web incarnations. And when it comes to social networking sites, the stakes are higher since the reach is that much greater, Oboler contends.

On Facebook, for example, information spreads in a viral fashion. When users join a group or sign up to promote a cause, their friends are automatically notified in their “news feeds.” They then have the option of joining, too, spreading the message even further. “The message thus spreads not only across geographic boundaries, but also across social groups,” explains Oboler.

The “Israel is not a country!” group, for example, attracted 35,000 members as of press time. Assuming each member has approximately 150 friends (a lowball estimate), then the group — which decries Israel as an apartheid regime and claims that Israel has no right to exist — will have been advertised to more than 5.25 million people.

In response, several Facebook users established counter-groups, such as the “Palestine is not a country” and even “causes” such as “Facebook needs to delete the group ‘Israel is a terrorist country we all hate Israel!’” which more than 19,000 people have joined. Although “Israel is not a country!” no longer shows up in search results, “Israel: Terrorist State,” “I Hate Israel,” and some 75 groups like it still exist.

With larger Jewish organizations largely failing to combat anti-Semitism 2.0, much of the legwork has been left to individuals (many of them under 40) who lack both financial backing and the time to devote themselves fully to tracking and wiping out anti-Semitism in this new medium for spreading hate. “They see something, get annoyed and have to do something about it,” Oboler says. “But there’s no greater strategy behind it.”

Dovid, an Orthodox businessman in his late 30s, is one of the lone rangers on YouTube, the video-sharing Web site that — according to Alexa, a company that measures Web traffic — is the second-most visited site on the Web. He has posted more than 150 pro-Israel videos on YouTube, generating more than 1.3 million video views — and thousands of hateful and insidious comments (which is why he requested that The Jewish Week not print his last name).

“A little over a year ago, I was searching YouTube and there was so much really, really vile stuff out there,” he says. So he posted trailers from the 2005 movie “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.”

“I wanted to get the message out there,” he says.

Using the name “CheckItOutNowNYC,” he continued to spend hours each week searching for videos that highlighted a positive image of Israel and the Jews, including one featuring Bob Dylan performing “Hava Nagilah.” More than 50,000 people have viewed his video, “See the Humane Treatment of a Palestinian Woman by Israel,” a three-minute NBC News clip about a female suicide bomber who entered Israel using a special medical permit but was caught with 20 pounds of explosives.

Dovid labels each video with background information and resources for those interested in learning more. The number of page views is staggering, as are the more than 100 comments he receives a day. But it’s very time-consuming, he says.

“I wish there were 50 guys like me downloading videos and reposting them,” Dovid said.

He’s since posted videos promoting Jewish organizations including Nefesh B’Nefesh and Efrat C.R.I.B. (Committee for the Rescue of Israel’s Babies). Yet he wonders why these organizations aren’t creating their own YouTube channel and posting their videos themselves.

“Super-large Jewish organizations are really slow,” he says. “But the goal is to get the videos out there. We need Jews to take a proactive stance to educate the public.”

A few Jewish organizations are warming up to Facebook. The Consulate General of Israel in New York and the Embassy of Israel in Washington, D.C., both have Facebook pages, but they’ve each garnered less than 1,000 “fans.” The ADL has a Facebook page, too, but it’s a rather dormant unofficial page created by a high school student.

Among the handful of organizations that are first beginning to explore social networking as a possible avenue for promotion, most lack a comprehensive understanding of how Web 2.0 works.
“Various organizations have a policy that they won’t link to other sites,” Oboler says. “This is counterproductive. Web 2.0 is about sharing. The way a Web site gets popular is partly related to the number of links and how high up they are on Google.”

“Organizations — especially the younger ones — are now realizing that Facebook, YouTube and other such Web sites are an important medium for reaching out to Jewish and non-Jewish students alike to talk about Israel,” said Dani Klein, campus director of the pro-Israel activism group StandWithUs. StandWithUs often records on-campus events and lectures and posts them on the Web.

“There will be 50 to 100 people in the room hearing the lecture, but the number of people who can watch it on the Web grows exponentially,” Klein said.

Since 2005, StandWithUs has been actively using Web 2.0 to connect with Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus. It created a Facebook page, posts events and uploaded videos to the Web site, including the protest against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad’s speech at Columbia University. In addition to the StandWithUs Facebook page, the organization created a Facebook page for Israel, where Klein posts YouTube videos highlighting Israel’s technological innovations and humanitarian efforts, as well as important links and resources.

In what may be viewed as a hopeful sign, the organization is in the process of creating a multinational online task force to monitor Facebook, YouTube and other Web 2.0 applications and find problematic videos and groups that need responses. The task force would then work on posting educated, rational comments on these pages, hoping to sway those who joined anti-Israel groups out of peer pressure.

“The people who started these groups are most likely in the top 10 percent who are staunchly anti-Israel,” Klein said, adding that they are probably not easily swayed. Instead, StandWithUs will reach out to the majority of the group, who he calls “casual Palestinian supporters” who joined because their friends invited them or because “it’s hip to be anti-Israel.”

“We’ve always known it was a problem,” said Klein. “As individuals, we try to combat it. But we need to do more.”

Labels: Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, cyber-hate, Facebook, Google, Internet, YouTube

Sweden accused of persecuting civil servant for pro-Israel views

By Cnaan Liphshiz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/956205.html
Wed., February 20, 2008 Adar1 14, 5768

An employee of the Swedish Migration Board sued the organization last month for what he considers unlawful demotion for his support of Israel and the U.S., which he expressed in his personal Web site. The parties met last week at the Goteborg District Court for a first hearing on the case.

Lennart Eriksson, 51, told Haaretz by phone that his boss, Eugene Palmer, had demoted him last September from the position of manager of an asylum assessment unit - which he had held for six years - to manager of one of the board's shelters. Eriksson maintains that in effect, the demotion constitutes dismissal.

The board - the government body handling immigrants - disagrees with this.

Eriksson, who is not Jewish, also said he viewed his demotion as a form of political persecution.

According to Eriksson, Palmer told him he had seen Eriksson's Web site and that Eriksson's views were both "unusual and controversial." According to Eriksson, Palmer told him he was being demoted because of the Web site, and that running such a site was inappropriate for a senior official of the migration board.

He said his site "does not and has never contained hateful or acrimonious ideas."

The board's press officer, Marie Andersson, said the board "strongly denies that it persecutes any of its employees." She added: "Under the Swedish Secrecy Act [Sekretesslagen], the board is not at liberty - and we do not find it appropriate either - to discuss one of our employees and the specifics of this particular case."

The board had confirmed in previous queries by the Swedish media that Eriksson had been "transferred" as a result of the opinions he expressed on his Web site. Andersson said the board finds it "crucial to preserve people's confidence in the organization."

This, she says, makes it essential "for employees to not show that they are in favor of one side in a conflict which leads people to seek refuge in Sweden." It is particularly important for staff in leading positions to "show impartiality," she said.

But Eriksson says that at least one of his former colleagues, Arne Malmgren, is a veteran pro-Palestinian activist working against human rights violations in the West Bank and Lebanon. Malmgren and his wife, Birgitta Elfstrom - who also worked at the board until retiring recently - are quoted in the international media in this context.

The board never approached Malmgren on this issue and has even recently promoted him, says Eriksson. Press officer Andersson would only say on this issue that "Mr. Malmgren has not been promoted to a position as head of any unit."

Israel's former ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, said he was not surprised by the incident.

"The people who fired Eriksson took the lead from a prevalent anti-Israel atmosphere in Sweden's corridors of power," he said. Dr. Mikael Tossavainen, a Swedish-born researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said he considered the incident a danger to free speech.

Upon hearing about the case, the vice chair of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Society, Ilya Meyer, launched a public campaign to raise awareness about what he calls political persecution apparent in Eriksson's case.

"If someone from another country had suffered the treatment to which Eriksson has been subjected, the victim would be granted political asylum in Sweden on the grounds of political persecution," Meyer said.

Labels: Anti-Israel, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Sweden, Swedish society

‘Feminist Moment Of Truth’

Ms. magazine’s refusal to print pro-Israel ad raises questions about the ‘Palestinianization’ of the women’s movement.

by Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
The Jewish Week
http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a2011/News/New_York.html#

Ms. Magazine’s rejection of an ad celebrating three Israeli women leaders has prompted Jewish feminists here to charge that the magazine has adopted an anti-Israel posture.

“This is a feminism that has been utterly Palestinianized,” said Phyllis Chesler, one of five Jewish feminists who lashed out at the magazine this week.

Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance founder Blu Greenberg told a press conference at the offices of the American Jewish Congress, whose ad Ms. Magazine rejected, that the leaders of the magazine “have aligned themselves with those on the political far left whose agenda is to totally de-legitimate Israel on the stage of world opinion.”

Francine Klagsbrun, an author and Jewish Week columnist, termed this a “feminist moment of truth.” “I call on Ms. to stand up to the pernicious pressures of anti-Israel prejudice among its readers,” she said. “If it fails in this and caters to anti-Israel sentiments, then it has failed the revolution and those of us who have continued to believe in it.”

But Katherine Spillar, the executive editor of Ms. Magazine, defended the magazine’s rejection of the proposed ad that featured pictures of Dorit Beinisch, the president of Israel’s supreme court; Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, and Dalia Itzik, the speaker of the Knesset. Under their names were the words, “This is Israel.”

“We don’t do pro-country ads,” Spillar said. In addition, she suggested, it is misleading.
“Israel does not have equality [between men and women],” she explained in a phone interview. “There is no country where women share power equally with men. The ad implies” otherwise.

And in a statement, Spillar said the ad could be seen as favoring certain political parties over other parties because two of the women belong to the same party.

Harriet Kurlander, director of the AJCongress’s Commission for Women’s Empowerment, said none of those reasons were given to her when she tried to place the ad. “They said we can’t take the ad because it’s too controversial,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Why, we are saluting three women who have achieved high office in Israel. This is not about settlements or borders or Jerusalem.’ I was in a state of shock.” The magazine’s representative later told her, Kurlander said, that if the ad were accepted, “it would create a firestorm.”

Kurlander said the magazine’s rejection of the ad has created a firestorm of a different kind. She said that more than 4,300 people have e-mailed a form letter to the magazine protesting its action. (Spillar said the figure was closer to 2,000). And Kurlander said it has galvanized Jewish feminists across the country.

Novelist Cynthia Ozick sent a letter to the AJCongress criticizing Ms. Magazine and saying it is “now conspicuously exposed as having joined the anti-democratic anti-Israel totalitarian radical Left. A journal that once stood for free and open opportunity for all now shows itself to be among the haters: closed, narrow, insular, and above all cowardly.”

And Susannah Heschel, a professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., issued a statement saying she was “profoundly disheartened by this foolish decision” of the magazine.

“Silencing the voices of women from the State of Israel who are struggling for political and economic parity is a betrayal of our feminist solidarity,” she added. “Moreover, a boycott of Israel, motivated by a repudiation of Israeli politics, is an unacceptable rejection of Jewish women and our efforts to achieve Middle East peace.”

But Spillar insisted that the magazine is not disregarding Israel but rather has written numerous stories about it. She said that in the 16 issues that have been printed in the last four years, the magazine has covered the Israeli feminist movement and women leaders there “no fewer than 11 times.”

She cited a story in the current issue about Livni and a feature story in the spring of 2006 by Israeli feminist Alice Shalvi in which she “catalogued the ongoing struggles to rectify” inequalities in Israeli society, including the need to increase women’s representation in the Knesset and at the negotiating table for peace.

Klagsbrun pointed out at the press conference that Livni heads the Israeli team conducting the peace negotiations. And she said she knew of no other country in the world in which women “have the top posts in the legislature, the judiciary and the executive branch.”

Chesler said she stopped reading the magazine several years ago but read some articles in back issues before coming to the press conference. They convinced her, she said, that the magazine is “consistently and sickeningly anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian.”

“Apparently, Palestinians are the sacred victims who are pure and can do no wrong,” she added. “Israelis are the Nazi-like aggressors and occupiers who can do nothing right. This is not the Ms. I once knew so long ago.”

She said the Palestinization of the feminist movement began after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War in 1967 because “Israel was no longer the little David” standing up against the Goliaths — the Arab states that surrounded it.

The controversy has also been a wake-up call to Jewish feminists, according to Greenberg.

“We have kept our heads in the sand for too long,” she said. Klagsbrun agreed that she and some other Jewish feminists have “separated our feminism” from concerns about attacks on Israel.

And Chesler said this incident should become an “opportunity to start asking American Jewish and non-Jewish voters how important is the demonizing of Israel.”

“I would like people to begin asking the candidates for president where they stand on the demonization of Israel ... and where they stand on Iran and its extermination delusions,” she said.

Kurlander said the AJCongress has heard from Jews who feel “personally betrayed” by the magazine’s action. She said there are feminists in Israel, such as Shalvi, who side with the magazine and believe “Israel should be shown as the terrible country it is vis a vis women and who don’t believe in showing Israeli women’s accomplishments.”

But she suggested that these are the same women who would want the world to lament the Palestinian olive groves that were destroyed by Israel to prevent them from being used to conceal Palestinian gunmen. But the “core of Israel’s feminist movement would be pained by this and antagonistic to Ms.,” Kurlander added.

----

American Jewish Congress

Ms. Magazine Blocks Ad on Israeli Women

http://www.ajcongress.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6709

January 10, 2008 — Ms. Magazine has long been in the forefront of the fight for equal rights and equal opportunities for women. Apparently that is not the case if the women happen to be Israeli.

The magazine has turned down an AJCongress advertisement that did nothing more controversial than call attention to the fact that women currently occupy three of the most significant positions of power in Israeli public life. The proposed ad (The Ad Ms. Didn't Want You To See) included a text that merely said, “This is Israel,” under photographs of President of the Supreme Court Dorit Beinish, Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik.

“What other conclusion can we reach,” asked Richard Gordon, President of AJCongress, “except that the publishers − and if the publishers are right, a significant number of Ms. Magazine readers − are so hostile to Israel that they do not even want to see an ad that says something positive about Israel?”

When Director of AJCongress’ Commission for Women’s Empowerment Harriet Kurlander tried to place the ad, she was told that publishing the ad “will set off a firestorm” and that “there are very strong opinions” on the subject − the subject presumably being whether or not one can say anything positive about Israel. Ms. Magazine publisher Eleanor Smeal failed to respond to a signed-for certified letter with a copy of the ad as well as numerous calls by Mr. Gordon over a period of weeks.

A Ms. Magazine representative, Susie Gilligan, whom the Ms. Magazine masthead lists under the publisher’s office, told Ms. Kurlander that the magazine “would love to have an ad from you on women’s empowerment, or reproductive freedom, but not on this.” Ms. Gilligan failed to elaborate what “this” is.

“The only conclusion that one can reach from this behavior is that Ms. Magazine feels that an ad highlighting the accomplishments of three incredibly talented and dedicated women would offend their readership. Since there is nothing about the ad itself that is offensive, it is obviously the nationality of the women pictured that the management of Ms. fears their readership would find objectionable. For a publication that holds itself out to be in the forefront of the Women’s Movement, this is nothing short of disgusting and despicable,” stated Mr. Gordon.

Ms. Magazine has a long record of publishing advertisements rallying readers to support reproductive choice; opposing the Religious Right; highlighting the fragility of the pro-Roe v. Wade majority on the Supreme Court; charging that “Pat Robertson and his Religious Right cohorts don’t like individual freedom;” announcing support for the “struggle for freedom and human rights;” opposing the Bush administration’s campaign to fill federal courts with judges who “will reverse decades of progress on reproductive rights and privacy, civil rights, religious liberty, environmental protection and so much more;” as well as accusing the Bush administration of being “bent on rewarding big corporations and the rich, turning back the clock on women’s rights and civil rights, and promoting a U.S. empire abroad.”

“This flagship publication of the American women’s empowerment movement publishes ads that are controversial in the general culture but not so among its readership,” Ms. Kurlander said. “Obviously, Ms. believes our ad would enflame a significant portion of their readers.”
Mr. Gordon added, “What really amazes me is that just recently, in their Winter 2007 issue, Ms. ran a cover story with a picture of Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi with the heading in big letters: “This is What a Speaker Looks Like.” While Ms. has every reason to be proud of Speaker Pelosi and her accomplishments, as are we, the only discernable difference between Speaker Pelosi and Speaker Itzik apparently is that Speaker Pelosi is not Israeli.”

Mr. Gordon noted that while Israel was apparently too hot to handle, Ms. Magazine did not extend that taboo to Arab and Moslem women. “What is even more amazing is that, while refusing to publish a simple ad praising three very notable women, women who embody the ideal that Ms. Magazine seemingly espouses, Ms. has run a cover article in the Fall 2003 issue on Queen Noor of Jordan, has featured a number of articles on Muslim women, and even ran an article in the Winter 2004 issue entitled, ‘Images of Palestine,’ which discussed the Ramallah Film Festival and gave sympathetic reviews to films concerning ‘the liberation of South Lebanon’ from Israel as well as numerous films which portrayed terrorism as legitimate ‘revolutionary’ activity against Israel and miscast Israel’s activities to counter terrorism as ‘oppressive.’”
“Clearly Ms. has changed a great deal from the days when AJCongress members and leaders of the AJCongress’ Commission for Women’s Equality − including Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Ms. co-founder Letty Pogrebin − were at the forefront of the Women’s Movement that led to the creation of Ms. Magazine.”

AJCongress President Gordon concluded, “Ms. has the right to turn down our ad. But in exercising that right, it has spoken loudly about itself and its readership, and their lingering hostility to Israel.”

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Ms. magazine Responds to American Jewish Congress Ad Controversy

For Immediate Release January 14, 2008
http://www.msmagazine.com/AJCongress.asp

Statement of Katherine Spillar, executive editor
Ms. magazine concerning the AJCongress ad

Ms. magazine has been criticized for not running an ad submitted by the American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) featuring the photographs of three prominent Israeli women leaders with the statement “This is Israel.” In its press release, AJCongress claims that Ms. therefore must be ‘hostile to Israel’. This is untrue and unfair.

Ms. covers women leaders across the globe. Ironically, the current issue just now hitting newsstands features a major story profiling Israel’s Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni, highlighting her career and accomplishments. Livni was one of the women pictured in the AJCongress ad. Ms. had previously reported on Dorit Beinish, also pictured in the ad, becoming the first woman president of Israel’s Supreme Court. Over the past four years (16 issues) Ms. has covered the Israeli feminist movement and women leaders in Israel no fewer than eleven times.

The mission of Ms. is to report on U.S. and global struggles to combat sex discrimination and oppression and to provide feminists everywhere with the information they need to take action to win equality for women and girls. Ms. policy is to accept only mission-driven advertisements from primarily non-profit, non-partisan organizations that promote women’s equality, social justice, sustainable environment, and non-violence.

In Ms. magazine’s judgment, the ad submitted by AJCongress for consideration was inconsistent with this policy. Not only could the ad be seen as favoring certain political parties within Israel over other parties, but also with its slogan “This is Israel,” the ad implied that women in Israel hold equal positions of power with men. Israel, like every other country, has far to go to reach equality for women. As the Israel Women’s Network notes: “Women have consistently received symbolic representation in Israeli politics, at least sufficient enough to generate the myth of an open and egalitarian system.”

Indeed Israeli writers have reported in the pages of Ms. on the continuing efforts of the Israeli feminist movement to combat discrimination and achieve a larger voice for women in the country’s political arena.

In a feature length story in the Spring 2006 issue of Ms., Israeli feminist scholar/activist Alice Shalvi catalogued the ongoing struggles to rectify such inequalities, including increasing women’s representation in elected office and at the table negotiating for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Women only comprise 14% of the Israeli Knesset, placing Israel 74th in the world for women’s representation in government.

The AJCongress press release compared its ad with the cover story Ms. ran when Congressmember Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House. However, when Ms. featured Speaker Pelosi on its cover with the words “This is What a Speaker Looks Like,” we did not claim that “This is what the USA looks like.” Far from it, since women comprise only 17% of the Congress, ranking 65th in the world in women’s representation, and continue to face discrimination in every aspect of American society.

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Wikipedia article about Ms. magazine

Ms. is an American feminist magazine founded by American feminist and activist Gloria Steinem, which first appeared in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine. The first stand-alone issue appeared in January 1972 with funding from New York editor Clay Felker. From July 1972 to 1987 it appeared on a monthly basis. During its heyday in the 1970s it enjoyed great popularity, but was not always able to reconcile its ideological concerns with commercial considerations. Since 2001, the magazine has been published by the Feminist Majority Foundation, based in Los Angeles and Arlington, Virginia.

Origins of the title

The title of Ms. magazine came from a friend of Gloria Steinem's who heard the term in an interview on WBAI radio and suggested it as a title for the new magazine. Modern use of Ms. as an honorific was conceived in 1961 by Sheila Michaels, thinking it was a typographical error. Michaels, who was illegitimate, and not adopted by her stepfather, had long grappled with finding a title that reflected her situation: not being "owned" by a father and not wishing to be "owned" by a husband. Her efforts to promote its use were ignored in the nascent Women’s Movement. Around 1971, during a lull in an interview with "The Feminists" group, Michaels suggested the use of the title "Ms." (having chosen a pronunciation current for both in Missouri, her home).

Controversy raged in the early 1970s over the "correct" title for women. Men had Mr. which gave no indication of their marital status since the formal address term "master" for an unmarried man had fallen largely into disuse; etiquette and business practices demanded that women use either Miss or Mrs. Many women did not want to be defined by their marital status and, for a growing number of women who kept their last name after marriage, neither Miss nor Mrs. was technically a correct title in front of that name.

Historic Milestones

Ms. made history when it published the names of women admitting to having had abortions when the procedure was still illegal in most of the United States. Running before the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the 1972 statement was an action of civil disobedience.[citation needed]

A 1976 cover story on battered women made Ms. the first national magazine to address the issue of domestic violence. The cover photo featured a woman with a bruised face.

Ms. magazine's credibility was damaged in the 80s and 90s when it became swept up in the day care sexual abuse hysteria and moral panic about Satanic ritual abuse.[1]

The "We Had Abortions" petition appears in the October 2006 issue as part of the issue's cover story. The petition contains signatures of over 5,000 women declaring that they had an abortion and were "unashamed of (the) decision", including actresses Amy Brenneman and Kathy Najimy, comedienne Carol Leifer, and Steinem herself.[2]

Recent Ownership

In 1987, it was bought by Fairfax, an Australian media company, headed by Sandra Yates. In 1989, concerned about a perceived 'Cher cover'-centered editorial direction under Anne Summers, American Feminists bought it back and began publishing the magazine without ads.

Robin Morgan and Marcia Ann Gillespie served respective terms as Editors in Chief of the magazine. Gillespie was the first African American woman to lead Ms. For a period, the magazine was published by MacDonald Communications Corp., which also published Working Woman and Working Mother magazines. Known since its inception for unique feminist analysis of current events, its 1991 change to an ad-free format also made it known for exposing the control that many advertisers assert over content in women's magazines.

In 1998, Gloria Steinem and other investors created Liberty Media and brought the magazine under independent ownership. It remained ad-free and won several awards, including an Utne award for social commentary. With Liberty Media facing bankruptcy in November 2001, the Feminist Majority Foundation purchased the magazine, dismissed Gillespie and staff, and moved editorial headquarters from New York to Los Angeles. Formerly bimonthly, the magazine has since published quarterly.

In the Spring 2002 issue commemorating the magazine's 30th year, Gloria Steinem and Feminist Majority president Eleanor Smeal noted the magazine's increased ability to "share research and resources, expand investigative journalism, and bring its readers the personal experience that has always been the source of the women's health movement."

In 2005, under editor-in-chief Elaine Lafferty, Ms. was nominated for National Magazine Award for Martha Mendoza's article "Between a Woman and Her Doctor". Despite this success, Lafferty left the magazine after only two years following various disagreements including the editorial direction on a cover story on Desperate Housewives,[3] and a perceived generation gap towards third-wave feminists and grunge music, a genre that Lafferty had trashed as being oppositional to feminism.[verification needed]

Over the years the magazine has featured articles written by and about many women and men at the forefront of business, politics, activism, and journalism. Writers have included Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Susan Faludi. The cover has featured comedian Wanda Sykes, performance artist Sarah Jones, Jane Fonda, actress Charlize Theron, Queen Noor of Jordan and former First Lady and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. The magazine's investigative journalism broke several landmark stories on topics including overseas sweatshops, sex trafficking, the wage gap, the glass ceiling, date rape, and domestic violence.

References

"All the babies you can eat: Ms. magazine's reporting of unsubstantiated satanic rituals" by Brian Siano, Humanist, March-April 1993.

David Crary (October 3, 2006). Women Sign "We Had Abortions" Petition. Associated Press. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.

Sheelah Kolhatkar (April 14, 2005). 'Desperate Housewives' Causes Another Breakup. New York Observer. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.

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Labels: Anti-Israel, Anti-Zionism, Feminism