Electronic Intifada’s Rania Khalek Libels Mordechai Kedar

We already know that Ali “Abumination” Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada will use lies and deception to achieve its goal of demonizing Israel. And today is no exception.

In a particularly insidious piece, notorious Israel basher and confirmer of a Norwegian doctor Rania Khalek calls Mordechai Kedar, Israeli scholar of Arabic literature and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, a “rape advocate.”

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-government-promotes-rape-advocate-expert-palestinians

Rania-300x300
the smiling character assassin

Israeli government promotes rape advocate as expert on Palestinians

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the United States for the UN General Assembly on Sunday, the Israeli government press office emailed journalists a list of supposed experts to contact on various issues related to his visit.

All those listed hail from the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, a hotbed of right wing nationalism in Israeli academia.

Appearing twice on the Israeli government-approved list is Mordechai Kedar, a professor of Arabic literature at Bar-Ilan University who recently advocated for the Israeli army to use rape as a tool of war.

Rape as deterrence

Speaking to an Israeli radio program following the discovery of the bodies of the three Israeli teens abducted and shot to death in the occupied West Bank in June, Kedar said, “Terrorists like those who kidnapped the children and killed them — the only thing that deters them is if they know that their sister or their mother will be raped in the event that they are caught. What can you do, that’s the culture in which we live.”

He continued: “The only thing that deters a suicide bomber is the knowledge that if he pulls the trigger or blows himself up, his sister will be raped. That’s all. That’s the only thing that will bring him back home, in order to preserve his sister’s honor.”

“It sounds very bad, but that’s the Middle East,” he reasoned.

Kedar’s recommendation appears to have been implemented in Gaza, where several Palestinian men who were kidnapped and imprisoned by the Israeli army during “Operation Protective Edge” told the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights that they were tortured and “intimidated with threats that Israel would demolish their houses, kill their families and “rape their wives.”

When a group of Israeli feminists protested Kedar’s comments in a letter to Bar-Ilan University president Daniel Hershkowitz, the school responded by defending and whitewashing Kedar’s rape advocacy with racist tropes about the region.

“Dr. Kedar’s words do not, God forbid, contain a recommendation to commit such despicable acts,” insisted a Bar-Ilan University spokesperson in a joint statement with Kedar. “The intention was to describe the culture of death of the terror organizations. Dr. Kedar was describing the bitter reality of the Middle East and the inability of a modern and liberal law-abiding country to fight against the terror of suicide bombers.”

Not surprisingly, Khalek was very selective in what she quoted from the Ha’aretz article. Here is the full section of relevance.

“The only thing that can deter terrorists, like those who kidnapped the children and killed them, is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.” This assertion was made by Middle East scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University about three weeks ago on an Israel Radio program. “It sounds very bad, but that’s the Middle East,” added Kedar, of Bar-Ilan’s Department of Arabic.

The program “Hakol Diburim” (“It’s All Talk”) was broadcast on July 1, immediately after the discovery of the bodies of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrah, who were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank. It dealt, among other things, with the question of how Hamas can be deterred.

“You have to understand the culture in which we live,” said Kedar. “The only thing that deters [Hamas leaders] is a threat to the connection between their heads and their shoulders.” When presenter Yossi Hadar asked if that “could filter down” the organization’s ranks, Kedar replied: “No, because lower down the considerations are entirely different. Terrorists like those who kidnapped the children and killed them — the only thing that deters them is if they know that their sister or their mother will be raped in the event that they are caught. What can you do, that’s the culture in which we live.”

When Hadar said, “We can’t take such steps, of course,” Kedar continued: “I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do. I’m talking about the facts. The only thing that deters a suicide bomber is the knowledge that if he pulls the trigger or blows himself up, his sister will be raped. That’s all. That’s the only thing that will bring him back home, in order to preserve his sister’s honor.”

Notice the part I bolded, which Khalek left out of her post, despite quoting the sentences immediately before and after. It clearly shows how Kedar was not advocating this ever be done, but rather explaining the mentality of the terrorists, and is consistent with his joint statement with Bar-Ilan, which Khalek did mention (and condemned for containing “racist tropes about the region”, despite clearly referring to terrorists only)

In other words, Khalek has deliberately omitted the key sentence of the Ha’aretz article, which provided the context of Kedar’s statements, in order to support her libelous claim.

Right from the Electronic Intifada playbook.

By the way, if the name Mordechai Kedar rings a bell, it might be that you remember him from the time he destroyed Al Jizz.

8 thoughts on “Electronic Intifada’s Rania Khalek Libels Mordechai Kedar”

  1. Rania Kalek is a bonafide nutjob and one of the dirtiest racist writers for Electronic Intifada. This lunatic actually tried to blame Israelis for the recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri! She claimed the police were trained by Israelis because the police chief visited the country on a counter-terrorism tour. Rania has a Jewish problem, she is obsessed with us!

  2. Wasn’t there an incident several years ago in which someone submitted a graduate thesis showing how Israeli soldiers said they would never rape an Arab woman? The researcher said this proved that the IDF was racist.

    1. Norman_In_New_York

      If she is representative of Arab womanhood, it’s quite understandable why Israeli soldiers would want nothing to do with them.

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