Women Warriors of Mossad

From Globes:

They are one of the State of Israel's most important assets. If we sleep soundly at night, it's in large part thanks to them. If we win the next war, they will have a considerable share in the victory. Our security is entrusted to their hands, but, despite their importance to the country, you won't read about them in the newspapers, you won't see them on television, you can't applaud them. Recognition and glory are not their lot. You can't identify them, because they operate under cover. The women of the shadows.

Their brains invent daring and ingenious operations that make the difference between success and failure. They bring to bear a capacity to improvise, rare expertise, sophisticated weaponry, command of languages, and psychological insight. They have to get inside the mind of the other.

These women working in secret are senior operatives of Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, an organization that needs no wordy introductions about the cunning and boldness of its operations.

They live under threat to their lives, to their families, and to their freedom. They disappear from their homes, emerge under various identities, conceal themselves, rub shoulders with the enemy. It's hard to grasp the price they pay. A spy who is captured in an enemy country can expect tough interrogation, torture, and execution.

See also:

Women of History - The Women of Mossad

Women of History - Mossad, Women & Israel

Tikva Levi & Mizrahi

From Haaretz:

Tikva Levi was only 52 when she died on August 1, but during her short lifetime she wielded a great influence on Israeli society. She was an active presence on a variety of important battlefronts: feminist, Mizrahi, educational, political.

"The ability to combine these battles, the awareness of the fact that they are not separate from one another, was one of the things I admired and loved about her," says Prof. Ella Shohat, a preeminent cultural studies scholar and Levi's fellow traveler and soulmate.

Levi is now recognized as one of the prime movers who managed to connect issues concerning Mizrahim, feminists and Palestinians. Indeed, as far as Shohat is concerned, "Tikva is a metonymy for these battles and a metaphor for a different future space. I admired her ability to connect ideas and to connect to people, and to try to convey these ideas even to those from whom there was presumably no such expectation - those who had been rejected, whether by the left or by feminism.

Further links:- Interview with Rachel Smith

Yocheved Horowitz - Israel's Rosa Parks

From Haaretz.com:

On a sunny afternoon early this week, an ultra-Orthodox woman boarded a bus in the enclave of the Gur Hasidic community in Ashdod and took a seat in the second row. The bus, Egged line 451, was headed for Jerusalem. It quickly became clear that this simple, everyday act - choosing a seat to her liking - was enough to transform her presence in the bus into a palpable challenge to the rest of the passengers. I sat down across from the woman, fearing the worst.

Not only did the woman, whose name is Yocheved Horowitz, blatantly ignore the tacit agreement among the bus' riders to adhere to the most stringent religious practices - in this case, an unwritten rule that men sit in the front and women in the back. And not only did she not conform to the seating arrangements dictated by men - that is, those in authority. This was also a woman who, judging by her appearance, seemed to come from within the community.

Now Horowitz turned around and said loudly and clearly: "What do you mean by 'men's area'? A geographical area?" she wondered. "What is mehadrin? Are you talking about an etrog, a lulav?" she queried, referring to two of the principal symbols used during the festival of Sukkot. "Nowhere in rabbinical law does it say that it is forbidden to sit behind a woman, not in the Shulchan Arukh and not in the Yoreh De'ah [two classical compilations of Jewish law]. What is written in the Torah and in rabbinical law is that it is forbidden to humiliate sons and daughters of Israel."

Mossad, Women & Israel

From Spoonfed:

Ahead of her new play Honeypot, premièring at New Diorama Theatre, Naima Khan talks to Julia Pascal about Europe's hand in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and Mossad's use of women following the 1972 Olypmic killings in Munich.

In choosing a female central character (based on a real woman Julia befriended in the late '80s), and structuring her history and personal life so thoughtfully, Pascal gets to dwell on many of the issues that surround the power of the honeypot. “Her search for an identity, and her overt sexuality, are used as a weapon and a drug. She is fractured and disturbed, but she also challenges all the stereotypes surrounding women – as a mother, as a daughter.” Though outwardly she addresses a war fought on many fronts, Susanne's journey also relates to an ongoing internal conflict that rings true for anyone concerned with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

Dona Gracia - Ahead of Her Time

From the Jerusalem Post:

Once the wealthiest woman in the world, Dona Gracia planned to establish an autonomous Jewish community in Tiberias.

The museum conducts weekend seminars about the life and times of Dona Gracia whose story fired Cohen's imagination to the extent that she pushed for the Education Ministry to include the study of Dona Gracia in school curricula. Tzvi Tzameret, the Chairman of the Education Ministry's Pedagogic Secretariat, agreed that it was high time for Dona Gracia to come out of the mothballs of the distant past. The upshot is that Israeli high school students as well as soldiers in the IDF will now learn of her plans to establish an autonomous Jewish community in Tiberias, which from the second to the tenth centuries was the largest Jewish city in the Galilee, and a great seat of Jewish learning.

The 500th anniversary of Dona Gracia's birth was celebrated on Sunday at Beit Hanassi in the presence of President Shimon Peres, Israel's fifth President Yitzhak Navon, who heads the National Authority for Ladino, is a former Education Minister and is descended on both sides from long lines of Sephardi rabbis, Education Minister Gideon Saar, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch among a host of dignitaries.

Israel: Women Protest Discrimination

From Ynet News:

Dozens of women and men marched in an ultra-Orthodox area in central Jerusalem on Wednesday, in protest of the discrimination between men and women on the streets of the Mea Shearim neighborhood during the Sukkot holiday.

The police set up barriers near the Shabbat Square, and the protestors retraced their steps and ended the rally. Loud arguments were heard between the protestors and local haredi residents.

At the start of the procession, its organizers stressed that the protest would be held "without any unnecessary provocations" and expressed their hope that they would not encounter violence.

The march was stopped several meters before the Shabbat Square. Large police forces were dispatched to the area, including mounted police, and the demonstration was dispersed shortly afterwards.

Women Defy With Symbolic Action

From UPI:

A group of Israeli women say they smuggled a dozen Palestinian women and four children into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for a day of fun in defiance of Israeli law.

The Palestinians were treated to a meal at a restaurant, swimming in the Mediterranean and a bit of sightseeing about two weeks ago, Haaretz reported Tuesday.

The Israeli women, including writers Ilana Hammerman and Klil Zisapel, picked up the Palestinian women in their villages, after meeting with them twice previously, and brought them into Israel, avoiding security forces at West Bank checkpoints.

Hammerman had accomplished a similar outing with three teenage Palestinian girls in May, Haaretz said. Peace activists approached her about doing the second trip, the Tel Aviv newspaper said. None of the Palestinians had permits to enter Israel.

"We all came, we met the women, we took them in our own cars. We pulled a fast one on the army," Hammerman said.

"We passed the checkpoints in our cars, knowingly breaking the laws of entry into Israel," the Israeli women said in an ad published in the Hebrew weekend edition of Haaretz.

"We don't recognize the legality of the entry law into Israel, which allows every Israeli and every Jew to move freely throughout most of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and denies this right to the Palestinians, to whom this land also belongs."

Hammerman called it "a symbolic act" meant to fuel debate.

Women of the Wall: Kotel Services

From the Jerusalem Post:

Despite the raucous and sometimes violent uproar that has at times accompanied their previous gatherings inside the women’s section at the Western Wall, Women of the Wall, a group that promotes, “the right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray and read from the Torah at the Western Wall,” will hold their monthly Rosh Hodesh service at the holy site on Wednesday morning.

“On Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 7:00 a.m., Women of the Wall will return to the Western Wall (Kotel), with over one hundred women in attendance, for their regular monthly Rosh Hodesh services, to celebrate the beginning of the Jewish month of Elul 5770,” a statement released by the group on Tuesday read.

Women of the Wall Continue Fight

From JTA:

Women of the Wall has launched a global campaign to support their right to pray with Torah scrolls at the Western Wall.

The Jerusalem-based group wants 10,000 Jewish women around the world to send photos of themselves holding Torah scrolls to key Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky. The campaign is to show that Jewish women are free to hold Torah scrolls everywhere except at the Wall, Judaism’s most holy site.

The campaign was inspired by the July 12 arrest of the group’s leader, Anat Hoffman, who was taken into custody for holding a Torah scroll at the Wall. An Israeli Supreme Court ruling forbids women reading from a Torah scroll at the site.

The photos are being sent with a message that reads, in part:

“Women of the Wall are not alone. Our daughters and our rabbis, our mothers and our grandmothers, our cantors and our teachers hold the Torah, read from the Torah, and study the Torah every day … Only in Jerusalem do women pray with fear and only in Jerusalem are women treated as criminals for practicing Judaism.”

The campaign began after Tisha b’Av on July 19 and extends through Simchat Torah, which ends Oct 1.

ARRESTED: Women of the Wall leader

From Haaretz:

Jerusalem Police on Monday arrested the leader of the Women of the Wall group for carrying a Torah scroll while praying at the Western Wall, Army Radio reported.

Anat Hoffman, the women's prayer group leader, was arrested and taken in for questioning after she was caught holding a Torah scroll in violation of a High Court ruling prohibiting women from reading the Torah at the Western Wall.

Dozens of Women of the Wall members arrived at the holy site on Monday morning for the traditional festive prayer in honor of the first day of the month of Av.

"This is another example of the ultra-Orthodox establishment imposing its stances on the public," a spokeswoman for the group said.

The Women of Mossad

From the Telegraph:

Meir Amit, the director-general of Mossad in the 1960s, laid down the rules for kidon women in a document that remains in force today. It contains the following passage: “A woman has skills a man simply does not have. She knows how to listen. Pillow talk is not a problem for her. The history of modern intelligence is filled with accounts of women who have used their sex for the good of their country... It is not just sleeping with someone if required. It is to lead a man to believe you will do so in return for what he has to tell you.”

'Gideon’s Spies: The Inside Story of Israel’s Legendary Secret Service’ by Gordon Thomas is available from Telegraph Books.

Israel: Women's Prayer Quorum

From Ynet News (Israel News):

Women's prayer quorum during the Purim holiday have become in recent years a widespread phenomenon in many religious communities in Israel, but a new Jewish ruling considers them illegal and forbidden.

Chief Ramat Gan Rabbi Yaakov Ariel stated that "to begin with, forming a women's prayer quorum is against the Halacha," and accused the participating women of withdrawing from society on the basis of "social and feminist considerations".

Rabbi Ariel, who is one of the leaders of Religious Zionism and a senior arbiter, warned against the phenomenon Thursday during an interview with Arutz Sheva (Channel Seven) and claimed the it is "not right" and "forbidden."

According to Ariel, "it's good that women want to be involved, but if a woman wants to be more god-fearing and pray in a quorum – she should do so in a men's quorum. The Torah did not command women to pray in a quorum," he added.

Religious women's organization Kolech criticized Rabbi Ariel's ruling. A spokeswoman for the organization told Ynet: "The Halacha states that a woman may fulfill the duty of prayer for another woman. The same ruling was also stated in the Shulchan Aruch (book of religious law from the Rabbi Yosef Karo), by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and more.

Women Soldiers' Testimonies

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

After last year's war in Gaza, and the later report for the United Nations Human Rights Council by Justice Richard Goldstone that accused Israel of war crimes, sensitivity to how Israel is perceived abroad has been more heightened than ever. Yet the most piercing insights into the Israeli-Arab conflict today have nothing to do with the foreign media. They come from within Israeli society itself.

In the past two years, internationally acclaimed films such as Waltz With Bashir, Ajami, and Lebanon, have added exceptional context to the deep divisions within Israeli society and the long-term effects of the conflict on its people. More disturbing still are the verbatim accounts of some of the soldiers who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The damaging effects of the occupation, not just on Palestinians but on the soldiers themselves, are laid bare in a booklet published last week by the group Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli army veterans who have taken it upon themselves to expose life in the occupied territories to the Israeli public. Titled Women Soldiers' Testimonies, the booklet details the experiences of more than 40 female soldiers who have served in various roles in the territories since 2000.

Women of the Wall

From JNET News:

The campaign against Women of the Wall steps up. Yet learned that chairman of the feminist Jewish worship group, Anat Hoffman, was investigated Wednesday by the police on suspicions of violating a legal directive and of rebellion following a minyan - or prayer quorum - she and her colleagues held three weeks ago – the start of the Hebrew month of Tevet – in the Western Wall pavilion.

The police reported that Hoffman was investigated at the Merhav David Station after the events at the Western Wall on the grounds that she disrupted the status quo at the site. Hoffman was questioned about her role in organizing the prayer service and the clashes that ensued. She was reportedly asked to give her finger prints. At the end of the investigation, she was released to go home.

The Women of the Wall chairwoman claimed that most of the group's members are Orthodox and that the prayer services they hold are conducted according to halacha. She also said that their consistent attendance for more than 20 years makes their monthly minyan a Western Wall custom, such that it must not be viewed as a one-off provocation.

Israel: Transportation Segredation

From JTA:

Three years ago, a 57-year-old grandmother got on a bus in Israel departing Rechovot for Givat Shmuel and sat in a vacant seat in the front.

Shortly after taking her seat, the woman was approached by a fervently Orthodox man who demanded she move to the back of the bus with the rest of the women.

Unbeknownst to the woman, who asked JTA to be identified only as H., she had boarded one of the so-called mehadrin (super kosher) bus lines, on which the predominantly ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, ridership imposes sex-segregated seating. The man told H. that segregated seating had been sanctioned by the rabbis and by Egged, the state-owned bus company that operates the line.

H., who is herself religious, refused, prompting a barrage of verbal abuse from the man.

The man harassed her for the entire ride. Nobody, including the driver, came to her aid.

H. is among a group of women who filed affidavits as part of a petition to Israel’s Supreme Court to ban gender-based segregation on Israeli public buses. The petition was filed by the Israel Religious Action Center, which is associated with the Reform movement.

Before issuing any ruling, the court referred the matter to Israel’s Transportation Ministry. In January, more than three years since the IRAC petition was filed, Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz is expected to issue the government's official position.

Some haredi passengers defend sex segregation, saying it upholds Jewish rules concerning sexual modesty. On mehadrin lines, women sit in the back and men in the front in order to avoid physical contact. Drivers do not enforce this code, but the IRAC considers such practices on public buses to be a fundamental violation of women's rights. It also says the practice has no basis in Jewish law, or halachah.

Israel: Women Arrested At Wall

From Reuters:

In a motion read by Ms Safina Kwekwe Tsungu, an Eala member from Kenya, the legislators further urged EAC member countries to ensure that women get comprehensive and accessible health services and programmes.

They expressed deep concerns on the plight of women in refugee camps and those internally displaced by armed conflicts in their home countries, saying they were chief targets of organised violence.

After a protest by Orthodox worshippers who spotted her, police escorted her to a police post and detained her for two hours before releasing her and ordering her to stay away from the holy site for 15 days, a spokeswoman said.

Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said Frankel was detained on suspicion of wearing a prayer shawl in violation of an Israeli high court ruling stating that women cannot wear religious garments at the site, in keeping with Orthodox rules. "Tensions flared, there was pushing and shouting and police intervened to prevent violence," Rosenfeld said. There were no other arrests and nobody was hurt, he added.

Frankel may face charges of performing a religious act that offends others, a statute that mandates a maximum six month jail term and a 10,000 shekel ($2,000) fine, said Anat Hoffman, director of a group that sponsors "Women of the Wall".

Female Halachic Advisors

From the Jerusalem Post:

The delicate balance between tradition and modernity is shifting in Orthodox circles, as women continue to maintain classic roles of motherhood and deference to rabbinic hegemony, while at the same time achieving recognition for their intellectual abilities in religious fields that were once male domains.

The restriction on Nishmat has been lifted permanently.

This trend was apparent on Sunday evening as Nishmat, a Jerusalem-based Orthodox institution that certifies women to act as halachic advisers on specific issues, lifted a 10-year restriction that had been put in place on their certifications'
validity.

Nishmat was careful to call the women "advisers," not "rabbis," and the certification given to the women was issued for 10 years, at the end of which the women were to be reevaluated.

These steps deflected potential criticism coming from more conservative elements within Orthodoxy, especially in the rabbinic establishment, who were concerned that feminist trends were seeking to undermine tradition.

Israel Releases Palestinian Women

From Outlook India:

Signalling a breakthrough in the deadlock over prisoners' exchange, Israel today decided to release 20 female Palestinian detainees in exchange for a new videotape of an Israeli soldier abducted three years ago.

The video will be viewed as an evidence that Sgt Gilad Schalit is alive after more than three years of captivity in Gaza.

The exchange will be carried out on Friday after the Justice Ministry today posts the names of the Palestinian prisoners on its website and no legal hassles delay the process.

The suggestion for an "unequivocal" proof of the Israeli soldier's condition came from the German mediator, working together with the Egyptians.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu congratulated Hagai Hadas, who is leading efforts to release Shalit, and the team on their "professional work" away from the spotlight.

"It is important that the whole world will know that Gilad Schalit is alive and well, and that Hamas is responsible for his fate and well being," Netanyahu said.

A statement released by the PMO said the cabinet decided to respond positively to this initiative as a "confidence building measure within the framework of the indirect negotiations" with Hamas over Schalit.

Tsipi Livni

Last years I published a couple of articles featuring Tsipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister:

• Politics & Power in Israel
• Female Israeli Premier
• Politics in Israel

I would like to add another piece, this one written by Mira Bar-Hillel from the Evening Standard: "The woman who stands to gain from Gaza's misery"

"The war was preceded by an explosion of advertising hoardings, set up along the roadsides, banners across motorway bridges and countless flyers. The predominant image is that of Tsipi Livni, the foreign minister who may well be Israel's leader after the 10 February election.

The only woman to lead Israel was Golda Meir, prime minister in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She was described by a previous PM as having more balls than the men in his cabinet but she never held the crucial position of defence minister.

In committing herself so uncompromisingly to the Gaza operation, Livni may have answered critics who felt she would be weak on security but her fate is now inextricably bound up with the outcome of the onslaught on Hamas and the Palestinians.

Military and security considerations aside, Livni is already a strong contender for the prime minister's job. She comes from that generation of politicians known as Princes, whose families played a role in creating Israel's independence."

Politics & Power in Israel

From the News Observer:
"Women already lead the courts and the legislature. The most important and visible piece, the executive, could soon follow suit.

In the heart of the Middle East, the region where women experience some of the most oppressive restrictions in the world, Israel could soon have a woman, Tzipi Livni, as prime minister, alongside the current Supreme Court Chief Dorit Beinish and Speaker of the Parliament Dalia Itzik.

If you had asked political experts to predict where democracy might sweep women to power, Israel would not have figured near the top of the list. Despite legal equality, most levers of power have usually stayed in the hands of men. Prime Minister Golda Meir's tenure four decades ago was the major exception.

In a democracy with true equality, the fact that Livni is a woman would not be a factor, positive or negative, in her election. Feminist fantasies that women would rule the world differently than men cannot be proven in what is still a male-dominated globe, and previous cases have offered mixed evidence.

If Israel's government does end up having three branches led by women, it may not change the world, and will not guarantee good government. But it will mark an achievement for democracy and highlight how much potential other countries sacrifice when they exclude half of their population from the political system.

As for the Israeli women who have made it this far, all we can say is, You go, girls!"

Please read the full article by Frida Ghitis above.