World Press on Rape, Israel-UAE Deal and Holocaust Denial: New Age Islam's Selection, 15 October 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Bureau
15 October
2020
• Protests Against Rape Give Us Hope But Is
That Enough?
By Tasmiah T Rahman
• Israel's Pact With The UAE Is Not About
Peace. It is A Business Deal
By Sami Abu Shehadeh
• Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Evolving’ Position on
Holocaust Denial
By Kara Swisher
• No One Left Behind: Handwashing Saves Lives
By Silvia A. Landa
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Protests Against Rape Give Us Hope But Is That
Enough?
By Tasmiah T Rahman
October 15,
2020
Demonstrators
stage a rally in front of the National Museum in Dhaka protesting the growing
incidents of rape, sexual harassment and violence against women in the country,
on October 9, 20
-----
After the
video of the Noakhali gang rape went viral, people from all walks of life were
rightly outraged and joined online and offline protests demanding reforms in
the relevant law against women and children repression as well as the highest
punishment for rapists. Not just the rise in incidents of rape but the sheer
brutality of these crimes also sent shockwaves through the society. In the
Noakhali case, the victim is a wife and a mother. She was stripped, gang-raped
and beaten while it was videotaped by the perpetrators. What makes a rapist or
rapists feel so empowered so as to videotape their own crimes and even release
the clip to further dehumanise her? What makes them think they can get away
with such heinous crimes (for, clearly, they wouldn't have released the video
unless they thought so)?
I felt
utterly helpless as I struggled to process the absurdity of the Noakhali case.
So I started reading up on the root causes of rape and what makes a criminal go
to such lengths. It is generally understood that rape can be addressed through
strict laws, provided they are implemented properly—a vital requirement that,
unfortunately, remains elusive in Bangladesh. But understanding this crime, and
the criminals behind it, is also important in the fight to end the rape
culture.
Before we
dig into that, it's worthwhile to recall that at least 975 women were raped in
the last 9 months, with 208 of them being gang-raped, according to Ain o Salish
Kendra (ASK). Clearly, violence against women and rape has increased during the
Covid-19 lockdown. As a society, we should be able to find a solution
collectively, and detecting the rapist amongst us is the first step.
Rapists Start Early
A New York
Times article, published in 2017 at the height of the #MeToo movement, talked
about an interesting approach adopted by Dr Samuel D. Smithyman, a clinical
psychologist in South Carolina. For his PhD thesis in 1976, he put up an advert
on a newspaper asking rapists to call him, in order to understand "Why men
rape". In the end, he conducted 50 interviews of "undetected"
rapists. The idea was, unless we understand a criminal's behaviour, it will not
be possible to understand the kind of crimes they commit. However, according to
the article, rapists start non-consensual sex much early in life. They are also
associated with others who share similar opinion regarding violence against
women. Rapists who do not feel guilty also tend to be repeat offenders.
While I was
reading this article, I was reminded of a Netflix series titled 13 Reasons Why,
which deals with a teenage girl who was raped and eventually killed herself.
The perpetrator in question was a rapist who repeatedly committed the crime in
school, while his friends remained quiet. Many such boys roam around our girls,
and yet we are unaware. It is important to teach our girls how to detect the
undetected rapist, through active communication and dialogue. Girls should be
able to speak up when they feel uncomfortable, instead of being shamed or
silenced.
Rapists Feel Entitled To Harass/Abuse Women
According
to Antonia Abbey, a social psychologist at the Wayne State University in the US
city of Detroit, many rapists think that women and girls often play hard to
get. They are seen as sex objects and thus dehumanised. They are also thought
of as inferior beings, and men who are rejected by them cannot handle that. As
a result, men feel entitled to throw acid in their faces, harass or abuse them
as they come from school or other places, sometimes in broad daylight, and even
feel entitled to walk into their houses to rape them, etc. Through our
tolerance or rather acceptance as a society, we have allowed rape and other
forms of abuse and violence against women to be normalised.
Rapists Are Being Enabled
We have had
sexual harassment and rape normalised to a point where such incidents no longer
produce shock, unless something jaw-droppingly awful happens, like the Noakhali
incident. On any given day, rape for us is just another news item on the back
or inside pages of a newspaper. This lack of sensitivity and awareness, among
other reasons, is what enables a rapist in the first place. This is what made
Delwar Hossain and his Bahini feel they could commit the gruesome crimes with
impunity. To be honest, thugs like them have been historically utilised for
various crimes, to instil fear into their communities, and they are never
arrested or tried until it gets too "embarrassing" for the powers
that be.
Many
societies and cultures, including ours, have this distorted notion about
consent when it comes to love and sex—that women often say no but secretly have
no objection. This notion is often promoted in mainstream movies and
pornography. Numerous movies, both home-grown and imported from Bollywood, show
variations of a love story where the hero would "harass" the heroine
in broad daylight, accompanied by his dancing troops, and in the end the
heroine would fall into his arms. These movies had set in motion a gradual
process of acceptance of such behaviours as "harmless".
Think of the 1990 movie Dil, where Aamir Khan
harasses Madhuri Dixit at night but she eventually falls in love with him! Or
think of the 2019 movie Kabir Singh, where a hostile medical student literally
makes a girl fall in love with him, who remains in love despite being slapped
on the face in broad daylight. How can these movies be allowed to be released?
And how do they become so popular if we are not endorsing them or the behaviour
promoted in them?
Rapists Have Mental Disorder
In 2017, Dr
Shuvendu Sen, Associate Program Director, Internal Medicine Residency, Raritan
Bay Medical Centre, explained the characteristics of a rapist in the Times of
India. One of them is mental disorder, which can happen during childhood and in
adolescent years. Detecting such behaviour early on is vital, as is treating it
through behavioural counselling, psychosocial support and allied therapies.
We need to
cure these minds before they get damaged beyond repair. This would mean
undertaking a concerted effort including forming a better education system
(teaching students the harmful effects of patriarchy), having healthier
communities as well as empathy from religious leaders, corporate offices and
community organisations that will work together with the law enforcers so that
potential rapists are identified, before they commit such crimes.
To
conclude, these are but some of the many causes and characteristics responsible
for our enduring rape culture. There are legal, procedural, political and even
societal reasons for why such incidents are on the rise. We need to identify
them and prepare accordingly. For a wider impact, we need to instigate
systematic changes through the involvement of our homes, communities,
educational institutions, faith leaders, NGOs, and above all, the
administration. Today, the problem is so profound and widespread that ordinary
people sometimes feel helpless and don't know where to begin. As I write this,
people are demonstrating and protesting across the country against the rise in
sexual crimes. People are now more aware than before, more vocal and united in
their demand to end the rape culture. This gives me hope, but is hope enough?
----
Tasmiah T. Rahman is In-charge, Skills
Development Programme at BRAC, and an advocate of women's rights. Views
expressed in the article are her own.
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/news/protests-against-rape-give-us-hope-enough-1978161
-----
Israel's Pact With The UAE Is Not About Peace.
It is A Business Deal
By Sami Abu Shehadeh
14 Oct 2020
A view of Jerusalem: the Israel/UAE agreement
‘threatens the status of Jerusalem’s holy sites’. Photograph: Anadolu
Agency/Getty Images
-----
Tomorrow,
the Israeli parliament will be voting on the agreement to normalise relations
with the United Arab Emirates. A large majority will approve a hugely
favourable step towards the Israeli government’s goals: perpetuating its
systematic violations of international law and of the Palestinian people’s
inalienable rights. Those parliamentarians who believe in justice and equality
are going to vote against this agreement. I’m afraid, though, that we are a
tiny minority.
This week,
we were given copies of the agreement, which I read in the three languages
(Arabic, Hebrew and English) and figured out a few things. First of all, those
who wrote it in different languages tailored it to their audiences. While in
English and Hebrew, they repeated the word “normalisation” several times, it is
not even mentioned in Arabic. This is a business deal that merely establishes
diplomatic relations, and not a peace agreement. The word “annexation” (of
occupied Palestinian territory) is not even mentioned.
This deal
cannot be taken out of the context of the US presidential campaign and
President Trump’s need for a success story after many failures. The recognition
of illegal settlements as part of Israel will not change international law.
Similarly, cutting aid to Palestinian hospitals will not force Palestinians to
accept Israeli domination. As mentioned in its preamble, this agreement is
based on the Trump plan that normalises colonialism, fully endorses the
right-wing Zionist narrative, and kills the prospects of an independent state
of Palestine. It also threatens the status of Jerusalem’s holy sites and treats
Palestinians as strangers in their homeland. The UAE, an Arab country that
claims to care about Palestine, should reject this framework, as most of the
international community has done.
The
agreements talk about “coexistence”. Why does Israel talk about “coexistence”
with a country thousands of kilometres away? At the same time, within its
borders, 100,000 Arab citizens live in villages older than the state of Israel itself,
yet are unrecognised and lack access to essential services such as water and
electricity?
Discrimination
and racism against Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, an indigenous
population that makes up over 20% of the country’s population, is present in
every aspect of life. More than 50 laws discriminate against non-Jewish
citizens. Israel’s trains do not stop in a single Arab city. Defense minister
Benny Gantz could have become Israel’s prime minister if he had agreed a
partnership with Arab parties. Instead, he preferred to become the junior
partner in the current Israeli coalition.
Just look
at the large Israeli delegation that went to the UAE in August: not a single
non-Jewish official was included. Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu and his government
are now tweeting in Arabic, but part of their legacy is the racist
Jewish-nation state law that downgrades Israel’s Arabic language status.
For the
UAE, the agreement is in effect a generous donation to Trump’s election
campaign, while at the same time giving Abu Dhabi more access to weapons and
intelligence. A simple review of Israeli media will show how security-related
companies are the most excited about this deal.
And what
about Palestinian rights? They are not even mentioned. What about stopping
Israeli annexation? This week, Israel is set to approve almost 5,000 more units
to expand its illegal colonial settlements further.
Perhaps
most strikingly, the agreement refers to international law and UN resolutions
on “international agreements”. What about resolution 2334 on the illegality of
Israeli settlements? Or resolution 478 calling on all countries to move their
diplomatic representatives outside Jerusalem? What about the UN charter urging
countries “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal
of threats to the peace”? Trump and Netanyahu are undermining the whole idea of
a rules-based world order.
Annexation
on the ground continues. Israel continues to demolish Palestinian homes to
expand its settlements. However, Israel’s foreign minister, Gabi Ashkenazi, has
been telling his European counterparts that annexation has “stopped”.
It’s for
all these reasons that I’m saying no to this agreement, as should anyone who
cares about justice. Regional peace, security, equality and fulfilment of the
Palestinian people’s long-overdue rights: this deal represents the exact
opposite.
-----
Sami Abu Shehadeh is a Palestinian MP in the
Knesset
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/14/israel-pact-with-the-uae-peace-palestinian-settlements
-----
Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Evolving’ Position on
Holocaust Denial
By Kara Swisher
Oct. 14,
2020
When
Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, told me two years ago
in a podcast interview that Holocaust deniers might not mean to lie, my first
instinct was to reply, “That’s completely idiotic.” I managed to stifle myself.
In our
interview, I let him explain how he wanted to govern the giant social media
platform he alone controlled.
As he
talked, his view of the proliferation of underbaked conspiracy theories, hoaxes
and misinformation on his site became troubling.
“Look, as
abhorrent as some of this content can be, I do think that it gets down to this
principle of giving people a voice,” he said, while at the very same time
noting that speech that created an unsafe environment might indeed be blocked
by Facebook.
Mr.
Zuckerberg defended the decision to allow the views of the persistently vile
Alex Jones, whose lies and conspiracy-mongering about the mass murder of
children in the Sandy Hook school shooting had proliferated all over Facebook
at the time and who seemed to delight in breaking all the rules that the
company had laid down. When I asked why Mr. Jones had not been booted off
Facebook — which Facebook insisted it would not do and then did not long after
— Mr. Zuckerberg wanted to change the frame of reference.
To the
Holocaust. Uh-oh, I thought. Still, he persisted.
“I’m
Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened,” he
said.
“Yes,
there’s a lot,” I said.
“I find
that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our
platform should take that down because I think there are things that different
people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong,
but I think — —”
I had to
interject one bit of sanity to try to stop this runaway train of thought. “In
the case of the Holocaust deniers, they might be,” I said, before deciding to
just let that whopper chug on by. “But go ahead.”
And go
ahead he went, driving himself right into a wall, with me watching the accident
unfold in quiet horror.
“It’s hard
to impugn intent and to understand the intent,” he said. It is not, I thought.
While he
later tried to clarify his remarks, sending me an email that said, “I
personally find Holocaust denial deeply offensive, and I absolutely didn’t
intend to defend the intent of people who deny that,” it was exactly what he
had done.
And which
he continued to do, until Monday, that is, when it finally occurred to Mr.
Zuckerberg that perhaps he had not thought it through and decided Facebook
would now “prohibit any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust.”
“I’ve
struggled with the tension between standing for free expression and the harm
caused by minimizing or denying the Holocaust,” he wrote in a Facebook post.
“My own thinking has evolved as I’ve seen data showing an increase in
anti-Semitic violence, as have our wider policies on hate speech.”
The move
comes just after Facebook announced last week that it is purging content from
QAnon, the bizarre and growing conspiracy theory movement.
Is this
woke Mark a good thing? I am not sure. This evolving Zuckerberg feels more
random than rigorous, based less on a consistent theory of how to police the
platform than playing an endless and exhausting game; and, more to the point,
motivated to look busy because of a possible change in political power that
could spell trouble for the Trump-friendly Facebook. Is this new tune simply
being sung for a coming Biden presidency?
I have no
idea. But what is clear is that Mr. Zuckerberg’s realization of all the ways
that social media can hurt us continues to be painfully slow. The enormous
costs of this process, which have never actually accrued to him, will still be
borne by the rest of us. The world has to repair the damage from the hate that
he has allowed to thrive under the false banner of free speech on the network
he built.
Until Mr.
Zuckerberg decides to really run the place, Facebook will remain a perfect
platform for anything, because it stands for nothing.
Since that
interview with me two years ago, Mr. Zuckerberg has talked to a lot of
reporters, but has declined to do another interview with me, although I have
asked time and again. That’s a shame, because I have a lot more questions for
him. Such as:
Why tell
everyone that you do not want to be an arbiter of truth after you purposefully
built a platform that absolutely required an arbiter of truth to function
properly?
Why did you
never build firebreaks that could have dampened the dangerous fires of
disinformation that you have let burn out of control?
Were you
motivated by a need to expand the business without limit or by a real belief
that human beings would behave if you let them do anything they wanted?
And most
important, now that we agree that Holocaust deniers mean to lie, can we also
agree that we need to remake the nation and also Facebook so that we can have a
real dialogue built on community? You always said that was your goal, right?
Or, after
all this time and pain, is that completely idiotic?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/opinion/facebook-holocaust-denial.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
----
No One Left Behind: Handwashing Saves Lives
By Silvia A. Landa
October 14,
2020
Can you
imagine losing a war while holding a powerful weapon? This could be a reality
for people who simply do not practice correct handwashing behavior during this
COVID-19 pandemic. Handwashing with soap is one of the most important things we
can do to prevent against getting infected with the coronavirus. However, not
everyone is religiously practicing this important habit at critical times. For
some, it is simply because the correct information is not reaching them.
For others,
it might be because the behaviour is not so easy to adopt, so they need a
little help through behavior change intervention. During our initial COVID-19
response through the Water for Women project, we found there were vulnerable
groups that faced barriers to getting correct information about how to prevent
COVID-19. An elderly woman in Sumbawa regency said that, without the health
worker who came to her house to explain about COVID-19 and teach her how to
wash her hands correctly during critical times, she would not know that this
behavior was important for her survival. In rural areas of Manggarai regency,
people prefer our COVID-19 information to be translated into the local
language.
Another
case of misinformation concerned some our disabled beneficiaries, who initially
assumed that to prevent COVID-19, they needed to wash their hands with
disinfectant only. Learning from and working with our beneficiaries, we
designed our COVID-19 information to reach everyone by eliminating the language
barriers, fulfilling the specific needs of people with disabilities by using different
types of media communications preferred by locals, and ensuring everyone is
reached through house-to-house direct health promotion. Is giving information
enough to make sure people are practicing correct handwashing behaviour?
Absolutely not! Even during this pandemic. Have you ever seen people wearing a
mask on their chin in a crowd in the urban red zones? Then it is possible the
same people do not wash their hands correctly at critical times. Those city
people must have received COVID-19 information. However, they still don’t
practice it. This is in line with what researchers say, that increasing
knowledge is not enough to trigger people to practice correct handwashing
behaviour. A study in Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Madagascar, Senegal, Kenya,
India, China, Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan and Peru found that fear of disease was only
a motivator when there was a clear and present danger such as an outbreak.
The main motivators for handwashing behavior
were disgust, affiliation, nurture, comfort, including social status and
prestige. As overwhelming and confusing information could reduce the adoption
of desired behavior. Our health promotion keeps the critical times for
handwashing to after defecation/toilet use, after handling child feces, after
touching animals, before preparing food, before feeding a child, before eating
and before touching faces. That is why, through our Water, Sanitation and
Hygiene (WASH) program, as part of our COVID-19 response, our intervention is
focusing on behaviour change with an emphasis on the motivators explained
above.
With support from the Australian government,
in the Water for Women project, we have reached 198,663 people including women,
children, the elderly and people with disabilities in 105 villages. About 92
percent of the households we monitored have to practice correct handwashing
behaviour based on the Health Ministry standard in the Community-Based Total
Sanitation (STBM) program. The minimum criteria are
1) Having
handwashing stations with soap in the vicinity — near the toilet, kitchen and
at the front of the house, especially with relation to COVID-19 prevention,
2) Knowing
at least three critical times for washing hands, and 3) Practicing correct
handwashing technique. However, consistent monitoring is really important to
ensure the behaviour is consistent, as slippage is very likely to happen
especially during this long pandemic. After a long fight people will usually
feel worn out. This is the phenomenon we are seeing now that even in red zones
there are still crowds and there are people who do not wear a mask in public.
This situation calls for a strong emphasis on behaviour change intervention
with continuous monitoring effort.
The Health Ministry already has existing
resources for this, which is STBM with an emphasis on handwashing in its second
pillar. The ministry has sanitarians in every health centre responsible for
ensuring household hygiene behaviour. However, their current data (
monev.stbm.kemkes.go.id) show that only 22 provinces in Indonesia show progress
in handwashing, with Yogyakarta at the top with less than 15 percent access. If
handwashing is so important during this pandemic, then STBM should be one of
our powerful weapons to be utilized and the data should look more promising.
Before the health system collapse by people flooding the hospital with
COVID-19, how about keeping them safe starting from their house by simply
implementing handwashing behaviour change intervention.
People can stay safe not only by getting the
correct information and having a handwashing station with soap and hand
sanitizer, but also by religiously washing their hands with soap. As we
commemorate Global Handwashing Day tomorrow, let’s start using the cheap
weapon, handwashing behavior change intervention, to save millions of lives.
And because it is cheap, there is no reason to leave anyone behind, especially
the vulnerable ones.
***
Water for Women project manager, Plan
International Indonesia
https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2020/10/14/no-one-left-behind-handwashing-saves-lives.html
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