[News] Ambassador of Israeli crimes - This is how Gilad Erdan became a defender of women’s rights in Iran

[Anti-Imperialist News]

english.palinfo.com
<https://english.palinfo.com/articles/2023/10/4/Ambassador-of-Israeli-crimes>
Ambassador of Israeli crimes
By Ramzy Baroud - October 4, 2023
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A new trend is emerging in the Israeli hasbara discourse targeting
Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims: women’s rights.

The word ‘new’ is not exactly accurate. The misuse of the genuine struggle
for women’s rights in the Arab and Muslim world is only new insofar as the
increasing reliance on the tactic within the larger Israeli propaganda
discourse.

This was demonstrated in a most bizarre way during the speech of Iranian
President Ebrahim Raisi on September 19, at the 78th Session of the United
Nations General Assembly in New York.

The story was orchestrated by Gilad Erdan, a mediocre Israeli diplomat and
Tel Aviv’s UN Ambassador.

Erdan’s real strength comes from the fact that he is supported by the same
Western governments that continue to fund and defend Israel’s war machine
and military occupation of Palestine.

Naturally, he is also given a disproportionate amount of media coverage by
corporate Western mainstream media, when compared to any other UN diplomat.

Erdan’s work is predicated mostly on a single tactic: If he is not pleased
by the conduct of his peers at the UN General Assembly, he simply accuses
them of being ‘anti-Semitic’, as a matter of course.

At times, the entire UN political body is accused of being anti-Israel and
anti-Semitic.

This Israeli strategy – defaming truth-sayers as anti-Semites – only
succeeds because it is part of a massive political and intellectual
discourse that is constantly fed by the media and accepted as a fact by
Western politicians.

Indeed, if Erdan is judged as a diplomat, completely independent from the
unquestionable support he receives by Western media and governments, he
would have been forced to find another profession altogether.

His recent conduct at the UNGA was a perfect illustration. In a terribly
choreographed gesture, he began walking up and down the Assembly Hall,
raising a photo of Mahsa Amini, who died in Tehran last year. The placard
said: “Iranian women deserve freedom now.”

Consistent with the rules of the UN, Erdan was eventually removed by
security, which he must have anticipated.

For him, however, his charade was a success, as it created the needed
distraction, not only from the speech of the Iranian President, but in the
coverage of Raisi’s speech altogether.

Though some have suggested that Erdan had humiliated himself, namely
because of his removal from the UNGA hall, I wonder if he was, in any way,
surprised by the outcome of his behavior.

He wanted to be a star, at least for like-minded anti-Iranian governments
and organizations; he wanted the conversation to shift from the rights of
the Palestinians to that of Iranians. For him, the mission was accomplished.

Of the many articles and news coverage that followed Erdan’s display, a
few, even in the Middle East, spoke about Israel’s war on Palestinian
women: the killings, imprisonment, torture, denial of freedom of movement,
daily humiliation, denial of life-saving medications, and much more.

According to the United Nations, at least 253 women were killed in Gaza in
the 2014 war alone.

These numbers are only the tip of the iceberg, as every single Palestinian
woman living under Israeli occupation, anywhere in East Jerusalem, the West
Bank and Gaza suffers daily. These women are hardly removed from the
collective struggle and suffering of all Palestinians.

Erdan had no signs prepared for those women; neither do many mainstream,
supposedly feminist organizations that continue to rally in solidarity with
Iranian women, while ignoring the pain and humiliation of Palestinian women
at the hands of the Israeli military and government.

Sadly, little action followed a damning report issued by Israel’s rights
organization, B’Tselem on September 5, where Palestinian women from the
Ajlouni family were humiliated and paraded completely naked in front of
their children. This episode took place while the Ajlouni’s boys and men
were handcuffed and blindfolded, and while Israeli soldiers stole the
women’s gold and money.

This is, of course, the norm, not the exception. It seems that whatever
Israel does to Palestinian women, little action, aside from that organized
by Palestinians and their supporters, ever follows: No placards at the
UNGA, no US State Department-led campaigns, no unique hashtags, no mass
protests, nothing of the sort.

When advocacy for human and women’s rights only applies in situations where
the culprit is an enemy of the US, one must question if human rights have
anything to do with the discussion altogether.

The irony is that Israel has been one of the main political forces behind
the deadly US-Western sanctions imposed on Iran for years, which
devastating Iranian society and families – women and men alike.

That, too, was another missing context from the coverage following Erdan’s
UN act.

But Erdan is not alone. Sheltering behind women’s rights in the Middle East
is now the go-to tactic in many public conversations, conferences and media
coverage of Israel and Palestine.

Even if the tactic fails to strike a major shift in the perception of the
Israeli occupation and apartheid in Palestine, at least, in the minds of
some, it does create a distraction.

I have personally experienced this during many of my tours in various parts
of the world, from Vancouver Canada, to Madrid, to Nairobi. Sadly, often
well-intentioned people engage in the side discussion, either defending
Middle Eastern societies, or nodding in agreement with the self-proclaimed
women’s rights ‘activists’.

But Israel did not invent the ‘liberation of women’ as a strategy aimed at
deflecting or justifying its own war crimes against civilians. The US used
it as a backbone of its massive propaganda that preceded the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars.

And, of course, once the invasions and subduing of these countries were
completed, Iraqi and Afghani women disappeared from media coverage.

In both cases, tens of thousands of women were killed, raped and tortured
by the US military. As for those ‘activists’ who had originally joined the
initial US-championed women’s rights campaigns, they often disappear when
women become victims of the US, the West and Israel.

While Arab and Muslim societies have their own social and political
struggles, we must be wary not to allow Tel Aviv and Washington to hijack
these struggles for their own politically sinister reasons.

It does not follow that, for women to be ‘freed’ from one society, the
women of another society would have to live in perpetual bondage, of
permanent occupation and racist apartheid.

This logic should apply to all situations of inequality, injustice,
discrimination and racism, anywhere in the world.

And, a defender of war crimes, like Gilad Erdan, must not be allowed to
serve two roles: an apologist for the mistreatment of women in Palestine,
and a freedom fighter for women anywhere else.

*- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle.
He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud is
a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global
Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC). *
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