Why we need women in decision-making positions

The moment of Kamala Harris' rise is a perfect opportunity to talk about why we need women around the table.

I’m trying to contain that feeling of thrill, trying not to get ahead of myself here, hanging on to what we may call “cautious optimism”. Maybe it’s a remnant from our 2016 traumas. When Hillary Clinton was nominated, I actually danced around my living room. I called it the Hillary Hora. My kids thought I was a bit off the wall, but I had no regrets. It was a big moment. And the night before the election, I went out and bought a bottle of blue curacao in order to make my “Mazel tov cocktail”. (Remember those memes?). And, well, we all know the rest.

I’m setting aside those memories to dwell in this exciting moment. Kamala Harris is an outstanding leader who we would all be lucky to have leading America. She is smart, experienced, thoughtful, and compassionate. She is a good listener and a fast learner and gets the issues. And whatever flaws she has that I’m sure are going to come up, they are all minor compared to the enormity of what she brings to the table. She sees issues from multiple perspectives — including the current situation in my neighborhood here, and including issues of law and justice that are tricky and multifaceted and which are certainly going to be coming up. These are all small compared to the moment we have going on here. A real moment for so many reasons which I’m sure you all know. And just I really want to soak it in for a second.

[Takes deep breath….]

Also, I do think that many of us are a bit smarter than we were in 2016, more realistic about the depth of misogyny and the twisted tactics used relentlessly to keep women down. I have a feeling that the women-hate stuff that we were bombarded with then won’t work quite as easily today.

Or at least I’m hoping… Cautious optimism….

*****

This is the perfect time to share the next episode of my podcast (which we recorded before this big announcement) which looks at women in leadership. Specifically, we are discussing the importance of having women around the table in all things peace, security, and negotiation here in Israel — not just to end the war but to rethink the entire conflict and to embrace long-term solutions built on values of equality, human rights, and security. But maybe with different defintions of “security”.

In this episode, we interview Stav Salpeter of Itach Maaki Women Lawyers for Social Justice. You can listen on Spotify or watch on Youtube, and sign up for our FB page. Links and transcript below.

Would love to hear your comments.

Listen here:

Or watch here:

Transcript:

[Music] This is women ending War the podcast where you'll discover that there is another path, that peace is possible, and that the women here can lead the way. I'm Dr Elana Sztokman I'm here with Eva Dalak my co-host. Welcome.

Welcome to our podcast Women Ending War I'm Elana Sztokman and I'm Eva Dalak.

Elana: Salam Aleikum

Eva: Aleikum Salam. Shalom Aleichem

Elana:And A'id Milad Sa'id! Happy birthday!

Eva: Thank you!

Elana:The Big Five O. That's really exciting.

Eva: It is especially celebrating it here.

Elana: I was thinking the same thing.

Eva: It is really an honor.

Elana: Thank you for being here on your almost on your 50th birthday.

Eva: Yeah thank you tomorrow July 9th national holiday. Should be a national holiday.

Elana: Why not! Absolutely.

Eva: As long if it's for peace, if it's for peace.

Elana: We're dedicating Eva's 50th birthday to peace.

Eva: Absolutely let's activate peace let's activate peace

Elana: That's the name of your company you're

Eva: Right. That's my project. Peace activation. Because we need to activate peace from within so that we can see it in the outside world. It doesn't happen outside. It happens inside. It's an inside work.

Elana: And you started peace activation after October 7th. Yes?

Eva: Yes I was heartbroken and I asked Spirit if there's one thing I could do please show me. And I received guidance to launch, to open a zoom with Rumi's court. Out there, beyond right doing and wrongdoing there's a field -- I'll meet you there. And so the zoom became the field where Palestinian Israeli and anybody actually that was annoyed, disturbed, frustrated by what was going on could come and share how they feel in the present. So it's a safe space where people come and share. Nobody's moderating, Nobody's responding, and we just share our truth. And I hold a very strict safe space where I would cut people if they start into political narrative. I'm only interested in personal narrative and for people to hear each other in their truth. And one specific incident was a person in Israeli Jewish person living in Costa Rica saying how heartbroken she was that her sister, 18 years old, was going to go to the Army and she was so scared and she was concerned for her safety. And immediately after her share a Palestinian woman from Gaza was sharing that she has just lost 72 persons from her family. And just the juxtaposition of both of these narratives and for the Palestinian person, it's like not understanding, how can you be concerned about your sister that is going to the army that is going to kill my family? And so these are the type of stories we hear, and that's what allow us to humanize the other. Because we really need to remember we are all humans sharing one Earth, one humanity. And in this process we've lost it, we're losing it. And the impunity with which Israel is conducting this genocide is really heartbreaking. And not just for Palestinians. it's for Palestinian for Jewish for Israeli for many many people. And that's the truth. Which is that there's no one truth.

And as I was sharing earlier with you, I love Shlomo Artzi's song, "Haemet, sh'ein emet achat o shataim, tzipor barcha li mehayadayim,...."

Elana: His song is called Truth there is no one truth.

Eva: Exactly. And that song I think exists from before. I's not a new song. So I think right now it's so relevant for us to remember that there's no one truth. And my truth is completely subjective, just like yours. And it's okay. And we can still be here together sharing this platform and sharing our perspective and listening to you.

Elana: Before we introduce our guest for today -- we have a special guest today I'm super excited -- I just wanted to ask you one question that I from the previous episode that I feel like I didn't, we didn't get a full answer to. Which is, I said to you, "What is your vision?" And I was wondering if you wanted to maybe finish that sentence I might have interrupted you and if I did them I'm sorry, but

Eva: No worries. My vision, my vision is to live as neighbors in deep respect for each other's truth. And I'm living it already in Costa Rica with neighbors that are Israeli. You've lived it in New York and we've lived it everywhere except for Israel. And so for me my vision is peace in the Middle East with compassionate self forgiveness as the weapon.

Elana: Compassionate self forgiveness. That's something you don't hear often, What does that mean?

Eva: So compassionate self forgiveness is to understand that what's killing us in this story is the judgment we hold on the other. And actually the Judgment we hold on the other is basically based on the Judgment we hold on ourselves. And that's part of the truth why Israeli have hard time to hear the Palestinian narrative because that would put into question this story, the narrative with which they were born and programmed and manipulated on. Like, this is a land of no people for people with no land. And so it Justified your presence here is Justified and legitimized. So if you hear and believe the Palestinian narrative of this possession then you have to negate your own story and your own goodness. And as we shared earlier it's really hard,

Elana: It's very hard.

Eva: It's very hard. It's very challenging and that's why I have compassion for that.

Elana: That's really interesting what you're saying because it's true that people have a very -- from my experience my experience having these conversations especially with Israelis and Jews from around the world also -- it's very hard hard to hear Palestinian narratives because it's like, "But I'm a good person! Why are you saying I'm not a good person?"

I mean and what I was thinking also in the previous episode you know one of your first sentences you use the word "genocide", and here also used the word "genocide". And I know from my experience that for a lot of Israelis and Jews, the second they're going to hear the word "genocide" they're going to be like, "I'm out. I'm not having this conversation anymore. I'm not talking to you. We're not even having this conversation. I can't hear that word." You get the same reaction when you use the word "occupation". Some Israelis and Jews are like, "How can you use the word occupation? That is such an offensive word! how could you say that about me?" You know so there are a lot of like those trigger points where you know people are like, "You're telling me I'm a bad person so I'm not engaging with you anymore."

So it's so interesting the way you're pointing that out -- and thank you for the compassion and thank you for reminding us about the self-compassion also. Because it is a hard process, you know, it is a very hard process to be able to say, you know, "I and my people are doing something that yeah I think is wrong and maybe I should be looking at it and it's wrong." And like I have to hold that and I have to hold that truth and I have to hold that reality,

Eva: While still believing that you're a good person. And for me that's the key. That doesn't negate you being a good person. It's just that there's a dissonance and fragmentation and schizophrenia to say, "Okay I am a good person, so if I'm a good person then it's not possible that I am doing this to these people, so probably I'm not doing this to these people and so that's the only way where we can coexist." But actually it's understanding that this judgment on the other is a judgment on ourselves and I have to accept reality as is. And reality as is since 1948, Palestine doesn't exist, Palestinians are under occupation and even Palestinians within Israel don't have full rights. And so it's really, I feel like there's a war on terminology rather than -- and denial of the reality on the ground -- rather than watching it with compassion. And that's why my vision is like to be able to hold this narrative in multiple truth in one heart, while at the same time healing the trauma of the people on this land, healing the trauma of the land. And understanding that we we can do that. It's not complicated. We can do that.

Elana: I also really appreciate humanizing everybody no matter what their identity is, no matter what their politics are and that's also hard for -- I just want to point point out a different perspective that I hear a lot. You know there's a lot of stories about anti-Semitism around the world and there are a lot of stories about, you know, Jews being kicked out, or, like somebody, you know, announcing, "Any Jews here?" or "Any Zionists here?" Or "Any Israelis here? You're not welcome. You're being kicked out." That's also a very very hard thing and also I feel like it goes to the same kind of dynamic you're describing that have to do with, like, taking a person and suddenly -- I am not just who I am, I am responsible for everything that my representatives are doing in my name. Whether or not I have anything to do with them. Whether or not I believe in them. Even if I've dedicated my life to trying to get my leaders to stop doing that, I'm still responsible. And I'm still evil and I still don't deserve to be in the room. That's hard

Eva: That's hard. I agree that's very hard. And it's a pity that Palestinian Liberation is equated with anti-Semitism because it's not. I mean Palestinian and Israelis are semitic people, and Arabic and Hebrew are coming from the same source. And so you cannot you cannot blame Palestinian to be anti-Semitism.

Elana: I think what you're saying is important. I have this conversation a lot, too. Which is that like if somebody is saying, "You know, Israel should be doing this differently" -- like when I say all the time, you know, I say, "Israel needs to get out of Gaza" -- I've been saying this for ages, since almost like the beginning, like, What are we doing in Gaza?! -- that doesn't make me anti-semitic.

Eva: Absolutely.

Elana: It doesn't make me anti-Jewish. It makes me say, "I want Israel to do things differently." And so we -- I say "we" meaning "my people" -- I wish that we would learn how to distinguish between criticism of Israeli policies and actual hatred of Jewish people. Because those are two -- sometimes they overlap. There is an overlap, like you say. Sometimes these things like bleed into each other. I mean maybe "bleed" is too charged of a word here. But it's like they overlap into each other and that is very very unfortunate because it stops the real conversation. It stops us from really being able to engage with honesty and authenticity because we're so triggered into our triggered places and into our victim places and all those things and so that's the end. Pft. You know that's the end of the conversation.

Eva: And I think peace activation is all about the triggers. And what I teach is, "Sit with your trigger. You're triggered? Great. You're angry? Great. Sit with it and come into compassion and self-forgiveness so that you can hear the other." And I really believe that it's so important to hear the other.

Elana: Okay, thank you for that. I love your peace activation. I've been there a bunch of times and it's really really a beautiful space.

Okay, so today I want to take a deep dive into some something that's obviously very important to this conversation which is the location of women in leadership and the almost complete absence of women in leadership positions. There were no women on the war cabinet, there are no women in military leadership, there are no women around the table in any of the negotiations. I mean the list goes on and on.

So we have here today our esteemed guest Stav Salpeter who works for an organization called Itach-Maki Women Lawyers for Social Justice. "Itach" means "with you" in feminine form in Hebrew and "maaki" in Arabic. Itach-Maaki And Itach-Maaki Maki has been on the forefront for many many years of advancing women's leadership in negotiations, in politics, in diplomacy, and and also in grassroots movements and lots of other things. So welcome!

Stav: Hi thank you thank you so much for having me.

Elana: Pleasure! So could you tell us -- so this week actually is a really interesting week for Itach-Maaki because you started a new campaign about women's leadership right? There are two massive dolls, blowup dolls, in the middle of Tel Aviv, right?

Stav: That was awesome

Elana: Okay we'll um we'll put a link to it here in the podcast.

Stav: Amazing yeah. Two huge four-meter-tall two- face dolls as well. So you have four dolls almost, four women standing and not allowing anyone to ignore them in the center of this very public space. And this is a campaign that we're launching to end a project that we've been running for a few years now with the Jerusalem Center for Women which is a Palestinian uh women's rights organization based in the West Bank. And together we've been training over a 100 women in peace negotiations and how to take part in peace negotiations from a gendered perspective. 100 Palestinian and Israeli women from a range of different backgrounds. So we have women who are you know from different communities. So we have Bedouin women, Mizrachi and Ashkenazi women, Christian and Muslim Palestinian women, women from various socioeconomic backgrounds. But also women from a range of professional backgrounds. So we have senior news correspondents, senior civil servants, senior academics. And the idea is really to bring this diversity of voices into peace and security negotiations. Because as you mentioned, Itach-Maaki has been working since 2005 when Israel adopted UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women peace and security, Itach-Maaki has been working with a range of women's rights organizations in Israel and Palestine to make sure that there's actually an implementation plan for this legislation which we still haven't seen.

Elana: Can we just pause for a second explain what 1325 is because not everybody knows what it is.

Stav: So UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security really talks about the need to integrate women's voices into peace negotiations and into decisions made about security. So it's about integrating both their perspective -- so gendered perspectives a gender mainstreaming into these decisions -- but also bringing the women themselves into the rooms where these decisions are taking place. And it's been proven across the world that once women take part in negotiations for peace, the peace agreements are much longer-lived,

Eva: More sustainable.

Stav: They much more sustainable because there's more community buy-in. I don't think it's because, you know, women are much more calm or peaceful than men or people of other genders. I just think that once there's broader representation of society in the negotiation table and the decisions that are made are able to really apply to a wider range of of members of society and

Eva: Absolutely

Stav: And are able for it to be longer lived

Elana: So you you're saying it's about the diversity

Eva: Diversity and I think women are weavers. They weave community. And as as we mentioned in the previous episode I think they're more participatory and inclusive and community-oriented. So the diversity would come not from all women as we said. It's not just because you're a woman. But I think the approach would be more participatory and inclusive.

Elana: I once heard a talk from an Irish guy (I can't remember his name; it's unfortunate I can't remember his name) but he was very involved in Irish peace talks for like decades. And he gave this talk in Jerusalem a couple years ago, maybe like four or five years ago, in which he was describing how the first time that women were in the room -- he said you know for 20 years there were never any women in the room, and then because of 1325 suddenly there were these these corrective measures to bring women in -- he said as soon as women walked in the whole room changed. Everybody sort of like sat up a little bit differently. They just sort of like looked around a little bit differently. They kind of like controlled their voice is a little bit more. It was just sort of like it went from being like an assumed you know Boys' Club

Eva: Men's club

Elana: Yeah to something else. They had to like be on better behavior. That's what he said. That's what he said. I was fascinated. It's so interesting.

Stav: Actually the northern Irish example is one that we really draw on in our work as well. And I think it was one of the precursors really to to 1325 this NIWC, the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition where you brought together Protestant and Catholic women. And somehow they were also able to find common ground on the shared basis of their own struggles with the patriarchy. And so I think really having this intersectional approach where we can bring in and see the different structures of oppression that you were mentioning earlier in our societies and seeing where do we have commonalities here, what are the oppressions that apply to all of us, and how can we as societies work in order to topple them, to break them down um to to democratize them.

Eva: And it's an approach that has been applied in many different conflict zones actually. Like I remember the Great Lake Region, Burundi and Rwandan woman, Hutu and Tutsti women, were coming together on the woman-specific agenda. And I think that's what is missing here. We're seeing, we have internalized patriarchy in Palestin- Israel and rather than seeing we're all suffering from the same disease, we're like fighting over who's going to you know, who's going to write the prescription for like -- who cares? It's the disease and we're all suffering from it.

Elana: So this raises another interesting question: Does war affect women differently?

Eva: Absolutely. Absolutely. Do you want to say more about that? And I can I can share from other examples.war affects people who are most marginalized in society in different ways in general, right? People who are already vulnerable, who are already invisible to decision makers become harmed much more by the war and are left out often by policies they try to remedy the impact of the war. And we've seen this throughout our War uh throughout the war -- throughout our work, sorry -- during the war. So we've recently published this report from our Legal Aid Center which receives over 2,000 calls of women who are marginalized on the basis of their socio-economic status, their geographic location in the country, their ethnic background. And we've seen patterns in the calls that have been coming in since the war. Because we've seen a staggering rise. And there are many issues that women face in society that don't apply in the same way to men and women from marginalized communities especially. So we've seen for example Palestinian citizens of Israel face rising cases of being dismissed from their jobs or having insecurity in their jobs in general because of their political statements.

Elana: Or even physical violence. I mean I have a friend in Yafo actually who, she goes with a hijab, and she was physically attacked during the first first week of the war by some local Yeshiva students. So Arab women especially who have that visibility of otherness as it were in our society are very vulnerable also to all kinds of discrimination -- the economic discrimination and the physical, the physical threat. There were women also you who are afraid of like going out and afraid of going to their jobs and things like that. So the war definitely brings that kind of, like, it kind of legitimizes hatred. It legitimizes discrimination. I mean that first month we had Mayors the mayor of Bat Yam and the mayor of Givatayim who said, "We're going to make sure that no Arabs work here! We're going to have a city that's free of Arab workers!" Things like that. So in that sense like the war definitely heightens discrimination. And women who have multiple vulnerabilities will face that vulnerability in in many ways

Eva: I think also there's we don't realize because it's women -- war affects women differently because there's a legitimization of violence. So actually what we've seen in different conflict zones and including Israel and Palestine is a rise in domestic violence and sexual violence. And we talk about 1325 but there's a series of UN Security Council resolutions and one of them is 1826 I think that is specifically targeting sexual violence as a a tool in conflict. And I think it's we underestimate how much it affects the oppressor and the oppressed. I think Israeli women also suffer from violence because there's a legitimization of violence in by the soldiers and also of women soldiers. And so it's it's actually on both sides.

Elana: And also of course on October 7th itself there was a massive you know, sexual violence was part of was a major part of the attack on Israel on October 7th so we have that element also that I think many Israelis are still traumatized by in all kinds of different ways. And then of course there was the whole issue of like the world not being so willing to talk about it even UN women like there was a lot of conflict around that you know which is very hard to come to terms with. But what it showed for sure is that like definitely war heightens violence against women. Also because most of the warriors are men. That's not to say there aren't women soldiers also in Gaza. There are. But the overwhelming majority of the fighters everywhere are still men. And now also you have lots and lots of men, you have guns everywhere. You go to the park in Israel and you see parents of young kids with guns 24/7 and, like, that can't be good. And then and you have Ben who's making it easier for people to get guns, and he's he's withdrawing the restrictions against men who have a history of domestic violence, and literally making it easier to put guns in their hands. I mean these are like terrifying things, so.

Stav: I think these are really scary, very kind of visceral examples of how the war leads to sexual based violence as you've discussed, you know on October 7th. And also all the imagery that's been coming out of of Gaza of soldiers with women's lingerie from houses that they've taken over and and and kind of playing around with it on their on their --

Elana: I missed that

Eva: You're lucky you missed it

Stav: Horrifying.

Eva: And also like a soldier obliging woman to strip tease and like Palestinian traditional woman. Oh yeah. There's lots of I think, it's interesting because we refer to October 7 as like this the date of you know the reference point but this has been going on since 1948 and a lot of sexual violence against Palestinian women has taken place in in a lot of the massacres. But it just wasn't publicized as it is right now. And in a way we're privileged because of social media. And what social media right now is able to show and people are using that and abusing that unfortunately, but we are in a position where we cannot say anymore "We didn't know" or "We haven't seen" because it's all over and it is a choice not to see right now and to deny it. And I think it's not just like on one side. It's actually on all sides and it's important to remember that that it's not it's not a question of sexual violence against Palestinian women or sexual violence against Jewish women. Just sexual violence throughout. And that's what the UN resolution heightened. Especially after the example -- it actually came to be after the Bosnia Herzegovina conflict. That was the first time that they saw that the other community was using sexual violence because they knew how important it is, what woman symbolize in the sacredness and the belonging. And that's why I say it's like internalized patriarchy. It's basically considering, "Oh, woman is the property of man and so if I attack the woman of the other I'm attacking the other."

Elana: It's from 1973 Susan Brownmiller's [book "Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape"]. Susan Brownmiller wrote about this in 1973 how rape is a weapon of war. It's not even about the sex. It's about using rape as a weapon. So it's been used and

Eva: And women suddenly, women's body are the battleground. This is like ridiculous. And that's like the ultimate of use of internalized patriarchy.

Elana: Right. So this goes also to the issue, in 1325 there's a whole thing about redefining "security". And here in Israel we talk about "security" with a very very specific meaning -- and it's missing all of this. Women's perspectives on personal security are completely absent from -- And just to give you an example actually also about the whole thing with October 7th and sexual violence. So it was really strange to me. I wrote a blog about this also. I wrote more than one blog about this because it was such a big thing. How you had these like very right-wing Republican American men standing up for Israeli women saying, "Oh look Israeli women are victims of sexual violence by Hamas" right? As if NOW we care about sexual violence. And it's like, well, you know, one in three Israeli women is going to be a victim of sexual violence in her life, statistically speaking, and all the rest of them are not going to be victims of Hamas but of probably men who they might even know or have dated or have been friends with. It's like, are you like interested in that at all or is the story of sexual violence only interesting when it fits into your particular definition of security -- which is "Definition of security is terrorism by the other, by them, the enemy". As opposed to, are you actually interested in women and women's lives and women's bodies and women's experiences what we go through on a daily basis whether there's a war or not?

Eva: You're not. Absolutely not. What their interested is how can take it as an instrument, and use it and manipulate it for our own power.

Stav: Yeah I think that's part what we've been trying to do with this campaign as well, is to redefine and broaden this notion of security in society, and really invite the the society coming to the protest but beyond to take part in this conversation and talk about what security means to them. Because I think you know there's this security related to gender-based violence which we've been discussing but there's also nutritional security. There's security of the women that we work with in the unrecognized villages who are don't feel secure in their homes because they don't know whether they will be demolished. There's so many kinds of security that impact our lives and the stability that we feel within them that are all impacted by the layers of conflict that all of us are subject to.

Elana: So important so important so important what you're talking about. Can you tell me a little bit about the program and the kinds of women who you're encouraging to -- or you're training, not encouraging -- you're training women to find a seat around the table which is not so simple and as Eva said in last episode even getting a seat around the table is not the end of the struggle.

Eva: Absolutely.

Elana: You then have a whole bunch of other challenges after that. But can you tell us, I'd love to hear about the women themselves. What are they bringing to the table? Why is it -- because a lot of times you also hear, like, "You know, there are no women of that caliber. They don't have the right experience.."

[Collective mutter]

Eva: Lousy argument.

Stav: Yeah yeah I think I mean that's why and my colleagues started the negotiation training program a few years ago. Because that was the argument they were getting there is you know the when they were coming to the governments and to ambassadors and saying, "There aren't enough women around the uh these negotiation tables," they were being told, "Well there aren't enough qualified women." And so they went to find and train these qualified women and make sure that you know, now many of our graduates are involved in track two negotiations. Our graduates have set up the the 1325 Forum to discuss issues relating to women peace and security.

Elana: By "track two" you mean informal

Stav: Right informal

Elana: "Track two" is like not the sort of back room back channels.

Stav: Yeah okay exactly exactly. There are very vague, very artistic notions of what is track two what is track 1.5.

Elana: Oh, there's a 1.5?

Stav: Apparently yes and so they've been taking part in other individual initiatives as well to highlight the needs of their communities. So for example, Ghadeer Hani who is one of our graduates, together with my colleagues went to ambassadors and raised the issue of violence within Palestinian communities in Israel and the lack of policing and the lack of structures provided by the government to prevent this rise in crime. And so it's been really great to see that after the training as well women have been taking the matters into their own hands and creating initiatives wherever they could -- whether that is through negotiations, whether that is through Civil Society initiatives, whether that is through advocacy with ambassadors. I think it's important in this context not only to think about those women, the women who we've had our negotiation training with who often are already in positions of power in society -- whether in Academia or in Civil Society or in government. We've also been working with women whose voices are completely invisible to decision makers. We have programs in in local authorities.

Elana: Oh like the Bedouin women.Can you tell us about what you're doing with Bedouin women?

Stav: Yeah definitely. I think that's really an issue that has been under-discussed in the war. We started a joint Jewish-Arab emergency relief center at the very beginning of the war in that environment that you were mentioning where it felt unsafe for many of my Palestinian colleagues to walk around in in in shared cities and Jewish majority cities. It felt unsafe because of that discourse that you were describing that was not only in local authorities but also in the knesset. And so so creating this joint initiative that on the one hand was meant to directly provide food security -- which isn't something that we as an organization do; we don't do humanitarian aid as a legal aid and advocacy Civil Society organization but we saw the needs on the ground -- and came there together with a coalition of other organizations. But in addition to that, the idea of the center was really to create a space for this narrative and to create a space that allows decision-makers to show support for this narrative. So we had hundreds of Jewish and Palestinian uh volunteers so it was a joint project. We gave out thousands of packages of food and essential supplies to Bedouin and Jewish communities in the area. And all of this project was very much led by women. And not just any woman the women who we have been working with are the Nishmayat movement of women leaders from the unrecognized villages. This is is a network that my colleague, Hanan Asana -- who is amazing and and I really recommend everyone look up after this -- she set up this network in 2013

Elana: We'll link to it yeah

Stav: Amazing. Happy happy to to send more information. And the main idea of the network in 2013 was to encourage women in the unrecognized villages to take part in elections. To vote um because at the time you know there were only 4% of women who were voting and by 2019 she managed to raise that number to 22%.

Elana: Which, by the way, Bedouin women have zero representation in the knesset. Through all of Israel's history, Bedouin women are one of the communities that have had absolutely zero representation. Which is like a shocking statistic when you think about it.

Eva: And can you tell more about -- I don't think the public would know what is unrecognized villages or maybe you want to say a couple of words on this?

Stav: Yeah I think that's a really good um idea. So the unrecognized villages -- you know there are about 300,000 270,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel and about 100,000 of them live in unrecognized villages. there are villages, 35 of them that are not recognized by the state and and don't have access to normal services. So you know they would have electricity lines going over their head without having access to electricity within the villages. In the war what this means is that they don't have access to shelters. They're not given any shelters within their villages. They are not even, they don't have the siren, so the the Iron Dome system doesn't work in these villages.

Elana: When we were attacked by Iran, the only person who was injured was a Bedouin girl because the Bedouin community did not have any safe rooms.

Stav: Exactly. Amina. Yeah he was she was the only one who was injured. Seven years old, injured from shrapel in her home. And this is this is women peace and security! This is showing why women -- and women from marginalized background especially -- are the ones who are hardest hit by conflict. You know I remember being scared in my bed calling my partner all night in this attack and I think all of us were very very scared. But the stories that were coming to us from the women leaders who we work with in the Negev -- I actually wrote one of them down so I would love to share it with you because I think it's better for um for for for the women to speak in their own words rather than me trying to to convey their stories. But the stories that were coming were horrible. My colleagues were receiving calls throughout the night of this attack. Women were saying, "We don't know where to go." They were driving -- one of them drove to a school because they thought maybe the school would have a shelter the school was locked so they had to drive to a different school. And many people were hiding under bridges um in the middle of the night. Hiding under highway bridges hoping that this is what is going to save them. And this country that has seen enough wars to be able to provide its citizens with shelters, right? And since October 7 there's been an even added campaign that has been going on for many years before that to provide these villages with shelters -- of course to no avail.

Elana: To do that it has to start with recognition yes? "Unrecognized" is -- it already tells you everything.

Stav: And it's very hard to to advocate for recognition with the government where, you know, our Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich was one of the founders of Regavim which is an organization that works tirelessly to advocate against the unrecognized villages in a very very racialized way as well -- showing maps from the sky, "Oh look at them spreading! Horrible!"

Elana: "Them"

Stav: "Them", yeah. It brought up really horrible connotations for me seeing all these videos. Jewish Israelis speaking putting on Bedouin Arab accents to mock people from these communities in their kind of advocacy videos. Horrifying. So our Minister Finance is one of the people who set this up. And of course a few weeks ago we've seen house demolitions. But anyways going going back to to this horrible evening of the Iranian attack, Nur Alnasara from the Sira village shared about her experience of getting under one of those bridges:

[reading]

"A lot of us had crowded there including little children, pregnant women and the elderly. The most difficult part for me was to watch the ill and disabled undergo this experience. My neighbor's daughter's disabled and somehow, I don't know how, we were able to lower her under the bridge. Another neighbor is reliant on an oxygen tank. These are individuals who must have a local shelter. They cannot start looking for a place in times of duress in the middle of the night. It's very difficult to watch the distress of the children. I'm a grandmother and seeing my children in such distress -- it drives me crazy."

Eva: It's breaking my heart. It's heartbreaking.

Elana: And also, you know, women have those experiences not just of like ourselves but also as mothers and grandmothers and just caretakers. And so these experiences are multiplied and because like as we were saying last time because we as women are so trained and socialized into all of that caretaking and you know, so we carry all of these, you know, we carry what our children and grandchildren and neighbors

Eva: And elders

Elana: And elders. We just we carry it all. And so you know when a woman walks into that room with the negotiating table, she's carrying lots of stories and lots of perspectives that until then are unseen.

Eva: Unseen, uncared for, you know

Elana: Exactly. Unrecognized. Unacknowledged.

Eva: Yeah yeah and needs as well right that that just are invisible otherwise.

Stav: So in in these joint emergency relief centers one of the things that we didn't think about handing out was blankets. Until the women were saying, "Look a child of ours was burnt last night because we don't have access to electricity and it's the middle of winter and we have fireplace in the middle of our homes. We need blankets." And that wasn't something that was generally being provided. And the these kind of very small needs that on a larger scale in society have huge implications are what we need to see our leaders listening to and taking into consideration.

Elana: Yeah. I want to also say something else about that motherhood grandmotherhood thing. Is that I feel like as a mother and grandmother I feel like something about war works to disempower us. To like try to make us passive. Like we're supposed to be the ones who stay back and just sort of accept passively what the big important people are deciding for us. It really relegates us to the the one who does the laundry, the one who does the cooking the one who feeds the fighters. You know our children, our sons, are out there fighting and our job is to make sure they're well-fed. Not to think. Our job is not to think about anything. I belong to I belong to a whole bunch of different mother groups and there's a whole series of mothers of soldier groups of mothers who are trying really hard to end this war. And to be a mother of a soldier ending the war is a big taboo. You know the mothers of the soldiers are supposed to be quiet!

Eva: And supportive.

Elana: And supportive. And sort of docile, subservient. And so it's what's interesting, what comes up a lot in these groups is, whenever there's media interest or something and they say, "Oh does anybody want to be interviewed?" they're always like, "No no no no I can't say these things out loud because then my son might hear it." And stuff like that. Even this, even me saying it here, I'm also worried about my kids hearing it okay? Because my job as the mother grandmother is to support. Do the laundry, do the cooking, you know

Eva: And support

Elana: And support. And it reminds me of -- I brought this book with me because I was thinking about it yesterday. There this book I have called Women at the Window. It's a midrash book. It's a book about commentaries on biblical texts. And the "women at the window" image comes from the battle, the story of Deborah. You know Deborah was the judge and she led -- she was the only woman leader in all of Israel's history, in of all Biblical history, she was the only one who led all of Israel. And she led this war against the Canaanites. And then after that there was peace for 40 years but it's considered this feminist tale because she's actually fighter-warrior. Then there's Yael who's also another woman who shown. And then she has a song. There's a song afterwards and in the song she mentions Sisera''s mother. And Sisera was the enemy general. And it talks about Sisera's mother waiting by the window for Sisera to come back. And of course Sisera didn't come back because Yael killed him with this you know the peg to the head. It's a dramatic famous story and a story of women doing all kinds of things including fighting. Yes? But in this book, [Nehama Aschkenasy. "Woman at the Window: Biblical Tales of Oppression and Escape"] the book is like 25 year old already, but this image keeps coming to my head of the woman at the window, as this sort of like, she talks about it as this passive thing. So can I read a little passage from this? Would that be interesting to you? It's about Sisera's mother. She says:

[reading]

"Sisera's mother, woman at the window. is by necessity a conformist, occupying the position of the spectator assigned to her by the male community. By acquiescing to her position at the window she helps uphold a system in which men run public life engage in the affairs of the world and make decisions that would inevitably affect her own life and fate. At the same time she is eagerly looking out hoping to participate in the lives of men, if only vicariously. Her far off gaze means that the center of her existence is not the room in which she turns her back but the remote unattainable and exciting male arena."

Eva: Wow. That's internalized patriarchy for you.

Elana: Yeah exactly totally.

Eva: You know I always thought that it was so funny that at the UN we were working hard to include more women in the military, versus stopping the military. It was just like, engaging more women in peacekeeping missions in positions

Elana: That's a big feminist dilemma in Israel. Israeli feminists argue about this -- about whether or not we should be trying to equalize gender in the military, or taking a whole different strategy and getting women to lead to a whole different path.

Eva: So I think that's a great sentence to end with and and invite someone that would dive deep with us on this. Can we create a woman agenda? Or peace? And I think that's what made the Liberian woman movement win as well as the Irish women movement win. It's a woman agenda for peace.

Elana: A different agenda. It's changing the rules

Eva: Changing the rules. Expanding the box and managing infinite possibilities.

Elana: So before we end I want to um introduce one last thing, which is I want to end with one last thing which is -- I think the perfect perfect thing to end with here which is that Rachel Polin Goldberg she's the mother of hostage Hersh Polin Goldberg Goldberg, she wrote a poem and the poem is called "To all the men -- To all the boys in the room." To all the boys in the room. Speaking of ways that by the way women are affected by the war there's also the is issue of hostages. And you know they've been there for nine months and they've experienced sexual assault. So that is but, yeah okay. Enough said. But we know what that means. So she's very concerned about that I've heard her speak a whole bunch of times and she's always saying, you know what is happening to those women being held hostage. So anyway, so she's a big believer in the idea that the negotiating room should be filled with mothers. Mothers from all sides. She says if mothers would be in the room this would all have been over a long time ago. So anyway so she has this poem so we're going to leave with a link to the poem and um we're going to sign off.

[Clip from Tiktok]

[Rachel Polin Goldberg speaking at a rally]: I've written a poem. It is called "To the boys in the room".

TO the boys in the room. There are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent civilians suffering terribly in Gaza.

But I only know one of them.

He and I share the same DNA and we are both left-handed.

Oh now only one of us is left-handed.

And he lived and grew inside of me for 9 months many moons ago.

To the boys in the room, every folk tail begins with the four words "Once Upon a Time". And every deal or negotiation that you think of crafting should begin with one word: "hostages".

To the boys in the room to motivate and incentivize you, you will now be asked to hand over one of your family members. Your spouse, your father, your sister, your son, your brother, your daughter, your mother, your grandfather. If he has already passed on to the next world we will supply you with a shovel.

We will then hold on to your beloved one and treat them exactly as our beloved have been treated until you come up with a plan for how to get these people back.And I reckon it will take you less than 184 days.

To the boys in the room Our Father Who Art in Heaven call him by any name you wish. He will be home soon and boys just you wait till your father gets home.

[applause]

[end clip]

All: Thank you so much.

Elana: Thank you Eva it's always really great chatting with you and it was great chatting with you Stav and hearing all your amazing insights and about the work of Itach-Maaki and keep up the great work.

Stav: Thank you so much for having me and this is honestly I'm really excited to hear all of this podcast when it comes out. I think it's going to be fascinating and these are exactly the kinds of conversations that we need to be havin.

Eva: Yeah heart conversations with big heart

Elana: I love that yeah. Okay. bye for now

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