On The Bookshelf

Blame On Her

oppressing Palestinian women.
She seesIsraeli male dominance and
attitudes of brutality as compensation
for the historical weakness of Jews,
and she catalogs abuses by soldiers and
ordinary citizens.
Although her assertions are heavily
footnoted, they are often referenced to
books by other authors, so the reader
"I think that each side of the slash
is sometimes left uncertain about orig-
has a lot to do with the other side. It's
inal sources. She says that some of her
an organic analogy, not a conceptual
information comes from conversations
analogy," she says.
and observations during a 1988 visit,
Dworkin, who worked on Scapegoat
her first, to Israel.
for nine years, began thinking about
One of the heartening aspects of
this book while writing her novel
that visit was to encounter many
Mercy, which is about rape. She then
Israeli and Palestinian women working
asked herself, "Where is God during a
together across the conflict.
rape? Is He watching?"
This book is also a call to action.
The 53-year old author linked these
Dworkin's
a believer in "strategic vio-
questions to other questions about the
lence." Women have to learn to fight
nature of suffering she'd been thinking
back, as Jews learned to fight back, she
about for most of her life. She learned
says. "You have to stop the
rapist long before he gets to
your body."
When asked about what's
lost when women take up vio-
lence, she adds, "I've been a
pacifist all my life. There's a
4
,04
difference between being igno-
t4.
I
rant about violence and there-
fore refusing to use it and
Andrea
claiming a moral high ground
Dworkin:
and knowing how to use it
"Perpetrators
and choosing not to."
of violence
Citing Moshe Dayan's state-
against
ment that Israelis can't guard
women feel
every pipeline and stop every
no shame.
murder, but they can make the
Those who
price of an attack so high that
are hurt feel
it's something an enemy
great
&mo o
decides not to do, she says,
shame.'
"The question for me is why
aren't women thinking in these
terms? The failure of the femi-
nist movement to sustain itself
author of Life and Death
is the refusal to look at these
very hard issues."
Echoing the book's epigraph,
"We cannot die, because we are
the question," from Elie Wiesel's
A Beggar in Jerusalem, Dworkin con-
about the Holocaust as a child "in a vis-
cludes her epilogue, "The past 30 years
ceral way" from a relative, a survivor
—
1970 to 2000, the time of the so-
who would have flashbacks of
called second wave of feminism — have
Auschwitz-Birkenau in her presence.
been prologue: The question is, to what?
She notes questions asked by Primo
Answer the question."
Levi and Aharon Appelfeld about why
Dworkin, who grew up in New
it is that Nazi perpetrators feel no
Jersey and attended Hebrew school
shame but the victims do. Similarly,
through her high school years, says
she says, "perpetrators of violence
that she probably would have become
against women feel no shame. Those
a rabbi if it were possible at that time.
who are hurt feel great shame."
"I loved the scholarship and still do,"
Dworkin has harsh criticism for
she says. "Most of the ways I think
Israeli society. She cites examples of
have to do with my Jewish training,
Israeli men oppressing Israeli
the training in reading and interpreta-
women, Israeli men oppressing
tion that I got in Hebrew school." 0
Palestinian women, Palestinian men

In her latest book, feminist author Andrea Dworkin
illustrates how women are the ultimate scapegoats.

SANDEE BRAWARS KY

Special to the Jewish News

D

rawing her title from the
ancient custom of sacrificing
two goats — one killed as
an offering to God and the
other turned loose in the wilderness, a
carrier of the sins of the group — fem-
inist critic Andrea Dworkin examines
centuries of hatred toward Jews and
toward women in Scapegoat: The Jews,
Israel, and Women's Liberation (Free
Press; $28). "Murder and exile are the
two paradigmatic fates of
scapegoats," she writes.
The author of 11 fiction
and nonfiction works includ-
ing Pornography and Life and
Death, Dworkin parallels
oppression and violence
toward Jews and toward
women throughout history,
including the time of the
Inquisition, the Holocaust
and present times, too.
For Dworkin, being hated
frames one's identity "Hating
Jews," she writes, "may be
described as racism without
color." In her view, women are
the ultimate scapegoats, treat-
ed as such even by others who
are themselves scapegoats.
In an interview with the
Jewish News, she asserts that
"women are almost always the
internal enemy in a society,
inside the boundary of what-
ever the ethnic group is."
Scapegoat is an insightful,
passionate and controversial
book by someone who has
read widely and feels much pain, per-
sonal as well as communal, about
these issues. The book is skillfully
written, although sometimes difficult
to read because of the litany of cruel-
ties it presents.
Extensively referenced, Dworkin cites
the work of hundreds of scholars, politi-
cians, Holocaust survivors, novelists and
others, with 32 pages of notes and a 47-
page bibliography at the back.
The book's chapters are topical pair-
ings relating to acts of aggression:
pogrom/rape, hate literature/pornogra-
phy, Zionism/women's liberation and
others.

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