Front Lines

Ms.-Managed?

Ms. magazine's rejection of pro-Israel
ad elicits strong Jewish response.

YOU ARE INVITED

to

Sue Fishkoff
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

San Francisco

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he American Jewish Congress
is ramping up its protest
against Ms. magazine's rejec-
tion of its pro-Israel advertisement.
In a campaign launched several
weeks ago, AJCongress urged people
to write, call or e-mail the prominent
feminist publication to "register your
complaint at their anti-Israel bias!'
It also has enlisted the support of
high-powered Jewish feminist speakers.
The ad in question features photos
of three prominent Israeli women
leaders and the phrase "This is Israel!'
AJCongress leaders claim Ms. reject-
ed the ad because of the magazine's
bias against Israel — a charge the
magazine's execu-
tive editor hotly
denied. "We only
take mission-
driven advertise-
ments," Katherine
Spillar said.
"Because two
of the women
were from the same political party,
we understood it as political endorse-
ment," she said. Ms. "does not get
involved in the domestic politics" of
other countries.
AJCongress President Richard
Gordon called that argument "spe-
cious:' noting that in any parliamen-
tary democracy, the foreign minister
and parliament leader are going to be
from the same party.
Gordon also noted that none of the
women is running for office, and the
ad does not suggest support for either
of their parties.
He pointed out that Ms. ran a cover
story about Jordan's Queen Noor in
2003, and a story in its most recent
issue about Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.,
the speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives, under the headline
"This is What a Speaker Looks Like."
Gordon said the only difference
he sees between Pelosi and the three
women featured in the AJCongress ad
is that Pelosi is not Israeli.

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January 31 * 2008

`Ms. magazine obviously is trying
to create a legal fiction after the fact
to cover their bias at the time of the
incident:' he said.
Spillar said that it is "unfair and
untrue" to allege that Ms. magazine is
anti-Israel. She said the magazine is
running a two-page profile of Israeli
Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni,
one of the three leaders pictured in
the AJCongress ad, in its Winter 2008
issue, which hit newsstands this week.
In a faxed statement, Spillar wrote
that the magazine has covered the
Israeli feminist movement and the
country's women leaders in 11 articles
in its past 16 issues.
But the AJCongress ad was "incon-
sistent" with the Ms. policy of not
being politically partisan, and the slo-
gan "This is Israel" in the ad "implied
that women in Israel hold equal posi-
tions of power with
men:' whereas "Israel,
like every other coun-
try, has far to go to
reach equality for
women."
Spillar said she
"puts the U.S. in the
same category as
Israel" in terms of having far to go to
achieve full gender equality. But the
AJCongress ad "was almost a country
ad, and we don't take country ads."
Harriet Kurlander, the director of
AJCongress's Commission for Women's
Empowerment, said when she origi-
nally tried to place the ad a magazine
representative told her that the maga-
zine "would love to have an ad from
you on women's empowerment or
reproductive freedom, but not on this."
In other conversations with maga-
zine staff members, Kurlander said
she was told that publishing the ad
would "set off a firestorm."
Kurlander said Ms. should admit its
"cover-up" and "simply print the ad."
Among the Jewish feminists speak-
ing out on the issue is Blu Greenberg,
founding president of the Jewish
Orthodox Feminist Alliance. She said
that Ms. is "aligning itself with the
political far left that wants to delegiti-
mize Israel altogether on the stage of
world opinion." ❑