A student's paper critical of the lack of Military rapes by IDF personal won a Hebrew University Teachers' Committee prize. The author asserts the lack of military rape is politically motivated. The lack of such behavior is not rooted in the soliders' sense of morality, humanity or decency, rather to reinforce a dehumanized image of Arabs. True media has a way of distorting a story but academics granting a prize for a paper that takes the ostensible position sexual violence is a good thing? The student may have come to certain conclusions based on raw data and the like but the implication of self loathing overrides the outrage a crime of gender based violence should kindle. Now it is unclear whether the faculty who granted the prize are of high enough rank to be on strike of not either way if this is what passes as serious scholarship maybe the professors should all stay out on strike.
Further this week it was reported that a job applicant was turned down because the prospective hire was Shabbat observant. A shameful episode of discrimination no doubt, but that is only half the story. The job is located in Eretz Yisrael and the position was with the Jewish National Fund. Which Jewish person of a certain age cannot recall the JNF blue box charity box being every Jewish except Shabbat services.To think that not only did the JNF turn down an observant person the hiring executive could not understand what all the fuss was about.
The insensitivity to Jewish values is so profound one almost gets the sense that values and sensibilities have been replaced an absense of common sense and moral vision.
The comfort to take is even if there are real deep divisions within Jewry the nation survives inspite of itself, AMYISRAEL CHAI
