The Zionist Women's Forum has come out against a demand by leftist women's groups to place Arab women in the Israel Lands Council. A coalition of 16 feminist groups accused the Lands Council of being made up solely of Ashkenazi (European Jewish) men in a press statement Monday, and demanded that Arab and Sephardic women be included in it also.
The ZWF, which says it offers a nationalist alternative to the leftist-dominated feminist women's groups, called upon Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “not to be influenced and misled by organizations that advance their political agenda under a cover of concern for the status of women.” It has begun circulating an online women's petition with the hope of counteracting the leftist groups' initiative.
Attorney Tamar Har-Paz of the ZWF told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew news magazine that the Left's feminist groups “use the status of women as a means of advancing their political views but in reality, their goal is that the State of Israel's lands will be transferred on an ethnic bases. Their aim is to help non-Zionist ethnic elements to take over the lands of the State of Israel.”
"What worries them is not the status of Arab women,” Har-Paz explained, “because most of these groups do not have Arab women in them anyway. If they really cared so much about the representation of Arab women, why don't they fight the Supreme Court, where there is very little representation of Arab women? The reason is clear,” she explained. “The Supreme Court behaves in a way they approve of today and so they have no need of fighting it.”
The ZWF's petition, in the Hebrew language, can be viewed and signed here.