Hello all,
I am writing to you because your names appear on the list of lecturers at a conference due on May 30 this year, entitled " Pink Crime" and dealing with the phenomenon of crimes committed by women. Definitely a serious issue, well deserving of being seriously discussed by the practitioners of criminology. I would like, however, to draw your attention to the fact that the conference will take place at the institute known as the "University Center of Samaria", located at the Israeli settlement of Ariel on the West Bank.
It is important to note that deliberations taking place at such a location, under the auspices of such an institution, are not – and cannot be – a "purely academic" event, free of political connotations. The settlement of Ariel is in an Occupied Territory under the rule of a military governor. It is not part of Israel - not according to Israeli law, since no government has ever annexed it, and certainly not under International Law. The creation and maintenance of the settlements, including Ariel, is a grave violation of International Law, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its citizens to the Occupied Territory. This, in addition to the settlements being the main obstacle blocking Israel from reaching peace with its Palestinian neighbors.
Criminology is an academic discipline designed to systematically and scientifically investigate phenomena of crime (crime by women in this specific case.) There is a great irony and an irresolvable contradiction involved in the holding of a Criminology conference at a location and under circumstances which make the conference itself an accessory to crime.
The settlers in general, and those at Ariel in particular, make great efforts to provide for themselves a "respectable" and "legitimate" image. The creation of an academic institution in Ariel, and the inviting of lecturers such as yourself to speak at academic conferences, is a significant part of this effort.
Should you go through with lecturing at the Ariel conference, in spite of the above arguments, may I suggest that you devote a few words at the beginning of your lecture to the contradiction between the goals of the conference, designed to reduce the effects of crime in human society, and the severe violation of International Law constituted by the conference's location.
Sincerely Yours, etc.
Gil Ronen's reply:
Hello Mr. Schloessinger,
Thank you for your e-mail. It has been a true source of inspiration.
The reason I am fascinated by your missive - which I realize you likely copy-pasted from a template suggested by Gush Shalom - is that I find that my view of the significance of the upcoming conference is a mirror-image of yours.
Your letter hints at a certain irony in the holding of a criminologists' conference that you believe constitutes a crime in and of itself, because of its location in disputed territory. I, however, see the location as precisely what makes it possible to hold the important conference, and to fight the criminal elements that have been occupying the fields of criminology and sociology for decades!
In the "seam zone" between sociology and criminology, you see, there is an important field referred to as Partner Violence, or Domestic Violence. This field has, unfortunately, been a highly politicized one since its inception. From day one, it seems, this academic territory has been occupied brutally by the soldiers of the "New Left" in the West, who raised the flags of gender Marxism and racial Marxism in the 1960s after their defeat on the field of class Marxism (communism).
Academicians who entered the field with pure hearts, driven by intellectual curiosity and a desire to improve society, belatedly realized that they were not free to study what piqued their interest, much less to publish their findings. Rather, as the Occupying Force made clear, they were only allowed to conduct "research" that served the "correct" side in the global Gender War. This meant that all studies had to be conceived and conducted in ways that would yield results that "proved" that:
An Evil Patriarchy has ruled the Western world since time immemorial.
The Evil Patriarchy conceived Mosaic religion and uses it to perpetuate its evil reign.
The Evil Patriarchy has always connived to take away women's rights and turn women into chattel.
"Within the family [the husband] is the bourgeois and the wife represents the proletariat." (Engels, Origins of the Family, Chapter 2, Part 4: link).
Men endanger women, they do not protect them. Men make women poor, they do not provide for them.
The connection between man and woman is not based on courtship, love and passion, but on harassment, exploitation and rape.
Married life is not based on a spirit of mutual sacrifice and cooperation. Rather, it is an oppressive institution in which violence is applied on a regular basis, by the husband/father against his wife and children.
Etc.
Those who deign to stray from these directives are denied funding for their studies, as Prof. Murray Straus, arguably the top researcher in the field of PV, has stated on many occasions (see the introduction to his 2007 study on Dominance and Symmetry in Partner Violence: link).
The gender war that these faux-studies serve to justify is ongoing and we are all its victims, as societies, as members of families and as individuals. However, that is not the subject of this letter.
Now, we all know that there is a long-standing divide between Right and Left in Israel, as regards the legitimacy of territories liberated in 1948 and 1967. The Left claims to believe that territory liberated in 1948 is legitimately Israeli, while territory liberated 19 years later does not legally belong to Israel.
This viewpoint has been contested and (in my opinion) refuted by worthy jurists. You are welcome to read one such refutation here (link).
The interesting thing, in my view, is that the Left's hostility toward Ariel has had the unintended, but unavoidable, consequence of loosening the Left's grip on the research that is done there, and weakening the Left's ability to apply its censorship. In fact, non-leftist academicians' courageous insistence on the establishment of Zionist academic institutes like the Ariel University Center in Judea and Samaria has produced an opportunity for an academic rebellion against the Left's iron-clad occupation of certain fields of study.
The upcoming conference vividly illustrates this point. To my awareness, the subject of female criminality, and especially female violence against children and men, has yet to be discussed openly and freely in any Western institution of learning in our generation. The conference in Ariel is one of the first conferences that I am aware of in which those in attendance will receive information regarding the politicization of their field, and be encouraged to rid themselves of this yoke.
Come to think of it, thanks to the liberation of Judea and Samaria by Israel's victorious army in 1967, academicians will, on May 30, be able to sit in a Marx-free auditorium, inside a Marx-free institute, and be empowered to rebel against the neo-Marxist Occupation of their chosen field of study.
When one considers the disproportionate role Jews play in the world of academic discovery, it is only fitting that a victory by a Jewish army can make possible - 44 years later - a victory for the forces of sanity, truth and liberty within the academic world.
Given the specific nature of the academic dispute involved, one would not be guilty of hyperbole if one called it a victory for love.
Hoping to see you at Ariel,
Gil Ronen
Journalist