Castigated for displaying humanity as ’empathy with the enemy’: Israeli anchorwomen
Israeli Channel 2 anchorwoman, Yonit Levy, has recently been castigated by Israeli viewers and from within her network for her “anti-Zionist” views and for “weakening national morale” by expressing any sort of humanity, such as in the following statement: “It’s hard to convince the world that the war is justified when we have one person dead and the Palestinian nation has 350 dead.” A petition that started to circulate on Dec 31st against the anchor accused her of “raising her eyebrows sarcastically over IDF actions, and furrowing them sympathetically over the trauma suffered by innocent Palestinians.”
Another Israeli anchorwoman, Channel 10’s Oshrat Kotler–laughably described as “militant feminist” by this piece–reportedly used her television platform to call for negotiations with Hamas “before we sacrifice hundreds of victims on the altar of Israeli masculinity.”
Quite. Livni, like Margaret Thatcher, is just as captive to this strain of militant hegemonic masculinity, to use John Connell’s distinction and separation of broader masculine identity from ‘hegemonic masculinity’. One could hardly fail to grasp that, apart from Israeli elections, the effective emasculation of the IDF by Hezbollah underlies the official Israeli “restoring deterrence” rationales for its ongoing assault and genocide.
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