Zionist S & M

The capacity of hack Australian journalists such as Janet Albrechtsen, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan and Paul Sheehan to dodge the bleeding obvious whenever they write about the Middle East never ceases to amaze. Two posts ago, I had to introduce The Australian's Janet Albrechtsen to the bleeding obvious in the form of the 'O' word - occupation (Janet's Dream). The bleeding obvious tells us that occupation, any occupation, is always a crime against humanity, and that it's not only bad for the occupied (the 'bleeding' bit, if you will), but for the occupiers themselves, the ones Janet & Greg & Paul really care for:-

"Israeli men are very emasculated and their identity is based on proving how masculine they are, being on top and squashing everyone below them. They need a release from that, which is why professional dominatrixes are in such high demand here. Israeli men would probably be better off if they knew where their sexual hang ups and fetishes came from. When they seek to be humiliated, belittled, made irresponsible and, ultimately, punished, it shows that they carry a lot of guilt. As an outsider, I can see that a lot of it comes from having been in positions of power in the military over a civilian population. They want to act out being in the position of being a Palestinian. It might mean recreating the exact position that a Palestinian was tied up in. A lot of them have urine fetishes... I think because it's an ultimate symbol of humiliation and it's also something that's done to Palestinians. Getting slapped in the face, being blindfolded, getting yelled at and being penetrated in the ass - that's a really big one because it's a potent symbol of humiliation. Also, having any sort of sharp items pointed against them. You have the connotation of the gun as a phallic object but it can be anything serving as that object whether it's a dildo, their own gun that they brought with them from military service, or the heel of a shoe or a riding crop." (Liad Kantorowicz, Israeli dominatrix, quoted in Arthur Neslen, Occupied Minds: A Journey Through the Israeli Psyche, 2006, p 164)

"These descriptions [by Israeli sex tourists in Thailand] ignore the pain and the humiliation that define prostitution, like the physical and psychological violence prostitutes endure. Pattaya sees a very high incidence of murder and violence, Brucker said. Some of the interviewees even told him about bullying the women as though it were a natural part of the relationship between a tourist and a prostitute. 'You feel that you can do anything', said Eli. 'You come and you do everything, all the things you don't do with your wife out of respect, you let yourself do here. Because here they are like a rag for you. If one doesn't want to do something she can go home. There will be another one within seconds, so you can do whatever you want'. 'We are our head, we have fantasy', said David. 'We want to realise our fantasies, and we can't make them happen at home. With the Thai women you can do anything. You can bang her in the ass, she sucks you off, you can put your penis in her ear, her mouth, her nostril. You can do everything'... Another interviewee... explained to Brucker about the ideological messages he insists on relaying to the prostitutes. 'I give them a lot of Zionism, lots of Zionism. I talk about Israel constantly, about the army, how much I don't like Arabs and that they shouldn't go with Arabs. I tell them I was a paratrooper and that I fought the Arabs who killed my commander. I tell them that in Israel, radical Muslims carry out terror attacks. Somehow it isn't easy to explain it to them, but I try'. Brucker surmises that Israeli sex tourism, like domestic violence and sexist attitudes towards women, is directly connected to service in the IDF... 'You see how we have a culture of personal glorification, of saying that who you are is related to the occupation of the other. This is how people grow, through the subjugation of others. It's possible to see this in the way we don't acknowledge what is happening in Gaza or the failures of the Second Lebanon War. We see these as the result of not finishing the job, because the resistance of the prostitute was too strong. She said there was a limit to how much you can trample on her'." (What do Israeli sex tourists in Thailand really think? Yotam Feldman, Haaretz, 30/11/08)

There you have it: in occupied Palestine, the Palestinians resist being screwed by their Israeli occupiers. How frustrating that must be. Thank God for Thai women...