As some readers may have noticed, I’ve been keeping an eye on Israel lately, because it recently came to my attention that the same revolutionary changes to marriage and family law that occurred in the US starting nearly a half-century ago are happening there right now. This is providing a first-hand view of how a few changes to the law can cause a cascading domino effect that plunges society into a hypergamous free-for-all in a very short timeframe.
I can’t say I’m an expert on Israel or Israeli culture, but I am aware that it is a more conservative society than the urban parts of the US in which most American Jews live; in other words, Israel is not just a distant burough of New York City.
However, due to its small size and very close relationship with the Jewish American community, which is arguably a more powerful entity than Israel itself, Israel is more vulnerable to the whims and trends of American society in general than, say, Ireland or Italy. This is why it looks like Israeli men are in for some rough times.
European countries are no picnic for men, but in many regards they are much, much better than the US (I’ll let the British commenters here decide whether they belong in Europe or not in this regard). Child support is not punitive, alimony is very rare, and men are more likely to share physical custody of children. Smearing a husband in court results in little in the way of payoffs — people are, for the most part, expected to work a divorce or separation out without resorting to expensive litigation.
But Israel, as far as I can tell is moving swiftly toward an American-style family law regime by replacing rabbinic courts with civil courts in which all the wonderful features of American law are apparently included. I have no doubt that plenty of enterprising attorneys will be all too happy to lighten their clients’ or their spouses’ wallets in vicious, protracted custody battles.
According to Avri Gilad, a popular Israeli TV host, there has been an explosion of false accusations as of late, probably after the new law allowing women to testify against their husbands in court before divorce went into effect in 2008:
Every day I get e-mails from fathers whose natural right to see their children is denied them by social workers, courts, the police, and what not,” Gilad wrote on his popular Facebook page, which is followed by more than 20,000 people. “They cry out and no one listens – sometimes they are even mocked.
The feminist revolution, which I support wholeheartedly, is felling victims among my brothers, the divorced fathers. In the name of [fighting] thousands of years of discrimination, in the name of an injustice that was done in the past and is done in the present to millions of women in the world, by rapacious men who shame the male sex, the legal systems believe that it is okay to mow down good people, devoted fathers who divorced because they chose to, or because others chose so for them.
I regret to say that there is a fad of submitting false accusations to the police regarding violence, the fear of violence, sexual abuse and other kinds of lies against good, loving and devoted fathers, whose only sin is that they did not get along with the woman with whom they thought they would live forever.
The police report that there is a huge number of strategic false complaints against men, which automatically set in motion a process of distancing the man from his children, transferring his limited meetings with them to contact centers – dingy rooms in the welfare offices – under the watchful eyes of female welfare workers (very busy, underpaid, who get a raw deal themselves) who are usually hostile, and in extreme cases, a complete severing of the connection between the man and his children.”
[Gilad notes that a governmental committee – the Schnitt Committee – has recommended joint parenthood as the default arrangement for divorce in Israel, but its recommendations are not being implemented.]
Almost no lawmaker is dealing with the matter. In private conversations, they admit that they fear the power of the militant women’s organizations. I am not afraid and I say with a clear voice: One evil is not corrected by committing another! Children are not raised by separating them from their fathers…
Sound familiar? This is a script that’s been playing out in the US since the 1970s, first dramatized by Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer way back in 1979.
Sadly, it looks as though Israel’s men have some catching up to do. Avri Gilad declares his support for feminism – a mistake that it took American men decades to correct – perhaps because he is not aware that the evils he addresses above are exactly what feminism is all about. Gloria Steinem herself indicates that absolute power over procreation (she calls it “reproductive freedom”), which includes parenting, is the cornerstone of the feminist temple. What Gilad and others have to keep in mind is that when feminists say “equal,” they don’t mean fair, as too many naive men assume. Feminist equal is an arbitrarily set value, prone to subjective interpretation and never to be defined by men (because that would not be equal).
But maybe there’s hope for Israelis. Unlike Americans, they are not the first to go through this nightmare, so they’ll have plenty of reference material from the get go. Some of the stories coming out of the states might give them some motivation, too. Maybe they are starting see the threat to father’s rights, but that isn’t all that’s at stake: do Israelis relish the idea of home-grown versions of monsters like Kermit Gosnell to implement the “reproductive freedom” envisioned by the likes of Gloria Steinem? How about an integrated army in which coddling and providing for female “soldiers” takes priority over battlefield effectiveness?
For Israelis, the most important question should be:
Can Israel afford feminism?
Personally, I doubt it. The US can’t really afford it, but this is a massive nation. Feminism is already a chronic problem here, but we can sustain a lot of damage before it becomes an existential threat. Israel, on the other hand, is a lot more vulnerable in that regard.
