I suppose the main comment I have is that it is a very strange subject to be selected for a thesis. Whilst I accept that it is a something that others may not have researched, whether it is worthy of research is another matter entirely. It is potentially I guess more of use to other armies in the world where they do have this problem.

My comments on suggested reasons are not based on scientific evidence but just rational thought -

Reasons for not raping.

1. First and foremost rape is a crime and a particularly obscene crime at that.

I am not sure if any other reasons are really needed but if I were forced to add other reasons -

2. Despite the allegations of some, the Israeli army is a very disciplined army
3. Soldiers are too busy protecting the Israeli population from terrorist attacks to have time for such activities.

On a different note we can consider the rape allegations in the Vietnam war. Guenter Lewy shows evidence that some of the anti-American sentiment towards the end of the war in Vietnam arose from poor behaviour by American troops including "raping Vietnamese girls." Explanations for violent crimes include "a relaxation of discipline" and "leadership, racial and drug problems" in the troops. Other motives for crimes including rape and murder include  "the desire to revenge buddies killed," "the stress of continuous combat," weak discipline arising from "ineffective leadership," and "Failure to impose meaningful punishment for not reporting war crimes."

Lewey stresses ineffective leadership. He comments upon a psychiatric study that showed:

"that all of the soldiers who participated in personal violence reported that others in their units did so too. Group pressures, the examples of superiors, 'old-timers' and other important group figures, and the acceptable limits implicitly and explicitly set by each unit appear to have been important in regulating the appearance and degree of violence .... Soldiers who followed the examples of others in violent acts were frequently attempting to gain acceptance in the eyes of comrades they held in esteem or were attempting to to maintain group membership and cohesion."

Of course the US army were not an army of occupation but it is an example of a war where soldiers did commit such crimes. (I suppose I am also commenting upon this as the book is close at hand.)

Source: Guenter Lewy, "America in Vietnam," (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) p. 158, 328, 330, 346

If that is anything to go by then good leadership and discipline would be factors in reducing such crimes - These two factors the Israeli army prides themselves upon.

This is of course away from any comments about Israeli society in general. As Israeli Arabs are exempt from the army it would be interesting to know of the incidents of rape by Israeli Jews not in the army and compare that to incidents of rape of societies of other armies of occupation. If rape by Israeli Jews is also less common than say rape in other countries then factors of society must surely play a part.

Somewhat concerning about this thesis is the comment by  Ami Isseroff:

"She also confuses between rape, which is generally considered an act of aggression, and sexual attraction and normal flirtation. She claims that the border between the two is somehow obscured."

If there is any truth to this statement then this surely is quite absurd.

David,

Where does Isseroff make "jokes and puns about rape"?

Isseroff shows that the right wing journalists have not read the work of Tal Nizan. Be it as it be, he concludes:
“This study was given an award by the Israel sociology association. We can imagine what the others are like. In my most humble opinion, because this paper lacks scientific method or any attempt at objectivity, it is not worthy of a Masters thesis or even an undergraduate seminar work in a scientific discipline. “
Ami Isseroff

Now this is not the first time, that one can earn a masters degree with “faults and contradictions and shoddy and tendentious logic”. I remember the case of Teddy Katz at Haifa University, a protegé of Ilan Pappe, who wrote a paper about an alleged crime of IDF in Tantura. When a commission of Haifa University checked his study, they found it full of mistakes and falshoods
You can find a documentation of this case on
http://www.ee.bgu.ac.il/~censor/katz-directory/

In other words, the Jewish army is to be condemned for not committing crimes.

This is pretty remarkable, almost Kafkaesc.  Ah these Jews they are evil because they are not as bad as others. Antisemitic thinking is always paradoxical, isn't it?

Dov, the highest aspiration of some Israeli university graduates seems to supply antisemites with arguments. There is nothing so silly, that it cannot be used, in order to show how racist Israeli Jews are. Tal Nizan can expect a lot of invitations to Europe to explain her theory. On the other hand, Hebrew University sociology department supplies cabarets with material.

Too bad that such so-called logic doesn’t apply to boycotts of Israeli academics, such that boycotting Israel academics would have the same effect as not boycotting them. Come to think of it, maybe it does.

Anyway, exploiting the issue of rape (!) to score petty rhetorical points and further one’s academic career is repellent.

This kind of allegorical reading of IDF action, or rather inaction in this case, belongs in a literature class, Dov, Karl, and not in a Sociological study.

As a student of literature I could see someone writing a paper like this one about a story where a company of soldiers refuses bodily contact with the enemy.  In real life situations though especially where soldiers are counseled to respect the social taboos of Muslims society the lack of violations should be honored and not condemned.

I realize that Sociology Departments are not in the business of honoring soldiers but they should not be in the shabby business of mocking them for not exercising a droit de Signor approach to combat.

It's hard to see how this argument, (which I agree with Mr. Pfeifer, is rooted in Jew hatred of some sort), can be gainfully exploited by the boycotters and other ilks. Wouldn't it sound just too insane: Let's boycott Israeli academia for not working to counter the Jewish proscription over raping your enemy's daughters?

I don't know what David Hirsh is thinking about, taking this thesis in any measure of seriousness and making it a matter of Right versus Left. If anything, it shows the absurd lengths to which the Left will go in trying to cast an ominous shadow over anything Israeli, so that even a good and moral behaviour is seen as inherently racist, or whatever.

Please note that the rationale provided in this thesis is about the imaginary baby not being JEWISH. So it can hardly be said to be an anti-Zionist or anti-Israeli argument.

It's just too bizarre. Unless I'm missing a whole layer of unbeatable logic and cognition.

Noga it seems to me that you have developed such a personalized dislike and distrust of me that it leads you to mis-read and then to mis-represent much of what I say.

For example, I link to Ami Iseroff’s critique of this paper about rape and the IDF, although with a couple of caveats, and your response is to say on your blog: “Engage seems to be taking this paper and its thesis seriously…”  I think the paper demonstrates the no-win standards that are set up for Israel.  I link to the best critique I can find of the paper – and you assume it is not because I take the critique seriously but because I take the paper seriously.  

For example, I critique those right-wingers who traduce Sari Nusseibeh, and who denounce him as an antisemite.  I link to your own blog because what you say is useful and important.  And you fixate not on our fundamental agreement but on my use of the word “contempt”.  I do believe that calls to boycott Nusseibeh and Al Quds – in the context of the fight against the academic boycott campaign – are contemptible.  You might choose a different word.  But why launch into an attack on Engage because of a choice of word?  

For example, your response to my Working Paper was extra-ordinarily pre-judged.  You couldn’t manage to read the whole thing, you said, but you nevertheless wrote that Hirsh “tacitly accepts, through his use of language, the terms and sentiments motivating the boycotters.”  You wrote this why?   Because you understood me to have written that “a genocidal manifesto becomes a “criticism” of Zionism.”  If you can’t get through the whole text, if you believe that it is too “sprawling” and “meandering” – if you believe that I am “so afraid of making … judgments” then just search the word “Hamas” – to find out what I think of Hamas.

It is the first time I have been accused of being afraid of making clear judgments.  Usually I am accused of the opposite - of being too forthright, of making easy judgments, of denouncing people for antisemitism on flimsy evidence.

I don’t know where your personal contempt towards me comes from Noga,  but I can tell you that it often leads you to an absurdist mis-reading of what I write.

In recent years IDF soldiers and commanders are demonized time and over in the Israeli media. A famous incident is that of General Aviv Kokhavi who couldn't come to the UK to participate in some sort of military studies, because he had been accused by Neve Gordon from BGU in conducting war crimes in Gaza. If Kokhavi lands in the UK people like Daniel Machover can arrange his arrest and he would have to waste his time on legal battles instead of studying.

Defenders of the IDF claim that in comparison with other armies in the world it has higher moral standards. The lack of rape is certainly brought as an example. The paper of Nitzan is designed to deal with this "problem": if the absence of rape is a result of some pernicious racist policy then it is not much of a defense. It seems to me that the paper was awarded the prize for expressing the right political opinion, and not for its scholarship. A shame.

BTW, as far as I know, British soldiers were not accused of raping Palestinian women. What does it prove about British government policies at that time? After all such accusations have been raised against them in Kenya and India.

Tohar haneshek
Having been myself a member of Palmach from March 15, 1946 and a soldier of IDF until 1.1.1950 I have been also "brainwashed" by the Zionists, not to rape, not to steal and if possible not to kill civilians or prisoners. That was called "Tohar haneshek". Some Israeli academics found years later out, what was obvious to everybody in the field, that not all those "brainwashed" respected the ethical code. Those academics earned outside Israel recognition as “courageous” scientists, as if one needs courage in Israel to describe history as it was. I remember I was still a soldier of IDF when I read the story of Jishar in 1949 about soldiers occupying an Arab village, in which the Arab refugees were the good ones and the soldiers of IDF were described as brutes.
In autumn 1948 I was among the soldiers occupying Beer Sheva. I saw soldiers throwing furniture of Arabs out of the window and yes; there was one soldier who tried to rape a Christian Arab girl. However the MPs arrested him on the spot. I was present at the military court session 1949 in Tel Litvinsky (Now Tel Nof) where the fellow was condemned to six years hard labour.

Sociologists
In 1979 – I was 51 years old – just by chance I met in Budapest some sociologists, who were opposed to the regime. By informing me about the real situation of society they opened my eyes. One of them Zoltan Zsille, told me the story, how he was charged to organise a conference about the state of Hungarian industry. The lecturers were asked to contribute a synopsis of their lecture. When somebody in the party leadership read them, it was decided to abolish the conference. Zsille was expelled from the party and lost his job.
Of course Zsille and his friends were not writing their articles based on their prejudices about society, but based on the facts and the real situation of their society.
So I had the privilege to see, how serious scientists work. Some of the post-Zionist academics – not all of them – are charlatans who compensate their ignorance or laziness by catering for the enemies of Israel and its people. It is a shame that this can go on. However it is also a proof, how democratic Israel is.

Journalism
I am now not so sure that Ami Isseroff’s criticism of the right wing journalists is entirely justified. For one cannot or should not blame a journalist, for translating the special language, scientists and charlatans use, into ordinary language that anyone can understand. Let me give you an example. I have printed the 163 pages of “Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections” and read this excellent paper of David Hirsh written for the Yale Initiative for the interdisciplinary study of Antisemitism. Having read before a lot of sociological material, I understood what he has written. The problem for the journalist, who wants to use it, is, that he must be very careful, when quoting, because so much of this work is written in a language appropriate for sociology.
Now if an Israeli sociologists is writing about the growing difference between the poor and the rich people in Israel, no rightwing journalist can make fun of it, for this is a sad fact of life. But what Tal Nizan has written is inviting sarcasm and satire. Whatever the mistakes of the rightwing journalists, one thing seems sure, without them writing about subject matter, we would not have known about it.

On the same subject, journalist Sara Daniel, the daughter of the founder of the left wing Nouvel Observateur weekly, Jean Daniel Bensaïd, also has a view on the subject.  She wrote on the 8 November 2001 issue (No. 1931) of the magazine that Palestinian women were raped by Israeli soldiers and then were systematically murdered by their own families as this was their way of dealing with "honour crimes".  She added that the such rapes were war crimes because the soldiers knew that by raping the women they were deliberately serving them with a death sentence.  

I do not know if Sara Daniel wrote that this practice was widespread or not. Her piece was widely viewed as a shoddy and nasty piece journalism.  

David:

I harbour, or express, no personal contempt for you. I could never express that kind of corrosive sterile emotion to someone as dedicated and well-meaning as you. I actually think very highly of you, and have said so numerous times. In fact, if I didn't appreciate your work on Engage and your dedication to it, or your paper, I wouldn't offer any critique at all.

Yet you seem to be advocating "contempt" as a desirable position and did not see fit to change the title of the thread about Sari Nusseibeh. You express contempt for my views when you refuse, on a rather eccentric and uneven basis, to post them. I saw published here others' comments that contain ad homs and derision for views that deviate from the "formal line" which you tried to set, with some temper, a few months ago (you may remember the post I'm referring to).  At the same time, comments were allowed that contained deliberate taunts and explicit calls for "go away" (for example, the certain poster who continually misspelled with some deliberation another poster's name, comes to mind).

As for your paper, since you seem so sensitive to criticism that offers less than a wholesale endorsement, I'll refrain from voicing my views here. Just remember that this is about the issues, not about you, personally.

Let me wish you much success in 2008.

Noga

I believe that this NY Times article is germane to this discussion about IDF conduct:

"Israeli Army, a National Melting Pot, Faces New Challenges in Training Officers" By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: December 31, 2007


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/world/middleeast/31israel.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&ref=world&oref=slogin


Augean Stables' gloss on the article is also pertinent:


http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2007/12/31/access-to-officers-school-has-positive-result-for-idf/#more-1146

"Access to Officer’s School Has Positive Result for IDF"

I remember once watching an anguished scene at a "flying" checkpoint, where nervous soldiers were searching people, and the young women were all walking around, in circles, extremely anxious because there was no female soldier there to check them. it's a big deal for their sense of modesty.

Unless I have failed to read the comments above closely enough, I suspect that one criticism of Tal Nizan has yet to be made, and it concerns poor (social) scientific technique. She is quoted as suggesting in her own abstract to her thesis that the levels of rape by IDF soldiers of Palestinian women in the West Bank may be low because these women (and presumably the men as well) are somehow "dehumanised" in the eyes of the IDF (and all/most other Israelies as well, given the general cross representation of the Israeli population through conscription?). The overwhelming majority of sociologists (and historians) will affirm that dehumanising a population you are fighting against/occupying leads to _higher_, not lower, levels of brutality against them. It would appear that memories of the actions of the Germans (_not_ just members of the Nazi party and the SS) against the Jews of Europe and Russian prisoners-of-war and Russian civilians are extremely short.

Or perhaps those commenting above are too polite to suggest that there is an implicit (or maybe even explicit) comparison to be drawn between Israel and its occupation of the West Bank and the Nazis - this time by certain Israelis.

As those above have noted, it makes much more sense, both common and sociological, to assume (as potentially testable hypotheseses) that the low levels of rape are due to one or more of the following: high levels of discipline, reinforced by a rigorous military judicial system; a high moral code amongst Israeli males as a whole towards women - women too have human rights; a generalised view of the "occupied" as human beings, with exceptions for those who wilfully (in the eyes of the occupiers) attack them, and therefore generalised "proper" treatment of them; and/or a desire to live in peace, and therefore a wish not to antagonise the occupied population beyond what is "necessary" to maintain the occupation until some solution is found.

I am relying, as are many of us, on either Isserling's translation being accurate, and/or those with adequate Hebrew that his translation isn't wilful, not being able to read the original.

I agree with Brian Goldfarb's well reasoned post.

I too found the premisses on which Tal NIzan's argument rests wanting. Rape as social scientists, never tire of telling us, is not a crime of passion it's a crime of violence and this being the case it can't be that the absence of rape is a sign that the Palestinian women have been "dehumanized."

Hence Brian's views make a lot of sense to me.

brian, about the third paragraph in your post -- some of the things you cite as working to prevent sex crimes from occurring -- discipline, "rigorous military judicial system, " -- if it's true those are preventing sex crimes, is that somehow different from preventing other types of abuses; should they not be equally as effective in helping to prevent other abuses from taking place -- I'm reminded specifically of this B'tselem report:

http://www.btselem.org/English/Publications/Summaries/200203_Trigger_Happy.asp

No army is perfect. Imagine Fred, you would be a 19 year old conscript and they would post you at a roadblock. Now if you are too "liberal" it can cost the lives of dozens of citizens. If you are too careful, B tselem could tell the world, how trigger-happy some Israeli soldiers are.

The Middle East is not Europe. Take for instance the fact, that Israeli soldiers are taken as hostages and no Red Cross envoy can visit them. There is no B tselem on the Arab side, condemning those who hold the Israeli soldiers. And the antizionists who are so vocal when condemning Israel are as a rule quiet when Israelis are victims.

There is a steady Arab propaganda describing the Israeli Army as brutal killers of children. Lets remember when  “brutal Israeli occupiers” allegedly killed a young Palestinian boy named Mohammad al Dura as he crouched for cover near his panicked father.
Within hours, virtually every television station in the world had played and replayed the now-famous tape of that tragic scene. To this day, the Al Dura image continues to proliferate throughout the Muslim world, in everything from postage stamps, billboards and T-shirts to memorials, films and television shows.
For the Palestinians, it has been a PR bonanza – the money shot that says it all in one second: Helpless victim of violent oppressor.
There is overwhelming evidence that the whole thing was staged; but perhaps the most chilling thing was the edited French newscast that cobbled together all these staged scenes, creating the impression that the Israelis killed a helpless child.
Philippe Karsenty accused the French TV station to have produced a hoax. He was condemned for libel.  Now in his appeal, which began in November 2007, the evidence of a hoax has been gushing out, and the number of his supporters is growing. It helps that his accusers in court have been anything but forthcoming, producing, for example, 18 minutes of original footage instead of the 27 the Arab cameraman swore he shot.

Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab woman. Even that is taken as pretext, to criticise IDF of being racist. Yes IDF is not perfect. But on the whole it is trying its level best, to defend the citizens and to show humanity in a part of the world, where humanitarian behaviour is understood by the enemies of Israel to be weakness

fred, Karl has provided the answer to your comment, but I will also respond, as the writer of the original comment.

I was suggesting these, hopefully testable, hypotheses _only_ in response to the reported comment by Nizan in her own abstract to her Masters thesis, concerning the incidence, apparently low, of rape of Palestinian women by serving members of the IDF being due to the "brutalizing" of them by the Israelis.

I made no mention of other elements of the occupation of the West Bank, as a reasonably careful reading of my comment would have shown. These are _hypotheses_, not claims as being "facts on the ground". They may well be proven wrong, should anyone consider them worthy of testing (or have the funds to go out and test them).

The only claim I made that could be seen as factual is the argument, held as straightforward by the vast majority of sociologists and historians, that when a population is brutalised by attackers or occupiers (or seen as less than fully human by this group) then rates of, eg, rape are high, compared with "normal" peacetime levels of this crime.

I fail to see what the B'tselem report has to do with this. Note that I am _not_ rejecting or dismissing the report in any way whatsoever, just querying its relevance to this discussion.

I brought up the B'tselem report because it belies the idea of discipline (in this case, open fire regulations) preventing unlawful firing.

You attributed discipline as being one of the things keeping rape from occurring.

My question was quite speculative. If discipline breaks down in terms of unlawful firing to the point B'tselem writes a report about it, then why should discipline be expected to prevent rape.

i'm not trying to play gotcha or be difficult. maybe this is some kind of red herring, i dont know.

Fred, here we go again. Try to understand the difference. A 19-year-old boy has to check people at a roadblock. One of those to be checked makes a sudden move. The soldier believes it is a knife he has seen and shoots. But it was not a knife, it was a mobil phone. Or imagine the other case. A soldier perceives at a roadblock a fellow with something in his hand, he believes that it is a mobil phone. Unfortunately it was a knife, and the fellow is stabbing him.
Those are real situations. The soldier has his standing orders, and he knows in principle, when to shoot, and when not to shoot. But in practice a mistake can cost the life of the soldier. And there are examples, when Israeli soldiers died, because they were too trusting.
The difference between being trigger happy and raping is very big. In the first case it can be fear of being killed, in the second it is the moral internalised, that one does not rape.

No fred, I _hypothesised_ the question of discipline, etc. That is a _huge_ distinction from an _attribution_. If you are aware of research or reports that impacts directly on the issue in question, rather than on a "fire" policy, let's hear it. You appear to be trying to collapse the distinction between a soldier or soldiers opening fire in a situation in which he or they perceive themselves, rightly or wrongly according to a mythical objective outside observer, as being under an imminent threat with the issue _actually_ under discussion: the apparently low level of rape of Palestinian women by members of the IDF on active duty on the West Bank. This comparison is  presumably with some expected level, given levels of rape inflicted on occupied populations in other situations (the former Yugoslavia as it was breaking up? Darfur? etc).

Your intervention would seem to be an attempt to obfuscate the debate by bringing in extraneous factors such as "fire" policies.

Once again, Karl has made the ppoint. What remains unclear is why you refuse to accept the distinction he and I are trying to make.

Brian, Karl: Thanks for your points. Again, as I stated about not purposely trying to throw in a "red herring," I wasn't out to obfuscate on this; it was more something I wanted clarified as to whether or not it was relevant, and I think Karl has now demonstrated well why it wasn't a relevant point, especially with his last two sentences. Sorry if it seemed like I was trying to be difficult, I was just thinking aloud, albiet poorly and not carefully, as it's now clear to me.

Karl, while you're here, I have another question for you, a bit off-topic, kind of related to the Kuntzel book, actually. Are you familiar with Martin Lee's work, "The Beast Reawakens," about the postwar fascist international, specifically Otto Skorzeny and Ernst Remer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_Reawakens

Please reply on the Kuntzel thread, as I believe Lee's work is at least tangentially relevant to Kuntzel's.

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1573

Fred, I am sorry not to know the book you mentioned. Kuentzels book is very important. A few months ago another  very important book the biography of Hadj Amin el Husseini by Klaus Gensicke was republished in German.
I remember 1948 on the Arab side, former Bosnian and Croatian SS-men fought and even some German POW who escaped from their camps in Egypt.