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protest rebellion and even crime. The power conferred by motherhood and the
romanticization of its calling, camouflages women’s impotence as citizens. This
is particularly true in a society like Israel which glorifies motherhood as a ‘public
role’ to serve the national goals. As bearers of children, women are entrusted
with the biological and social reproduction of the national collective (Berkovitch,
1997). ‘The unique mission of the woman, the mission of motherhood – there is
no greater mission than that in life’, declared the pronounced first prime
minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, in 1949, in a debate about releasing married
women from compulsory military service.
These essentialist maternal qualities have been used by some theoreticians and
politicians, including many feminist thinkers and activists, to explain and justify
women’s involvement in anti-war protest movements (Lorentzen and Turpin,
1998). The assumption inherent in these arguments is that the essence of
‘woman’ includes natural inflexible qualities resulting from her role (or potential
role) as a mother: a mother produces life and destroying it is against her nature.
A mother is used to providing care, to nourishing and nurturing, and therefore
will seek cooperation, and object to violence and the exploitation of power.
Universalistic notions suggest that through centuries of socialization, women
have become more equipped to resolving conflicts through peaceful means
rather than through competition and violence, which are more in line with
masculine norms of behaviour (Galblaum, 1997/8; Harris and King, 1989).
However, for maternal practice to become ‘a natural resource for peace politics’
(Ruddick, 1989: 157), it needs to be transferred from the private lives of women,
to the public sphere of politics, as Azmon (1997) so rightfully states. Indeed, this
‘motherist’ posture has many manifestations and was the leading argument of
many of the women’s peace movements of the century worldwide (York, 1998).
Although many argue over the notion of the essential peaceful nature of
women (Elshtain, 1987), their involvement in peace work in many countries
is well documented (Lorentzen and Turpin, 1998). Specifically, research on pro-
test movements in Israel against war and occupation suggests that women’s
involvement in them is significantly higher than their proportion in the popu-
lation at large, and that women also tend to establish their own movements
(Chazan, 1992). Over the past decade in Israel, such movements have included
‘Mothers Against Silence’ (protesting against the war in Lebanon), as well as
‘Women in Black’, ‘Shani – Women Against the Occupation’, ‘Women for
Political Prisoners’, ‘Tandi – Democratic Women’s Movement in Israel’, ‘Bat
Shalom’ and others (all protesting against the occupation of the Palestinian
Territories). [...]
In an attempt to understand why women’s movements and women’s issues as
a whole have been either ignored or displayed in news coverage, Rakow and
Kranich (1991: 9) suggest that news is esentially a masculine narrative ‘in which
women function not as speaking objects but as signs’. Their absence from the
public sphere and lack of status as authority figures legitimizes their common
presentation as ordinary people bearing the meaning of ‘woman’. Their presen-
tation in the news illustrates the consequences of public events rather than their
being political actors in those events. When women threaten the social order,
their actions are attributed to the nature of ‘woman’ and its essential personality